Japanese listening practice

Perhaps this will be of help to some of my fellow Japanese language learners out there. I’ve been looking for some Japanese radio stations to listen to via Real Audio, in an effort to bolster up my at-the-moment flagging Japanese, and especially my listening skills. There are plenty of news programs out there, usually coupled with video (TBS maintains several linked here), but I just wanted something to listen to in the background while I’m scanning photos and what-not, and without a visual accompaniment, news programs are just too difficult. Certainly there are a slew of music programs available out there, but these are naturally heavy on music and light on talk. What I wanted was talk radio, conversations and interviews conducted in futsuu-kei (everyday Japanese using plain forms), on topics I already have some knowledge about so I’m not totally lost at sea.

I finally found something I was looking for, raji@, run by a company called Advanced Internet Integration (AII) (even more digital media content at their site). Every weeknight from 11:30pm – 2:00am, which also happens to be my prime computer usage time slot, there are 4 or 5 programs on topics like computers, gaming, music, movies, etc. Tonight, the program from Mikaka featured a discussion on blogging, and online community, which then morphed into a discussion of jisatsu buumu (“suicide boom”) and web sites that offer advice to folks contemplating suicide, which have been in the news a lot recently.

If others out there know of other resources out there like this one with which to improve my Japanese listening skills, well, I’m all ears.