With the popularity of the social video site YouTube soaring, thanks to the “Chocolate Rain” and “LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!” videos, many similar sites are popping up everyday. One of these mock YouTube sites caters towards native Japanese readers and speakers – or anyone who has passed the JLPT 1 test.

Ameba Vision is very much like YouTube, in the Japanese sense. Many videos submitted to the site are worth watching, especially if you’re studying the language. The content is similar to YouTube: User created and submitted, often ripped off of television, then later pulled by the site staff for copyright infringement. However, Ameba has a nice selection of rare opening and ending clips of Anime never before seen on the Internet or US Television and DVD.When searching for videos on Ameba, Japanese keywords have a better effect than English keywords. Typing in keywords such as ” jpop” brings back only a few results. Adding the dash before “pop” helps, but the results aren’t all that great. Another example: Type in “アニメ”, it yields 2,000 results, whilst “anime” brings back only 73. This is compared to 11,000 results from “アニメ” and 1,140,000 “anime” on YouTube.It is assumed (pardon my Japanese) that Ameba has a feature similar to YouTube’s mobile video upload that uses the PSP’s Chotto Shot Camera to upload videos and edit them before uploading to the site. The upload instructions are just as simple as adding a PSP game demo from your PC; if you have a good video editing program.In the end, Ameba is an alternative choice to get away from those videos that received “two million hits in two days” (Hint: “LEAVE HER ALONE”), and a good study aid for the Japanese language.

Pros: Better content than YouTube for fans of Japanese Culture.

Cons: Requires a level or two of Japanese to navigate.