Originally Posted by Arleners
A friend of mine told me our local library has video tapes to help learn Spanish. It is essentially a soap opera, but each episode increase the vocabulary. This way - as you get caught up in the story, you develop more language skills. I don't know the name of them, but there is a series. Maybe the company that produces them has one in Japanese as well since this is an up and coming language.
I know the book that we use has a website with video help too... and the video is set up like a soap opera... which we use as a lab in class... but I'll look into it! :)