This is the website for NHK's Radio Japan language-learning program, which offers Japanese lessons in an audio drama format with language support for 17 different countries. The series follows the adventures of a young Thai student learning the Japanese language at a university  in Tokyo.

• In the 'やさしい日本語 (Easy Japanese)' section, there are 48 lessons in all. New lessons are added at a rate of one per week (one lesson = 10 minutes).
• You can download audio and scripts for free.
• 1 useful Japanese expression is presented in each lesson.
• You can study hiragana and katakana.

How to...

Let us show you what's inside やさしい日本語 Easy Japanese.

These lessons are broadcast weekly on the radio, and the contents of the website reflect the contents of the radio program.
There are 48 lessons worth of 10-minute broadcasts.

You can download the audio and text of the lessons, free of charge.

This is the menu.

Take a look at 'What is "Easy Japanese"' and you'll see there is an introduction which explains the set-up of the lessons and the characters who appear in them.

The actual lessons are found in the section called "List of Lessons".

You can choose the contents you want to study by the list of lessons, or by theme.
Choose by theme and you can see what you should be able to do with each lesson.

List of themes

Let's look at Lesson 1.

Details of the scene in question are written for you (see the red-framed section below).
You can see that there is also an audio button and download buttons too.

There is a script which includes the "Key Phrase" for that lesson (written in kana/kanji and romaji notation, and including English translations).

Click on 'Vocabulary List & Quiz' from the menu on the right and you can see vocabulary lists for each lesson.

In 'Japanese Syllabaries' you can study hiragana and katakana.

You can listen to audio to help you pronounce them, and you can download PDFs showing stroke orders.

To get to this website from NHK World,
first click on 'Learn Japanese' .

You can find Easy Japanese Grammar lessons in Programs.
Choose your preferred language from 17 languages.

Having done this, 'やさしい日本語(Easy Japanese) Grammer Lesson ' will appear.

As the characters and the background are set out already for you, the easy-to-follow skits and scripts with audio/explanations on this website - plus an easily manageable pace of 10 minutes per lesson - mean that even the busiest people out there shouldn't find it too difficult to stick at their Japanese language studies if they use this resource!

If you'd like to learn conversational Japanese, we recommend the Easy Japanese Conversation lessons (Introduction article)on the left-hand side of Grammar lessons.