You might want to give this show a try, if you are looking for something good for learning. It goes under the name Kaasan Mom’s Life over on crunchyroll.com. There are around 140 episodes available at the moment, and the show is still running in Japan, with new episodes every week.

It is an animated show featuring a simple visual style. Mouths are often drawn as simple squares, and eyes are often just lines or scribbles. The story is about a mother who works from home as a manga artist. She has two young children, and her husband is a war reporter who is often away from home. The show is broken up into several sketches per episode.

The language is relatively simple, and there is enough repetition of words that you can learn while watching. You probably can’t get through the first episode without learning the word カニ, for example, because one of the mini-stories is about how she likes crab so much she eats it secretly in the dark and won’t share. Needless to say, the word カニ gets repeated a lot.

Sometimes while watching I got the feeling I was watching a children’s show. For example there is a short bit that consists just of the main character counting and jumping rope, with a punch line at the end. Other bits seemed intended for general audiences, such as the sketch that has the mother and father trying to share a moment together by viewing the same moon, even though they are apart.

But even if it really is a show for children, I’ll probably keep watching. The show presents a perspective on what Japanese family life is like, and the dialogue is simple enough that even a beginner can get something out of it. Perhaps it is a brief opportunity to be a child again, except this time, in Japan.