Is anyone a paying member of this site? How is it? Is it good for starting out in Japanese?
I signed up for the free intro but I found it hard to navigate. Basically I was looking for stuff to import to LingQ, but I couldn’t find it. I think I gave up easily because I found the site too “sales”-y. I also really dislike the English bookending on the podcasts. It’s bad enough it is in English, but on top of that the guy’s voice really grated on me. The podcasts themselves, the Japanese parts, are quite good though.
I poked around jpod, too, and it’s funny you had the same response as I did, Ed! I found the guy’s voice who was doing the bookending really annoying too! The best part of the podcasts was after the scripted dialogue when the hosts would talk in Japanese about the dialogue and related topics. Unfortunately, they only provided a transcript for the scripted dialogue. The banter was nice because it was real and you felt like you started to get to know the participants. Their approach on the whole is quite conventional.
First let me say thanks to both of you for your quick responses.
I know how you feel mark, about only getting a transcript for the scripted dialogue.
I supposed as a quasi-Newbie in Japanese (I only know about Japanese from a linguistic standpoint) I could pay the 10 bucks to try it out for a month.
Actually, I checked out the subscription page and the 10 bucks is the monthly price only if you sign up the for the limited basic for 2 years. I was thinking I might just pay for one month premium with no commitments and down load as many dialogs and transcripts as I could in that month and then work on listening to them later. But, since I already have a lot of dialogs from Genki and Living Language Ultimate Japanese 1 & 2, a subscription to Hiragana times with audio, graded readers (no translations), Harry Potter audio book, ebook and hard copy, and many other audio CD’s I think that getting (you might even say hoarding!) material can be a distraction for me from the real task, and of listening to the content I already have, or checking out the free content here on LingQ just for the pure enjoyment of it! Come to think of it, why am I reading and posting to the forum at 11:00 at night when I could be listing to another gripping chapter of my Angeles y Demonios audiolibro! Heh-heh!!!
I’m a bit of a resource hoarder as well. I just found the first Harry Potter book in Chinese online, so I’ve been listening to it and reading along in English. Where did you get the Japenese one?
Thanks for the tips on Japanese resources though, especially the Hiragana times one you were talking about. Now to just find the time!
I’m a compulsive ebook and audio book collecter too. If anyone’s collecting books in English, Russian, French and German, please let me know. We could get some good swaps going 
I’d be glad to swap resources Helen. I know a great place where you can get free audio books in those languages…
It just occured to me that I have the audio book, as well as the texts, for first Harry Potter novel in all four of those languages. Interested?