Jim's Home Page

Jim Breen's Japanese Page (Details of recent updates.)

• Highlighting Japan is an online magazine of mostly feel-good articles about Japan. Produced by the Japanese Cabinet Office. (Jim - Mon, 10 Dec 2007)
• The Web Japan site is a gateway to a mass of information about Japan. It has a huge and well-maintained link collection. (The site is sponsored by Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.)
• A huge Japanese Language link collection.
• Japanorama has a very good up-to-date page of Japanese-related links (yes, this page is on it!)
• This is covered elsewhere, but because many ask, here is a link to Microsoft's Global IME, which lets you see and enter Japanese text in IE & Outlook, Office 2000, etc. BTW, you may need to be running IE to download the file.
• A really excellent collection of links to sources of information on and in Japan is Larry Stockton's Japan Links page. Strongly recommended.
• Ben Bullock's Alternative sci.lang.japan FAQ is an interesting and highly readable collection of information about Things Japanese.
• Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, has a useful page of Web Sites for Japanese students, which is worth a visit, as is their home page.

• (Sat, 14 Feb 2009)
• A terrific gallery of Unicode fonts compiled by David McCreedy. (Jim - Sun, 2 Nov 2008)
• An article about configuring HP-UX input methods for CJK languages These IMEs are included with HP-UX's "Asian System Environment (ASE)". ATOK X has become the preferred Japanese IM, and the full version of it is now included with ASE. (Howto - Japanese version. (Mark Smith - Sun, 30 July 2006)
• Time Eyre's howto on using the Japanese-language version of TeX, pTeX, etc. (PDF file.) (Jim - Sat, 20 May 2006)
• A WWW Japanese Input Method by Taku Kudo at NAIST. Very handy if you're away from a PC with an IME operating. (Jim - Tue, 7 Feb 2006)
• For the new Ubuntu Linux, some pages on Japanese input and fonts, and a link to the Japanese localization team. (Jim - Tue, 7 Feb 2006, updated 24 Oct 2007)
• A step-by step guide to creating Japanese documents using the LaTeX typesetting system under Linux (Mark Alford - Sat, 17 Dec 2005)
• An actively-maintained resource for Gentoo Linux users on setting up Japanese. (Sudrien - Tue, 24 May 2005)
• Information detailing how to get Japanese language support (fonts and input) into Sun Solaris . (Eric Enright - Mon, 30 May 2005)
• Claudia Aguiar's page (in Portuguese) on how to make Japanese input work with the Kurumin distribution of Linux.
• A bit dated now but still strongly recommended for Linux users is Scott Robbins' Inputting Japanese text page.
• Useful information on Microsoft's AppLocale utility that allows users to run a legacy application on Windows XP without changing to the code-page/system locale needed by that particular application.
• Another site on using Japanese with MS Windows. (The links to the English are at the bottom of the page.)
• This site (in Japanese) has an excellent summary of input methods for Unix and Linux.
• Gregg Tavares, who wrote the page about Japanese on WinCE (below) has also written an excellent and detailed page on how to use the Japanese IME in Windows XP.
• For Mac users there is an excellent summary on Christopher Bolton's Japanese for Your Mac page.
• The Sharp Zaurus PDAs run a version of Linux, and have terrific potential. This Users Guide in German and English assists in running various packages and dictionaries.
• The nihongo-computing mailing list is a useful source of information about using Japanese with computers. Members of the list can read the archives.
• Declan Software's Guide to Installing and Using Microsoft's Japanese IME is a good introdiction for those who don't have the IME.
• Mike Fabian has a very useful page on CJK Support in SuSE Linux, much of which applies to other Linux distributions as well.
• Young Joon Moon's e-Japanese site has a lot of useful information about handling Japanese text processing, particularly with Windows.
• Gregg Tavarres has produced a very detailed page on using a Japanese WinCE machine with handwritten kanji recognition and JWPce.
• The Tokyo PC Users Group has an interesting site, and has informative meetings and articles.
• for users of my favourite operating system, Linux, there is the Tokyo Linux Users Group (TLUG) and while I'm at it, the Tokyo Unix Users Group (TUUG).
• Sean Nelson has a particularly useful page on enabling Japanese support in Windows 2000.
