Nihongo con Teppei get’s recommended a lot as a podcast for learners for Japanese and for good reason. It’s an excellent resource. For one reason or another, I never got into the beginner podcast, but I decided to give the original podcast a listen and it’s been amazing. Most people around here probably know about the Beginner Podcast, (Nihongo con Teppei for Beginners), since I managed for months to avoid realizing that there’s an original, intermediate level podcast, there’s probably other people around here who’ve made the same oversight.
The original podcast is great. When Teppei started it, it was probably the only podcast for Japanese learners presented almost entirely in unscripted Japanese. There’s others now (though actually not that many that I know of), but it’s still one of the best if not the best podcast around for upper beginner / intermediate learners. (I could see this as possibly being useful for advanced learners as well, but I’m not an advanced learner and can’t really speak to that from personal experience).
Teppei puts a lot of energy into the making the podcasts, has a good sense of humor, and offers up a lot of positive energy to his listeners. His podcasts are a lot of fun to listen to, they’re great listening practice, and often quite fun to list to in their own right. But, while in it’s own right the podcast is fun and great for intermediate level Japanese-learners, the one thing it has that no other podcast can offer is *quantity*. There’s 700 episodes of the original Nihongo Con Teppei podcast and over 125 episodes of the follow-up (identical in style) Nihongo con Teppei Z.
That amount of quantity is valuable in and of itself. It’s really useful to hear one person talking and get used to the style of speech and the words and expressions they use often. While at the advanced level the opposite may be true, you may want to listen to as many different styles of speech, as many different kinds of words as possible, as an intermediate it helps to narrow your focus and listen to just one person. And, in terms of Japanese language content created specifically for Japanese learners, there is no other podcast that offers more than the original Nihongo con Teppei.
Here’s the original website:
[http://teppeisensei.com/](http://teppeisensei.com/)
but if you use a podcast app, you are better off looking for the “archives” version since only the latest 100 episodes will load in the original version of the podcast (this is actually the reason why Teppei finished the original podcast and started the new run as “Nihongo con Teppei Z”). That’s not *quite* been completely uploaded yet, but it’s up too episode 600:
[http://original.nihongoconteppei.com/](http://original.nihongoconteppei.com/)
or on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/4vBY6sdIYs75n9Z8WsolXu) or [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nihongo-con-teppei-original-archives-1-700/id1629303829?uo=4&itsct=podtail_podcasts&itscg=30200&ls=1&at=1001l39ag&ct=podtail-profile)
I also highly recommend the conversation podcast Teppei and Noriko do, as well Noriko’s own “Learn Japanese with Noriko” podcasts.
[Japanese with Teppei and Noriko](https://teppeinorikojapanese.com/)
[**Japanese with Noriko**](https://www.japanesewithnoriko.com/)
8 comments
For sure, I’m incredibly thankful to him for doing this. When I used to learn another language, I really struggled finding any podcast that I can listen to for longer durations, let alone repeat episodes. Most are so incredibly stiff – worse even, they often have some weird teacher-student setup where they spend minutes explaining cultural stuff in English and going through vocab. The student playing the role of an idiot essentially where they repeat words with horrible pronunciation and the teacher just giving up and saying “y…yeah exactly!” at some point. In contrast, his podcasts have value from the very first seconds and he always manages to make some small highlights preventing things from going stiff, let it be a spontaneous cat rap, a short theatrical impression of a language learning situation or whatever else can give you small chuckles.
It doesn’t really matter which format, his podcasts always have a very welcoming and warm feeling to them. I’m still at a level where only the beginner podcast has real value, but I often times have Teppei and Noriko running when working from home just because it’s so chill to just have it in the background, and looking forward to the point where I can dive to the next level of his original podcast.
+1 for Teppei-sensei. If you’re learning and not listening to either the beginner or original you’re missing out on perhaps the best listening practice out there. The best part for me is most of his podcasts are *hillarious*, listening to them is never boring.
I’m currently working my way through the first half of *Genki I*. I tuned in to the beginner podcast, but couldn’t understand most of what was being said. How much vocabulary do you feel is required before I can really start to engage with Teppei?
the bizarre stories are great. i get quite a few chuckles from those
Thanks for this.
I love Teppei!
And totally connect with wanting something like this in other languages. Started looking for a similar beginning German podcast and am not having luck (yet)
And thanks for the recommendations!
Thanks! I checked out a couple of episodes, and this seems like a pretty good match for my level of listening skills.
Support him on patreon!