- Japan Foundation has developed several free courses and plenty of other learning materials, funded by the Japanese government.
- Japan National Tourism Organization
- Japan FAQ: Know Before You Go for gaijin (visitors), including lots of valuable (unofficial) hints about the JET programme from previous participants.
- And here's the official page about the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme (JET).
Learning resources
- Japanese-Lesson.com offers free online study programmes produced by an experienced native Japanese language teacher. Includes writing practice sheets for hiragana,
- NHK Learning Japanese online
- Visual Kanji has free video-based lessons on 1100 kanji and 7000 associated words. Asahi Kanji offers an online Java flashcard program to help you review and drill the Japanese kanji; also available for iOS and Android.
- Jim Breen's Japanese Page has been running for decades, with a list of recommended sites and WWWJDIC, an online dictionary he developed.
- Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese
- Hirogaru shows various aspects of Japan through reading or listening to information on 12 topics such as music, anime and manga, food, sports etc.
- goo is an information project sponsored by NTT in Japan, providing access to four Sanseido dictionaries: a big Japanese-Japanese, Exceed English <-> Japanese and the Daily Shingo (new word) dictionary. All instructions in Japanese.
- Teach Yourself Japanese provides a range of online lessons from beginner level.
- Rikai allows you to view any Japanese website with popups that give the reading and English definition of each word; words can be added to your own word list alongside their definitions. Alternatively, you can enter your own text. The site also offers a Kanji map, flashcards and phrase/Kanji of the day. Impressive. POPjisyo.com does a similar job, but can also show romaji readings.
- Japanese for Busy People - videos in a YouTube playlist for the popular coursebook.
News and journals on-line
- The Asahi Shimbun - daily newspaper in Japanese. English version also available.
- The Yomiuri Shimbun - daily news in Japanese or English.
- Mainichi Daily News - another bilingual daily.
- Radio Japan - NHK Radio Japan World Service in 22 languages.