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Since my video on The Secrets to Learning Japanese, I’ve been asked by several people where I get my Japanese television fix from, as they’ve had difficulty tracking Japanese programming down due to living in North America. I frequently use D-Addicts for all my Japanese program downloads. Another method would be to look into getting your television provider’s “Japanese Channel”. I know that Rogers has this channel, and it has a lot of educational Japanese programming from NHK (日本放送協会 Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai : Japan Broadcasting Corporation), as well as Japanese dramas, music television, and even Japanese news.

On D-Addicts, you can find a huge variety of Japanese dramas and even Japanese television programs. I will give you a quick tutorial based on whatever it is you might be looking for, so that you can find it all.

Step 1: Obviously the first step would be to go to the site. Here is a quick link for you -> D-Addicts.com

From this point you will see a forum with lots and lots of links. If you don’t have time to browse around and just want to get to the Japanese goodies, then follow this next step: 1) If you just want to get straight to downloading, click on the TORRENT button at the top of the page, or 2) If you have some extra time and you want to research what to watch, click on the DRAMA WIKI button.

Step 2: Assuming you’ve just went to the torrents link. You will be given a lot of stuff to choose from. To narrow it down, select the “type” drop down menu. From here you can choose what you want to see on the list below. For our purposes we will select Jdrama (Japanese Drama). 

Next, the “subs” drop down menu will allow you to narrow it down further as to whether you would like english subtitles or not.

Step 3: From here you will have a list of dramas/tv-shows to choose from, and download the torrent files. If you don’t have some bit-torrent software, I strongly suggest you get some, otherwise you won’t be able to download these episodes.

Step 4: If you chose to click the DramaWiki link on the front page, you will be taken to this page:

Here is where you can get all the information you need on all past/present/future Dramas. Again, for our purposes, we will be clicking on “Upcoming Japanese Dramas” (Unless you have something/someone specific you are looking for).

Step 5: This page will list you with all the dramas that are coming out next season. To get to currently running or past running dramas, scroll to the bottom of the page. I’m interested in what is going on right now in Japan, so I will click on “Japanese Drama Season - Spring 2008″

Step 6: From here I can now view all the Japanese Dramas currently being aired in Japan, their broadcasting companies, air times, and ratings. Just as a pointer: Monday Japanese Dramas that are aired at 9:00pm are called “Getsu-Ku” (meaing monday’s at 9), and have the biggest stars, and are usually the most anticipated dramas of the season. You don’t have to download them, this is just for your knowledge.

Step 7: I rarely watch Getsu-ku dramas as they are far too sappy & touching for my liking. So what I’m going to do is search around for some more humorous dramas. All you have to do is click on the drama’s name and it will take you to a page full of information, a synopsis, a list of the cast, episode information, and links to the official website. I’ve selected Gokusen 3 (ごくせん３), and was taken to a list of all 3 Gokusen series. They are comedies and about school, much more to my liking.

Step 8: After I’ve done checking out whether I’d want to watch this or not, all that is left is to go back to the TORRENTS page and type in the series name, and *BAM* there’s your list of downloadable episodes.

Other Notes:

• Drama’s (more than anime) have “soft-subs” meaning you can choose to have subtitles on or off. If you are starting out learning the language, watch the episode without subtitles first and try and catch as much as you can. If this is too difficult, try this method the other way around, and see what you can pick up. Write it down, check some dictionaries. This is just a quick tip, I’ll get more into this later on.
• Japanese television programs such as variety shows rarely have english subtitles. I’ll recommend a few good ones for intermediate Japanese learners in the future.
• Leave a comment here if you found this useful! Subscribe to my site! and tell everyone you can about my site! Cheers! =) 

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 11th, 2008 at 5:03 pm and is filed under Jdrama.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.