Found some great resources today.
Japanese
I found a blog awhile back called MutantFrog Travelogue which offers up interesting viewpoints on Japan related news/politics. In a recent post about which reports on Japan he respects he trivially tossed a link in his post to http://www.gregoryclark.net/ who is a used to be famous/is still famous australian who has lived in Japan and written many an article for Japan Times and other publications in Japan (in Japanese and English) and has these posted on his website. The articles are all in 2-column form with English on the left, and Japanese on the right–a great resource for learning political or recent news vocabulary!
Chinese
This also applies to Japanese, but a resource I found a loooong time ago (before I was studying Chinese) then remembered is MIT’s OpenCourseWare program. Everything is released under the CreativeCommons copyright and therefore is 100% free. You can download the whole course or go thru all the homework assignments, tests, handouts, and in the case of Chinese (and others I suppose), even textbooks are online for free. They also have culture and history courses available for the interested. Amazing resource and quite handy since I’m still at the starting out stage in Chinese. Highly Recommended.
