TheJapanesePage.com has a new face!  If you have been a regular visitor to TJP you know we’ve been trying to improve the site for quite some time now–over three years.  We’ve tried several web design firms and spent waaay too much money (for a free site), but nothing seemed to work the way we wanted–I’m sure a lot of this is because of my poor managerial skills.

Thanks to Phreadom (a long time member and maestro web designer), we have a new look:

This time, I think we have a keeper.  There are still a few issues to work out, but take a look at the new TJP.  Kick the tires and let us know if anything falls off.

This is our first instant download in almost a year.  We have been so busy with iPhone apps, this part of our business was totally neglected.  But I’m happy to announce we have a new $5 download!

Or actually, we don’t.  After some thought, we decided to change our pricing schedule.  Up until yesterday, all of the instant download products have been a flat $5. But some products, such as the readers, were more work intensive than others.

Most of our current stock will actually become cheaper. But some will be more expensive. We have already lowered the prices on the ones we will lower but we are keeping the others at $5 for now. We will probably raise those prices in 1-2 weeks (after our monthly newsletter goes out).  So if there are any readers you are interested in, grab ‘em while they are still cheap.

This pack contains about 90 common giongo (onomatopoeia) and gitaigo (mimetic words) sound words. Each sound word has an example sentence.

Beginners can get a lot out of this product, but very basic Japanese is recommended.

This pack includes:

• A E-Book in Flash for interactive studying and listening (click to hear)
• A 35 Page PDF (for printing)
• Folders with individual MP3 files for each word AND for each example sentence in Japanese
• Works with PCs or Macs

In the flash file, click to hear it instantly read by a native speaker. Print the PDF for offline review. The PDF and Flash program contain the words and example sentences.

Drop the MP3 files into your MP3 player to listen when away from the computer. Or burn the MP3s to a CD to listen in your car.

Please see the product page for sample audio and images.

Ever since the launch of our first iPhone app, Japanese Phrases, we have had requests for other platforms.  I’m happy to say, we are simultaneously working on an Android and Windows Mobile version.  Blackberry will come soon after these are completed.  It will still be about four weeks before the projects are complete, but it is exciting!

Here are a few reviews from the past few days in the iPhone App Sotre:

No person studying Japanese should be without this app. Very impressed with the huge amount of new content. The lessons are a very welcome addition.  10 stars for the grammar section- I haven’t seen anything like this before in any other Japanese education app – very, very useful !!

I’ve been learning Japanese for two years and have found the application very useful and one of the best on the AppStore. I love the lessons!

And from the free version (which has about 500 sound files compared to the 2,200 found in the full version):

I used this app to learn phrases while holidaying in Japan. Now that I’m actually studying Japanese, this app now provides a means of doing my revision wherever I am. The recent update was stellar in turning the app from a humble phrasebook to respectable study tool.

While this can’t take the place of a instructor led class it gives those with no Japanese language experience some useful phrases to get started with and those of us who have had some classroom experience a refresher. Kudos to the team that put this together you have made what I believe is the finest educational app to date.

We’ve received a lot of requests for enhancements and please keep them coming!  The next update (already submitted to Apple for review) will add Mass favoriting (and unfavoriting) and an option to hide the romaji.

Yesterday morning we loaded up the minivan and headed south for… the annual Orlando Japan Festival.  This was the third year we’ve gone and every year it gets bigger and bigger.  There were a ton of people–many more than last year, I think.

We were planning to get a booth, but decided to be a sponsor instead.  We were listed as “Japan Shop.” (Mentally write a “www.THE” before and a “.com” after)

Well, Apple has gone and made things worse for developers I think.  In a recent post titled Apple-is-smarter-than-this-itunes-app-store-release-date-madness, I tried to summerize a few problems for developers trying to get their apps in the Released Date front page. 

Up until now, both new apps and newly released updates appeared in the center screen “Release Date” section.  This almost guarantees a nice boost in sales for obvious reasons.  Unfortunately, it looks like Apple is only showing truely new releases there now. 