• Nobby Miura has a valuable Internet in Japanese page, with tips for email, etc. in Japanese.
• In a similar vein is Gyula Zsigri's CJK Quick Start page. Information on how to get a list of applications to run on various platforms.

• Kanji Fuda is a game to help students of Japanese quickly memorize Japanese Kanji. A free "Lite" version is currently available in the iPhone App Store; more advanced versions are under development. Versions for Android and BlackBerry are planned. (Evan Owens - Mon, 8 Jun 2009)
• Nihongoup is a Japanese language reviewing tool. Options inlude: improving your kana IME typing speed, reviewing JLPT kanji and vocabulary, learning how to correctly use particles (Philip Seyfi - Sat, 9 May 2009)
• (Wed, 15 Apr 2009)
• ExpressJapanese, a flashcard and vocabulary quiz package for Java enabled mobile phones, level is suitable for JLPT3 and GCSE students. (Simon Keen - Wed, 15 Apr 2009)
• Shinkanji for iPhone and iPod touch - Japanese dictionary and reference application for learning kanji. Nice animated stroke order diagrams and multiple search methods including handwriting recognition. Uses KANJIDIC for the kanji definitions and readings and JMDict for the word dictionary and list of common compounds containing a given kanji. (Benoit Cerrina - Tue, 6 Jan 2009, amended 30 Mar 2009)
• Tagaini Jisho is a free Japanese vocabulary/kanji dictionary and study assistant, featuring stroke order animations for more than 6000 kanjis. It also supports tagging and annotations on entries, training, production of printed material, and runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. (Uses JMdict, KANJDIC, etc.) (Gnurou - Mon, 6 Oct 2008)
• rikaichan is a popup Japanese-English dictionary extension for Firefox. Hover the mouse over Japanese text in the browser. (Uses EDICT) (Vincent ISAMBART - Fri, 21 Apr 2006, revised Lone - Sun, 5 Oct 2008)
• Kotoba! is an iPod/iPhone application based on JMdict. All 130.000+ dictionary entries in your pocket totally free of charge. Visit the Apple AppStore now to install. (Pierre-Phi - Sun, 28 Sep 2008)
• KanjiCruncher: English-Japanese dictionary/translator for Windows XP/Vista. Uses a built-in EDICT dictionary and online Google Japanese-English translator. (Jonathan Smith - Wed, 11 Jun 2008)
• Firefox add-on for practicing kanji. Replaces the first letter of words with the kanji corresponding to their meaning. (kanjilish - Wed, 7 May 2008)
• Very nice server which adds furigana to Japanese text. Source can be downloaded. (Jim - Sun, 13 Apr 2008)
• Palm TaCo is a free and open-source Palm application that allows you to select and view pairs of Japanese/English sentences from the Tanaka Corpus on your device. (Ricardo Mendonca Ferreira - Thu, 21 Feb 2008)
• JISHOP is a kanji dictionary program (for Windows). (Vadim Smolensky - Fri, 1 Feb 2008)
• KanjionaPod is a kanji flashcard collection for iPods, including all the joyo kanji set (and growing!) (Daniel Quevedo - Wed, 14 Nov 2007)
• JMDict.NET is a Japanese Multi-lingual Dictionary for the .NET Platform. Kana and JASCII IME included. (Based on JMdict dictionary file.) (X-[Vr]bL1s5 - Sun, 14 Oct 2007)
• Japanese flash cards for Java enabled mobile phones, level is suitable for JLPT4 students. Learn vocabulary in Kanji, Hiragana & Romaji. Many example sentences to help students make progress. (Simon Keen - Mon, 30 Jul 2007)
• nihongobenkyo.org is a public dictionary server providing free Japanese dictionaries. It allows to look up words from dictionary applications compatible with the DICT protocol such as GNOME dictionary, KDict or Fantasdic. (Mathieu Blondel - Mon, 30 Apr 2007)
• Language Aid is a plugin-based, system-wide text lookup engine for Mac OS X. It can be used to perform Japanese dictionary lookups on almost any text in the operating system with the included WWWJDIC plugin. (snielsen - Fri, 13 Apr 2007)
• Simple web-based kanji flashcard generator for photo capable iPods (Gabor Bognar - Tue, 27 Mar 2007)
• Sven Groot's Pocket Dictionary package for Windows Mobile handhelds. (Jim - Mon, 5 Mar 2007)
