Thanks a lot! the JLPT stories are very well done, I'll subscribe. I know about Jpod101, but it isn't so useful without a subscription (it's kind of designed this way). I guess I should also get back to the "advanced" lessons by Assimil (so far available only in French). But I guess I'm mostly disappointed I can't find a good, interesting, Japanese podcast I could listen to to practice while learning something new. Interesting podcasts, at a completely natural pace, made for native speakers, are too difficult. There aren't so many words missing in my vocabulary, but while I'm trying to guess what one sentence meant, they've said 3 more which I didn't hear, and I entirely lost track.
A contrario, there's a gazillion of interesting podcasts in Spanish I can listen to, about all kinds of interesting subjects, to maintain some practice of the language. Of course, I understand well over 6000 words... Same huge choice for Italian or Russian (except I don't need the additional practice). The closest I found for Japanese is the "bilingual news", but it's a US/Jp couple (Mickael and Mami) who ramble on and on and on (about 2 hours per episode!!) about electronic gadget or whatever they read during the week. If they could make 20-30 minute episodes, have more structure, and write a description of each episode, and stop to translate the most difficult words/expressions they used during a subject, that would be perfect. But in its current form, they don't even indicate which subjects are discussed at which minute, so you can't skip to the part that might be interesting to you (or is it all about Apple, Google etc?).
