A little over 6 months have passed since we launched our first podcast – Japan Podshow.

This experimental podcast met with great success, becoming popular with a worldwide audience and resulting in over 20,000 downloads.

We feel that given the fact that there was no budget whatsoever to produce the show, and that it was all done alongside our full time jobs, this was quite an achievement.

We’d like to thank all of our contributors and listeners for making it possible. It couldn’t have been done without you.

Whilst there have been numerous calls for a continuation of the series, without funding this is not possible at the present time.

Japan Podshow will remain on our servers so will always be downloadable via iTunes.

We’re delighted to announce the launch of a new podcast on the Pokya.jp network – Making it in Japan.

Japan Podshow is doing really well, with a great audience base that continues to grow with each episode. However, we appreciate that some people don’t have the time to listen to a full episode – but at the same time they do want to hear the interviews with our special guests, who tend to talk a lot more sense that we (George and Joseph) do.

Also, we sometimes record excellent, inspiring interviews with guests, but due to time limitations are unable to fit them into Japan Podshow in their entirety.

Additionally, we’re aware that some people may not want to be featured in a ‘variety’ podcast – preferring instead something a bit more serious.

Enter Making it in Japan – a purposely minimalistic podcast. As we say over there:

“Making it in Japan showcases the achievements of English-speaking entrepreneurs and artists. In our interviews we hear how they have built businesses or carried out artistic projects, learn of the challenges specific to Japan that they faced along the way (and how these were overcome), and find out what they would tell others who are thinking of pursuing careers in related fields.”

We have three episodes up already, two of which were first broadcast on Japan Podshow.

Check them out and subscribe at www.pokya.jp/makeit.

It’s now several months since we started producing Japan Podshow. We’re pretty happy with how things have gone so far. Listener figures are steadily on the increase as word of the show spreads. Listener feedback. something which we received virtually none of for the first few episodes, now comes in in a steady stream. Our ‘loyal’ fan base is growing too, doing all they can to promote the show to people in their own networks. We’ve also been fortunate to work with some other very talented people, with some great interviews and contributions from others – thank you to all of those who have taken part so far.

The recent release of our Cirque du Soleil Tokyo special was a big achievement for us. The amount of work that went into it was pretty substantial, all the more so as we were fairly new to pro video editing software. Still, we were very fortunate to have the cooperation of the theatre who did all that they could to support us in our efforts.

Whilst we would like to do more of these kinds of mini-documentaries, the time factor means that for now they’ll have to be put on hold. Due to our daytime commitments, most of our time is going in to producing Japan Podshow. Whilst the editing process is now much smoother than it was at the beginning of the series, it is still not unusual for an episode to take in the region of 20 hours (total) to produce.

We’ve also started experimenting with tools such as Audio Boo. These enable us to record short podcasts without any additional editing needed – they are simply recorded on an iPhone and uploaded direct to the net.

What will happen at the end of the current series of Japan Podshow (it is scheduled to run for 12 episodes)? Well, whilst we’re not entirely sure, it’s thought that a second series will begin in the winter. In the meantime, projects that have until now been put on hold will be produced.

For now though, the focus is on the next few episodes. We have some great interviews lined up with some talented non-Japanese here in Japan, and hope to continue to provide just the kind of content our listeners are looking for.

Japan Podshow can be found at www.pokya.jp/japanpodshow

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