• A handwriting input method for Sven Groot's Pocket Dictionary package. (Jim - Mon, 5 Mar 2007)
• mKana is a free cellphone Java game to help study of hiragana, katakana, and romaji. New characters are automatically introduced based on your level of mastery and a handy reference table is included to help look up unfamiliar characters. (Sieow Yeong Huah - Sat, 3 Mar 2007)
• IPOD-Notes-JLPT-Quizzes JLPT Level 4,3 Kanji review/practice + level check quizzes for the Ipod Notes feature (3rd gen + up) (jolietjoe - Sat, 10 Feb 2007)
• LanguageEnabler is a simple freeware application which provides a simple one- click mechanism for setting up Japanese support under Windows. (Anthony Miceli - Sun, 31 Dec 2006)
• LingoLessons is a flashcard-based study application which runs in the background and asks questions at set intervals. Runs on Windows and a Mac version is under development. (Anthony Miceli - Mon, 18 Dec 2006)
• Kanji Recall is a freeware cellphone aid to learning kanji. (Ronen Akri - Tue, 12 Dec 2006)
• Hiragana Recall and Katakana Recall allow practice of hiragana and katakana on a cellphone by displaying either a character and four romaji or vice versa. (Freeware) (Ronen Akri - Mon, 20 Nov 2006)
• JARDS Mobile is a word and character reference and training tool for students of Japanese. It runs on Sharp Zaurus devices. (Johnny Andersson - Wed, 8 Nov 2006)
• Flazzle is a Windows dictionary with bookmarks, Kanji radical lookups, a spaced repetition flashcard system and Japanese input. It imports around 30 formats including Edict, JFC, Wadoku and delimited text. (David Morrissey - Mon, 18 Sep 2006)
• M-Kanji-SuDoKu - a free (distributed under GPL) Sudoku game for mobile phones (J2ME platform). (leopardo.f - Fri, 15 Sep 2006)
• KanjiFlashCard , free software for reviewing the meanings and readings of kanji, with exercises. This software keeps information about your errors,for later review. Descriptions and screenshots on the website... (in french) (kamui - Fri, 25 Aug 2006)
• Mined is a powerful text editor with extensive Unicode and CJK support. Available for both Linux (including console mode) and Windows. (Thomas Wolff - Wed, 31 May 2006)
• Stackz is a popular and effective flashcard system (Jim - Tue, 2 May 2006)
• From the makers of Stackz, KanjiBrowze is a dictionary package for EDICT-format dictionaries. (Jim - Tue, 2 May 2006)
• XHTML Ruby Support is a Mozilla Firefox add-on by Shimoda Hiroshi which allows Firefox to display furigana created with W3C ruby markup. (Kendon Stubbs - Mon, 27 Mar 2006)
• Tango is a general vocabulary flashcard program designed to run on Java-enabled mobile phones. Optimised for Japanese language learning Tango will display Hiragana and Katakana on any phone that can run it. The trial version offers about 100 terms, and the licenced version (very cheap) allows you to import your own vocabulary lists. Tango uses the popular kvtml format for its data. (Jason - Fri, 24 Mar 2006)
• Learn Kanji is a free Java program for practicing kanji. Detects your level automatically and introduces new kanji to you only when it thinks the time is right (=when you have learned all the previously introduced kanji well enough). This system makes learning kanji almosts like playing Solitaire! (Antti Kuukka - Tue, 7 Feb 2006)
• MemoryPlanter is a spaced repetition web-application which is good for learning vocabulary. (Brian Kay - Thu, 12 Jan 2006)
• kanjiPod, Python software to compile Kanji study dictionaries for the iPod "Notes" function. Also includes pre-compiled dictionaries. (Bryn Davies - Thu, 12 Jan 2006)
• Updated Mike Johnson's Japanese SIP (soft input panel) & EDICT dictionary for PPC and WinCE, as wall as Win2k/WinXP port. Licence: GPL. (aleXANder - Sat, 19 Nov 2005)
• [LINK] A Japanese dictionary midlet based on EDICT. Requires a Siemens phone with Chinese rom. (I.R.on - Sun, 23 Oct 2005)
• [LINK] Creates kanji wallpapers or xml files by querying the kanji database with simple parameters. (I.R.on - Sun, 23 Oct 2005)
