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.

For the rest of the month, we will be posting special Twitter-only coupons and promos good at TheJapanShop.com. If you are interested, please follow us!

The average file rating is 4.042 out of 5 stars
There are 47 files in the database
There has been a total of 57,555 downloads
The newest file is Japanese Beginner Phrases Podcast 9
The highest rated file is Chapter 5 with a rating of 5 out of 5 stars
The lowest rated file is Listening Practice #2: Golden Week with a rating of 2 out of 5 stars
The most downloaded file is Grammar PDF: Hou ga ii with 4,339 downloads
The least downloaded file is Japanese Beginner Phrases Podcast 9 with 12 downloads
The average number of downloads each file has is 1,224.574

Note: The links above are direct links, but it is ‘prettier’ to find them through the main download page: HERE

We have 47 files for download. Many of these are ebooks with audio, but there are a few PDF lessons and other miscellaneous items.

The 尺八 shakuhachi is a Japanese bamboo flute often heard at festivals and recently on TV and film–The Last Samurai, for example.

His article finally went live a few minutes ago here.  And I listed his brand new CD earlier today here.  So I feel pretty good about a days worth of work. 

If you are at all interested in Japanese traditional music, please checkout both the article and the CD.  Brian does much to introduce the instrument to his Western audience.  If you like his work, please consider supporting him by buying his CD or giving him a holler at his website.

We think it has something to do with the new forum. The techs will work on optimizing the forum database and we’ll see…

Other than that and a few other small glitches, it looks pretty good. I’ll wait until we figure out the performance issue before making a formal announcement.

In the mean-time, check out the new (possibly slow) site: http://www.thejapanesepage.com

More to come…

Back in January (of 2008) we completed an ‘upgrade’ of The Japanese Page. We are working hard on doing another upgrade now.

Some people have asked why I would want to essentially make a TJP 3.0 so soon after TJP 2.0. The January update was easier to manage from an administrative point of view, but frankly it was ugly, disorganized, and I hadn’t a clue about how Drupal (the backbone software) really worked. I am pretty sure for the end user, the old site was far superior.

A few months ago, a few of the site admins and myself decided it was best to start over–literally. We have taken every single page (hundreds and hundreds of them!), polished them, fixed broken links, added content & images & audio, and literally rebuilt the entire site page by single page.

Now that I know a little about Drupal, I spent an incredible amount of time setting it up so that everything is organized precisely how I want it. Now whenever an article is created, I simply choose the corresponding categories and–shazam!–the title and teaser appear in the correct categories page(s).

Drupal is very powerful and flexible–both of which mean there is a huuuuuuge learning curve. I wouldn’t recommend Drupal for someone new to it unless you don’t mind investing a lot of time learning its ins and outs–still it is an amazing CMS.

(Click for larger image)

• The three column layout is only on the front page. All other pages drop the third column and expand the middle column
• Hundreds of broken links were fixed (恥)
• Forum is much more integrated now including new posts listed on every page
• Wagawiki, our in-house wiki, will be integrated too by launch
• Video, Audio, and other media is also all integrated–before we had links here and there and required separate logins…
• Every article has been graded as fit for beginner, upper beginner, lower intermediate, and intermediate and above
• Photo Gallery has been upgraded to the newest version
• We will be working on the Groups to help people find study partners
• Dozens of brand new videos, podcasts, and audio lessons
• It’s all free! (except links to the store and friends of course…)

That’s what we’ve been working on. It is still a work in progress and we still don’t have a solid date for the upgrade, but it should be very soon.

But if you are a Sinatra fan (who isn’t?), you can’t pass up this opportunity: 97 great hits for only $9.99! I don’t know if this is a mistake on iTunes’ part or if it is just a great deal, but Amazon has it for almost $30!

The Best of the Columbia Years 1943-1952
Frank Sinatra

Including great songs like: Saturday Night (is the Loneliest Night of the Week); Ol’ Man River; Embraceable You; Someoe to Watch over Me; Nancy; Guess I’ll Hang my Tears out to Dry; and… well, you get the picture.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to work with many feed readers.  Phreadom is working on that.  It does, however, work very well with Firefox’s Live Bookmarks.  If you use Firefox, please give it a shot!

1) Log into TJP.
2) Go here (or go to the forums and click on the RSS button at the top right)
3) Choose which forums you would like to subscribe to (or choose all) and press ‘Submit’

There is a new online Japanese music store on the horizon. It’s called HearJapan and has a nifty torii/music note logo (see left). But that’s not all; it also has music I hear.

It’s a bit exclusive and very beta right now, but I’ve been given a coupon code for people to take a peak inside. (see below) Every song has a 30 second clip (some may be a little shorter) to preview and most songs are only 100 yen (about 90 cents US). Of course all descriptions and menus are in English.

Coupon Code: 9kk3m
http://www.hearjapan.com/login/register

You must use the above code and URL since HearJapan is still a (somewhat) closed beta.

The Pros:

• Everything is in English and accessible to the native English speaker no matter where you live (Hello iTunes Japan!)
• Extremely high quality MP3s
• No DRM which means you can play your MP3s on any device anywhere
• Japanese Search—in addition to searching in English, you can also find artists by their Japanese names
• 30 second samples streamed for free
• Latest artist, concert and album information in English

The obvious Con for now is the selection is quite modest, but HearJapan writes:

Over 80% of the artists and groups that HearJapan has already signed to the site are not on the site as of yet. From start to finish it is a long process for each artist, so please have patience. Many larger labels are also waiting for HearJapan to officially open before committing to anything. Currently we are in talks with dozens of labels. In order to bring the fans all of the music they desire, we decided to jump start the beta release to get more labels signed on faster. HearJapan is quite a revolutionary concept, so the most important thing now is to show the labels that there is demand for Japanese music outside of Japan. If you, the fans can do this we are confident that we can make you happy.

If you like JPop (no Enka yet—Come on Tendo Yoshimi!) try it out. I’ve found a few songs that are rather nice.

Coupon Code: 9kk3m
http://www.hearjapan.com/login/register