Fun for Language Learners - the idea
As you may know from this previous entry, I think that the easiest (not to mention most fun) way to learn languages is to simply watch, listen to, and read things that you enjoy, even if you don't understand them. That is to say that in the beginning, you'll need to find things that you can enjoy with little to no understanding, and you may want to start mainly with videos, because you can get a lot out of the visuals in many cases.

I didn't come to this idea entirely on my own - I started watching French in Action on my own in order to go faster than my far-too-easy university French course on the advice of the good folks at How to learn any language, and started into internet radio (RFI) and reading novels and French-language Wikipedia, it was slow going and I resented it, because even though it was a goal I had set for myself, RFI was boring, and I was frustrated with not understanding.

Learning Japanese has been a much more positive experience, perhaps partly because, unlike French, it was something I wanted from the start, and also because I already knew a bit about Japanese pop culture and Japanese things I liked, and so when I found All Japanese All The Time, whose author promotes the idea of doing fun things in your target language all the time, I had some idea where to start. I also started doing this three months, rather than four or five years into my studies, and the result is that my progress in Japanese has been fairly rapid and seemed easy, even though I remember months of almost total noncomprehension. Said months were easier to bear because they came towards the beginning - I knew I shouldn't be able to understand, and had no false pride - and because the things I was watching were generally entertaining. I also came to like the Japanese language more than I have ever liked French.

Recently, after I found out that I wasn't going to Japan next year after all, I decided to refocus on French, because I want to study in Montreal and will need all the language ability I can muster. I am still rather ignorant about French things compared to my level of knowledge about Japan, but there's a lot more out there online than a few years ago, and I've found things I really like, which has made me feel a lot better about the language.

Anyway, the authors of All Japanese All The Time and Antimoon have explained the idea at great length, and Khatz of AJATT also gives a lot of ideas of things to watch/read/listen to if you're learning Japanese. There's also 100 Japanese Things, which lists and explains Japanese things for Japanese learners. But I have yet to find such a thing for learners of French (tell me if you've seen one!), and of course I have a lot of favorite Japanese things the above sites don't mention. So I figured I'd start my own list.

French in Action is a series of 52 half-hour episodes for beginning to intermediate learners. The first episode explains the method (in English), but the rest are French-only. Each episode contains two segments. One details the ongoing story of Robert, a young French-American staying in Paris, and the friends he makes. The series was filmed in the late 1980s, and it's all a little silly, but it's good fun. The other segment features classroom scenes and explanations (with illustrations) of new vocabulary introduced in the episode.

The downside of the series is that it is supposed to form part of a larger course, and the materials are out of print or expensive. I would recommend simply taking your time and watching episodes several times if you find you don't understand as much as you like (which I found after the first half or so of the series). That said, stop watching if it's really not your thing.

The website I linked above has free videos of the whole series. You'll probably have to join the site (it's free) and it might not work on all browsers (Firefox worked for me). Some public television channels still air it from time to time in the States.