• [LINK] project URL for a patch to jwpce to add stroke order diagram (Benoit Cerrina - Sat, 15 Oct 2005)
• Yokozuna - Kanji Learning Software with handwriting method of study from Rainboo Software. (Oleg Podsadny - Sun, 21 Aug 2005)
• A free and open-source vocabulary flashcard program, conversion utility and editor for Windows and Linux. (David Morrissey - Sat, 4 Jun 2005)
• LightWayText is a hybrid, reliable, and powerful text editor for multilingual word processing, having lots of nice features and great stability. (Yumi - Tue, 14 Jun 2005)
• jTango. I finally have completed jTango v1.0 (uses all of your dictionaries). Please take a look at it here. It's free (as in beer) and runs under Linux as well. Thanks again for your dictionaries. (Nic - Thu, 16 Jun 2005)
• PocketPC's today plugin. It will help you learning Japanese easily on Today screen of your PocketPC. Just turn on your PocketPC and you can learn some Kanji appear immediately. It has a lunar calendar also, and Japanese datetime style. (comart - Thu, 16 Jun 2005)
• KanaQuiz is a Freeware Windows kana learning program for beginners. Learn Katakana and Hiragana, including basic, voiced and compounded kana. (BlueFire - Fri, 12 Aug 2005)
• The curiously-named Mojibake is a Japanese-English dictionary program for Linux/UNIX systems. It is based on GTK 2, and sorts results according to relevance.
• A Firefox plugin of the popular Rikai reading assistant.
• Kotoba appears to be a flashcard program for Mac OSX.
• Kanji Crammer is a flash card/slide show program for learning japanese kanji. It runs on the Macintosh with Jaguar(10.2) or better. It even comes with the source code.
• Golly's Vocab Tutor is Windows software to create dynamic multi-user quizzes. Very flexible. Uses Text-To-Speech.
• Daniel Kim's JpDic is a free .NET Japanese/English Dictionary program based on EDICT (Windows XP/2000). Source is also available for download.
• Alexander Vollschwitz's Babbletower project has developed Java software suitable for dictionary use on PDAs. Can run on a number of platforms.
• JLookUp JLookUp is a Japanese-English dictionary program (Windows); it has a built-in kana IME, allows multiple dictionaries, and has tons of encoding support.
• Michael Yokoyama's Japanese Content for Palm Powered Devices contains reviews of Japanese and Japanese-oriented software for the Palm Pilot PDA. Has links to his own KanjiKun and Katahira packages.
• CJEDictionary is a .NET application which provides a Chinese/Japanese/English service (based on CEDICT and EDICT.)
• For WWW users without an IME, Kana Chameleon converts romaji to kana, which can them be cut and pasted.
• We seem to be getting into mobile phone flashcard systems. LanguageBug is one such. Like FlashKana below, it also needs Java-capable mobile phones.
• Another kana drill program, Frank Sundgaard's FlashKana runs on Java-capable mobile phones.
• Erwan Loisant's very nice Mozilla Firebird plugin that does dictionary lookups on WWW pages. (I'm watching this particular application environment closely, as I think it has great potential.)
• KanjiSharp is a .NET-based vocabulary/flashcard system.
• Patrick Shyu's JE Eyes package is for .NET envirnments. Looks very nice.
• Jardic Pro is a shareware dictionary program suitable for Japanese/Russian dictionary files such as JR-EDICT. Can also use EDICT, KANJIDIC, ENAMDICT and EIJIRO dictionaries.
• Albert Huang's DLTOOL enables dictionary lookup via the clipboard on Windows systems. Works in Japanese & Chinese.
• Another Kanji flashcard system, this one by Peter Salvi. Uses Tcl/Tk.
• The Pacific Software Publishing company, is the publisher of several Japanese word processing and language learning software programs. They have the Japanese-Online language and culture resource page, and an online store. Among their products is a Kanji OCR package.
• Another new Zaurus dictionary application is WaJEi by Richard Dunham. (It used to be called "Sagasu".)
• Another Mac OSX dictionary program is Andrew Lindesay's WordLookup. It has several language modules, with the Japanese one built from EDICT.
