Tony-Sensei,
Just wanted to know what is available to us at the moment. Is it just the podcasts and kana work sheet?
Thanks!
Shutoh
I live near a mecha of Japanese communities - Gardena, CA and Little Tokyo in L.A., CA, so I might have better luck than others. :]
Most definitely! Even better, I hope that I can avoid such materials as much as possible. We will be discussing a couple of poems that are in the public domain, so those shouldn't cause much of a problem. The manga are more problematic, as one series that I love to use ("Pocket Story") is relatively unknown, and even worse out of print.
If I can, I'll try to find something that can be shared by everyone!
Thanks Sensei. Will you be listing the other copurighted materials that you use, so we can buy them if we want?
Sorry that it took me so long to respond! I thought that the site was configured to email me notifications of all forum posts, but I guess I was wrong... =P
Currently, it's mostly the podcasts and the Anki decks. I'm adding stuff as fast as I can, but right now I'm concentrating on those materials, as I will be using those in my class. As the school year progresses, I will also be adding tests, quizzes, and various handouts (those that don't contain copyrighted materials--I like to use manga in my teaching, but those I won't be able to upload here...)
What I truly hope is that members of the site will start uploading stuff that they've created. I also hope that other Japanese teachers will upload good materials that they use. If we can build a good community of learners then we should be able to build up a library of materials that far exceeds anything i could ever create myself...
I've searched used bookstores in Tokyo for this one without luck, so if you happen to find it near you then that's fate calling. (^-^)
You can get online versions of the three volumes, for 525 yen each. The problem is that reading them requires some lame Windows-only eBook reader, and I'm pretty sure that you can't print them out, so that's two pretty major strikes for me.
If you really want to get them, your best bet is probably to order them through amazon.co.jp, where they are sometimes available used. Prices vary wildly, however. Right now I see Volume 1 available for a low price of 94 yen, Vol 2 for a low of 1744 yen, and Vol 3 for a low of 3350 yen.
Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3
The biggest problem here is that a lot of the sellers probably won't want to ship overseas, so unless you have a contact in Japan that will forward them to you, you might have to shop around.
I personally think that these are wonderful manga, very different from what most Western manga fans are usually exposed to (another reason I use them in my class). As I explain when presenting them to my class, the author seems to be less interested in telling stories so much as evoking certain emotions that all humans feel from time to time. I like them so much, in fact, that I've serisouly considered trying to work out a deal with the publisher to allow me to make publicly available educational materials out of a couple of the stories.
That being said, there's lots of good manga out there, so it may not be worth the potential cost and hassle of getting these. If your stars align and you can get them cheaply and easily, or if the digital versions work for you, I'd say pick them up. Otherwise, don't worry too much about missing them.