In 2001, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) implemented a revolutionary program, the The OpenCourseWare Initiative; they put their courseware online, available free to anyone who wants to study it.
Browsing through the 500 courses, I found just what I was looking for: Beginning Japanese I, Beginning Japanese II, and Intermediate Japanese I.
Each course provides the study materials and practice tests with answers. This is the part I really like. I find it difficult to learn from many of the books I have since I don't have to actually do anything. A test challenges me, but it's only worth the challenge if I the answers are available to check my work. This is a great resource the next time you resolve you're going to start studying Japanese again (for the 10th time).
Update: 2003-11-26
Bush tells us the economy is on the rebound, but MIT is cutting back staff and services.
MIT Finances site.
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens
October 16, 2003
Comments
What a fantastic idea from MIT. They are contributing to the REAL information revolution!
Comment by: Jim Broadbender. Posted November 1, 2003 02:11 PM.
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/shared/ap/National/MIT_Costs.html link is broken.
Comment by: layer3switch. Posted December 25, 2003 07:46 AM.
http://opencontent.org/ocwfinder/ and do a search on "japanese". it'll spit out a lot of results and then use the browser search function to find the 3 entries. PS - There's a great Firefox utility called "Moji" which provides a translation as you roll over kanji. Check it out.
Comment by: Paddy. Posted December 20, 2005 05:32 PM.
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Japanese self-study materials from MIT OpenCourseWare.