• A Zaurus dictionary application called bedic can handle a version of EDICT. Christian Wittern has a suitable vertion of EDICT for bedic here.
• Lars Grunewaldt has developed PADict, a Palm OS dictionary program which uses the EDICT file.
• Declan Software has Windows software for studying Japanese reading and writing: ReadWrite Hiragana, ReadWrite Katakana and ReadWrite Kanji. They include a number exercises to assess progress & include animated stroke orders for all kanji and kana.
• Some free Japanese vocabulary, kana and kanji drill programs for Mac OS 10.0 are available from Single Brain Cell. (Follow the Modern link.)
• A good Palm OS dictionary package is Dokusha.
• Visual Kanji is a Windows Kanji dictionary (in Spanish.)
• Yet another flashcard program, JBDrill is a simple Tcl/Tk system I wrote a while ago, and have finally released. Runs on Linux, Windows and Macs.
• Benjamin Peterson's jBrowse is a browser plugin that provides a dictionary service (using EDICT), furigana addition, etc. Needs IE5.5 or higher,and either Windows 2000 or XP, or Japanese versions of Windows 95 or 98.
• KanjiQuick is a Windows kanji dictionary package using Spahn and Hadamitzky's dictionaries. Shareware with a demo version. There is a freeware version which can use EDICT too. It has a speech synthesis module which seems interesting. Also there is a shareware Voice of Japan module into which text can be pasted.
• Andrew Gardner's petJFLASH is a Windows-based kana, kanji and vocabulary flashcard system.
• Norbert Siepenkoetter has witten a KANJIDIC-based dictionary and kanji quiz program for the Zaurus PDA. He has called it KanjiNirvana.
• Duane May has a project called KanjiXML which is based on an XMLed version of KANJIDIC for which he is developing Java libraries.
• A new Windows dictionary shareware program is Justin Hunt's Aroha which looks very promising. (Now on the Monash ftp site.)
• A new dictionary package for MacOS X is OriDict (Oriental Dictionary), which uses EDICT format files, and can drive EDICT, CEDICT, etc. (another site)
• A new kanji reading/writing education program is LexiKAN. It goes beyond many other such programs by providing feedback on stroke order and placement. Commercial with a downloadable demo version.
• The Tejina package provided a very impressive kanji dictionary and learning tool.
• Hiragana Navi converts kanji to kana on WWW pages. It seems to need IE and Japanese Windows.
• Michael Koch's JGloss is a Java package that analyzes Japanese text and appends the readings and meanings of kanji jukugo.
• Andrew Lindesay's WordLookup package for MacOS-X handles multiple languages, including Japanese (with EDICT).
• For the Palm Pilot Norbert Siepenkoetter has written Palmradic, which implemements the multi-radical kanji lookup, and works with KDIC.
• Andrew Innes has written Jverb a learning tool for Japanese verbs. It's for Linux.
• Armin Rump has ported EDICT to the PDIC format used in the Zaurus PDA. Armin also has a wide range of other dictionaries available for the Zaurus.
• Ivan Kanis has written a Kanji lookup program for the Palm Pilot called PocketKanji.
• J_Inflect is Collin McCulley's verb & adjective inflection program.
• For the Palm Pilot there's a very nice Japanese input method called ATOK for Palm.
• Ben Mitchell's MacIntosh Kanji Card program joins the growing list of kanji-drilling systems available. This one looks good.
• lrnkana.pl is a kterm-dependent Perl-based kana drill program.
• A very interesting Linux/gtk dictionary package based on xjdic is Botond Botyanszki's gjiten.
• Kanjipad is a Japanese handwriting program for Unix with the GTK+ library. Written by Owen Taylor and based on Todd Rudick and Robert Wells' previous programs.
• New from Glen Rosenthal of JWPce fame is his next production, a Flashcard package called JFC.
• Alex Schonfeld's JQuickTrans claims to be an "Integrated dictionary, simple translation and study system which can link to your windows clipboard. (Win9x/NT)" (I'm not sure I like the "Trans" in the title, as it's really a dictionary/vocab system.)
• This is covered elsewhere, but because many ask, here is a link to Microsoft's Global IME, which lets you see and enter Japanese text in IE & Outlook. BTW, you need to be running IE to download the file.
