I’ve been studying Japanese on my own for 20 years and haven’t gotten very far. We’re going to Japan soon so I decided to try a different strategy. Now, I listen to this podcast every day while walking my dog and it’s been so helpful as a refresher for the things I used to know and has made me feel a lot more confident about speaking to people while I’m there. I even emailed Alex a question and he gave me a very thorough and well thought out answer.

I wish that I had known about this podcast months ago when I started my Japanese learning journey. Thank you for making this. This is the first podcast I’ve found that earnestly instructs you on how to speak the language in easy-to-grasp terms. I love how the whole thing is sorta conversational because it makes it easier to follow along and just listen/absorb. I’m sharing this with all my language learning friends and I hope this podcast keeps pumping out episodes.

Listen at 1.25x speed. You’ll thank me later.

Hi Alex, I’ve listened to all of your episodes but appreciate this last one especially. My husband and I just returned from Japan last month, and we had some awful tourist experiences. One especially where we purchased tickets to see a traditional arts performance in Gion Corner. (Sadou, ikebana, koto, bunraku, miyako odori) Several groups and persons arrived late, finding their seat in the MIDDLE of performances, rather than waiting during applause. And not only that, but talked very loudly to find their seats, late into the performance. It was incredibly disheartening and disrespectful, and I wish there could have been more awareness at that time. I felt so sorry for the performers on stage who so carefully prepared everything with so much detail and care. I hope everyone listens and thinks about this episode. It will help preserve the richness of Japanese culture.

Love this podcast! Very naturalistic sounding Japanese. Enjoy listening to friendly banter between hosts.

This is such an enjoyable podcast! It’s very informative - which is what I was looking for - but the hosts also have great chemistry and such interesting insights! Although I’ve learned a lot through my studies, the natural flow of dialogue in each episode has allowed me to learn details about Japanese culture that would be difficult to learn without first traveling to Japan (and dealing with some embarrassing trial and error!).

This is the best podcast for improving your Japanese.

I’ve been learning Japanese for a while and really need to practice listening because my skills are low in that dept. I really like the format of this podcast and the length of each episode. I always learn something new in each episode even if it’s on a topic i feel familiar with. Great to listen to in the car and the repetition makes and both Japanese and English, and the Japanese conversations in between make shadowing a lot easier. Keep up the great work!!

I started listening to the podcast recently as I’ve been using duolingo for the past 60 days so far to learn and wanted to branch out and be learning from multiple sources, this podcast has offered a lot of great advice already and I love the energy of it!

As an intermediate level Japanese learner, I’ve gained SO much from this podcast. Alex and Ami really do a great job of teaching practical natural sounding Japanese. They explain everything thoroughly, so even beginners can easily understand. They also teach very nuanced language in the “Random Phrase of the Week” segment which is useful even for advanced learners. A must listen if you want to stop sounding like a textbook robot!