Not in Japan? Don't have access to Japanese TV via satellite? Still want to hear lots of native speakers talking about various things? You're in luck-- iTunes podcasts can help.
Most people are familiar with iTunes, Apple's popular music jukebox software that works with iPods. But not everyone knows about podcasts. In short, a podcast is like an audio blog. There are podcasts on nearly every topic, just like their are blogs about everything. And there are many in Japanese, and several about studying Japanese. Best of all, every podcast listed on iTunes is free.
If you don't already have it, download iTunes. Once you open iTunes, you should see a link for podcasts in your library near the top of the list. From there you can go to the podcasts directory and search for podcasts.
There are a few Japanese podcasts (particularly those intended for students) on the US listing, but to find most, you'll need to switch to the Japanese iTunes store. Unfortunately, you can't buy songs and programs from the Japanese iTunes store without a Japanese credit card, but you can use the Japanese store to download podcasts free.
To change iTunes stores, click Store in the iTunes library, and then scroll down to the bottom of the page, where you should see a button for "country." Choose Japan (日本） and then click the podcasts link, and you're good to go.
Of the podcasts for studying, my favorite is the set offered by JapanesePod101. Although they have membership fees for their site, the podcasts can be downloaded for free through iTunes, and they are of superb quality. Unfortunately, if you do subscribe to their site, the lesson PDFs are created in a strange way, so you can't select the text and paste it into SuperMemo for memorization. If you need access to the text for your learning, you'll have to type everything up for yourself anyway, so I would recommend against joining the site. Also see my warning about Japanesepod101.com's marketing.
Do you have podcast recommendations for me? I'd like to hear what you're listening to. Let me know!