As a consumer, you may think this is a good thing so as to not clutter up that area.  But it isn’t.  It creates an incentive for developers to spend all their time making throw away apps (because only new apps appear in the spotlight) instead of polishing and making old apps better. 

Maybe Apple is just tweaking the Release Date area and will allow updates to appear too, but if not, expect to see many more new apps with fewer updates and of less quality.

If there is no boost-in-sales incentive to update, why would developers bother?

(This being said, we have several updates almost ready to be uploaded )

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UPDATE: Iliya Yordanov from Cramzy.com has this to say: http://cramzy.com/news.php

Interestingly, the post (or rant) suggests the number of iPhone apps will actually dramatically decrease within a year due to the fact developers will be less likely to renew their $99 contract.

I really hope Apple isn’t going in this direction.  I can’t see how this would benefit Apple, developers, or certainly the consumers.

Cleaning up around here, I created a stack of stuff that someone can use, but I don’t really want to make a product page for it at TheJapanShop.  If something interests you, I’m willing to negotiate   Also email me or call 1-386-965-8774 if you have any questions or would like a photo of anything. (or you could use Google to find out more about these too!)

Nintendo DS Games (will work on ANY DS device)

1) Kanji Dragon 必殺カンフー漢字ドラゴン (game for learning kanji) – never opened; still in shrinkwrap. $25
2) Kanken DS 2 漢検DS２＋常用漢字字典 (kanji training software for the Kanji Test) – never opened; still in shrinkwrap. $38

J-Pop Music CD

1) Puffy – Jet CD – This is opened, but the CD is fine; no scratches $5

And

1) Kanji Learner’s Dictionary CD for several Casio electronic dictionaries including the XD-GP9700.  $38 (It should work with all Casio dictionary models starting with SW, GW, SP, GP, SF, GF)

Here is what Casio writes about it:

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If anyone is interested, please call or email me.

This is actually pretty easy to figure out by stumbling about in the iPhone Settings, but from time to time I hear people asking.  So, here is how to turn on the Japanese keyboard and voice commands on the iPhone or iPod Touch.

1) First tap the Settings icon probably on your first screen:

2) Next tap “General.”

3) Next tap “International”–You could do the same thing by tapping “Keyboard” and then “International Keyboards,” but International gives you other options.

4) The “Language” setting sets the language for all menu titles; Try changing the Voice Control to Japanese and then hold down the home button for a few seconds.  But for today’s post, we want the third choice–Keyboards. 

5) Set QWERTY to ON and leave Kana off.  Using QWERTY (or romaji input) is so much easier than searching for kana.

That’s it.  Most people will find this on their own (I did).  But for those who Google before trying, here you go!

I’m working on an update for our Karate app on the iPhone.  It contains karate related Japanese terms and phrases.

As a request from a user, I’m adding two groups of phrases and decided to add them to TJP with the audio here:

Dojo Kun and Niju Kun

The Dojo Kun are five succinct guidelines for becoming the ideal Karateka.  The Niju Kun are twenty general rules and observations about Karate devised by Gichin Funakoshi who is credited for introducing Okinawan karate to mainland Japan.

You have to see it to believe it, folks.

Last week at the Asian Festival in Gainesville, Florida, a Taiko group was supposed to follow Thai Elvis—yep, he was a Thai impersonator of Elvis.  The only problem was, as the Taiko group started, Elvis played an encore.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Elvis.  It’s just when you’re expecting cola and you take a swig of milk, something just ain’t right.

For a limited time (meaning, Clay hasn’t decided yet!), we are discounting our popular Beginners Vocabulary Download to less than a buck! (well, ok, one penny less than a buck)

This instant gratification download has over 500 sound files and it is actually the base for our first iPhone app called Japanese Phrases and Lessons.  If you have an iPhone, you will want to get that instead of this download since we have added more than 2,200 audio files and hundreds of pages of lessons to it.  But then again, even if you have the iPhone app, you may want to pick this up to have on your computer  for a mere .99!

 This download includes a Flash program for point, click, and hear interactivity, PDFs to print out the vocabulary, and over 500 sound files in MP3 format.  It works on PCs and Macs and right after the purchase, you will be able to download the files instantly.