On episode 3 of Japan Podshow, we were fortunate to meet Katsuyuki Hasegawa, the founder of the fantastic bilingual magazine, Hiragana Times.

The Hiragana Times is one of the longest running magazines catering for people interested in Japan and its culture, containing not only recent news but also special articles examining and explaining aspects of Japanese culture and society – and it does all this whilst teaching you Japanese! Every article has been accurately translated, and the Japanese text comes complete with furigana to help with those kanji that you might not know.

The Hiragana Times also has a regular Q and A spot, answering common visa questions that foreigners in Japan may have.

Check out what’s in this month’s issue.

Whilst established over two decades ago, the Hiragana Times has kept up with the times, having launched its PDF version 10 years ago, and now having a digital version – complete with downloadable audio.

Recently, the magazine has also teamed up with Smart.fm, the popular online learning tool, so that you can study Japanese using the Hiragana Times audio and texts from the Smart.fm platform.

The Hiragana Times is available from all good book stores in Japan, usually in the English language magazine section. You can also subscribe online, either to the digital version or the printed version – all the subscription details are here.

In our podcast, we gave away a 12-month subscription to the digital version of the Hiragana Times to lucky listener Vince Ladisa – congratulations Vince!

Our thanks to Katsuyuki Hasegawa of the Hiragana Times for his making this possible.