This is a site where foreigners living in Japan can practise Japanese conversation and written characters. It's useful for learning spoken Japanese for the kind of situations encountered by a foreign resident beginning life in Japan - things like completing the necessary registration procedures at the city hall, seeing a doctor at the hospital and talking to school teachers about one's children. There is language support for Portuguese, Spanish, English, Chinese, and Japanese.

• The site has speaking practice, a hiragana chart, a katakana chart and a sample resume (CV) in Japanese.
• You can check how to write and pronounce hiragana and katakana characters on the charts.
• In the speaking practice section, there are 3 situations: City Hall, Hospital and School.
• There is also a vocabulary list.

In the city hall setting is a conversation based on the renewal procedure for foreigner registration. The hospital setting has a conversation in which the foreign patient is diagnosed with a cold and receives some medicine. The school setting has a conversation showing a parent explaining to the homeroom teacher that their child is ill and will take the day off, and listening to some reports from the school.
You can practise by listening to the whole conversation, or repeatedly listen to short sections for a particular expression/function, then mimicking the Japanese.

You can use the charts on the site to check the writing order and pronunciation of all the hiragana and the katakana.

In the 'Resume Sample' section you can check the reading and meaning of kanji found on a typical resume (curriculum vitae) and download the sample sheet in order to write your own.

There are plenty of contents useful for foreign residents beginning a new life in Japan.

These contents are part of Nagoya University's Japanese Language Learning Support System for Toyota City.