Japanese on Shortwave Radio

[berean_315]

I've been listening to shortwave radio off and on for about 30yrs, but don't know if many people are familiar with it.

Radio Japan broadcasts in many languages throughout the world. For the North America broadcasts from I believe 0000 - 0600 they use a transmitter in Canada so the signal is strong and broadcast programming in English and Japanese. As part of the English broadcast they have japanese lessons on Monday & Wednesday evenings. A link to the Radio Japan site about the lessons is here:

Easy Japanese, free audio & text lessons | NHK WORLD RADIO JAPAN

You can also listen to the lessons online besides over the radio.

Broadcasts times and frequencies here in the evenings in the U.S.are:

0000 - 0100 UTC on 6145 Khz (English)
0200 - 0300 UTC on 5960 Khz (Japanese)
0300 - 0400 UTC on 5060 Khz (Japanese)
0500 - 0600 UTC on 6110 Khz (English)
0600 - 0700 UTC on 11690 Khz (English) * Japanese Lessons

This programming info can be accessed from the NHK World site at:

NHK WORLD - English

One final neat thing. If you listen to the program you can send them a reception report about program details, time, freq. day and they will send what what is called a QSL card such as this:

Gerald

 

[berean_315]

To learn more about QSL cards and shortwave go to the following links:

Introduction to Shortwave Listening
Reporting and QSLs
Shortwave Radio QSL SWL

I have attached a picture of the back of the QSL card in the first message.

 

[Uncle Frank]

Welcome to a fellow airwave lover !

Love to spin the Sw dial ! Have an attic full of antennas to protect them from ice storms. No room for ham equip. because I have so many scanners. It's great practice to listen to the Japanese when you're trying to learn Japanese and Sw radios are dirt cheap now days.

Frank