• Philip Brown's Jdrill and Kdrill programs, for Java and Unix/X11 environments respectively, support kanji drill practice.
• A very nice Kanji Flashcard system using Java applets, written by Nobuko Chikamatsu and Steve Ryner at DePaul University.
• For the Palm Pilot there is the interesting KDIC application by Hiroshi Kawashima. His page has vanished, but I have it on my ftp site here.
• an interesting new development is the latest in freeware word-processors for Windows; Glenn Rosenthal's JWPce. Despite its title, it runs on Win95/98/NT as well as WindowsCE for a growin number of hand-helds. It is not modified version of JWP, but more a complete redevelopment in C++. JWPce is available from the Monash ftp site, as well as Glenn's page.
• Ka-Ping Yee's excellent Shodouka system was the first WWW mediator system to allow non-Japanese-capable browsers to display Japanese Web pages. You can also try the new server we now have installed at Monash for reading Japanese WWW pages using a browser without Japanese fonts. Also, another server, written by Dan B., has just come available.
• for users of my favourite operating system, Linux, there is the excellent, but now a little dated, Linux and Nihongo page produced by Craig Oda.
• the Basis Technology company specializes in localization/internationalization, and have produced the excellent RJ Japanese text reader.
• The Lava Software Home Page. Lava Software, which hails from Australia, produces the Japanese WordMage (previously WordMaster) package. WordMage offers nine highly integrated applications including a multilingual wordprocessor, a HTML web page editor/viewer, various study systems with authoring abilities (interactive storybooks, auto-revision flashcards, the `Kanji Safari' multiplayer game and reading, aural and visual comprehension exercises), a powerful Kanji reference dictionary, a grammar library builder and a text translation aid. Does not require any Japanese O/S software to run. MacOS, Windows and Linux platforms supported.
• Staying with Macs, here is the page of Dan Crevier's new Unidict dictionary package. This is one of a growing set of packages which add value to the EDICT/KANJIDIC files. (Needs JLK, etc.)
• The Lernout & Hauspie company, which bought out Neocor, and has since been bought by Scansoft, produced some excellent software, including the Power Translator English-Japanese translation system which seemed to be based on the earlier "Tsunami/Typhoon" systems. They also had the Kanjiscan Japanese OCR system. Sadly the links for all these products have ceased working, and I have heard that Scansoft treated all the Neocor and L&H language products as legacy and withdrew support.
• Also aiding translation is the Universal Translator Deluxe from the LanguageForce company. Note that for Japanese, it warns that the product "does not have grammar and sentence structure support. This means that it can only translate word for word or phrase by phrase."
• The NJSTAR Japanese Wordprocessor for DOS and Windows is a very popular shareware product. It is part of a family of Chinese and Japanese software developed by HongBo Ni. (It seems like only yesterday that I received some email from HongBo asking me to try the alpha version...)
• Free Light Software is a French company which specializes in Asian and oriental language software, and produces the Free Light Japanese which is available as a demo on the Monash ftp archive.
• Robert Wells has developed an interesting package for the Pilot which combines dictionary searching and kanji recognition. He has a page describing it, with down-load information.
• for the Psion palmtop, Otfried Cheong (ne' Schwarzkopf) has written the Dic application, which handles multiple languages and scripts. Uses EDICT for Japanese.
• TkJdic is a Tcl/Tk package which accesses the KANJIDIC and EDICT files, and is based on my xjdic program. (Unix/X11, of course.) The original WWW site is gone, but you can get the package here
• information about the Autogloss package (for Macs). Uses the EDICT file.

• Bright Life is an historical novel about the framing of Japan's Constitution. The author says: "It's a sort of internet "soap" with new episodes coming on line as I write them...a chapter or two a week." At the time of listing it is about 50% complete. (David Valley - Wed, 10 Dec 2008)
• Kanji Haitani's Man'yoshu Best 100 page presents one hundred poems from this classical anthology. For each poem, he has provided brief explanations in both English and Japanese, including "literal translations" into both modern Japanese and English. (Jim - Mon, 5 Feb 2007)
• The Roomazi BUKKU site has romanized Japanese novels and other literature. (Ken - Sun, 14 May 2006)
• CCC Books is devoted to the work of Japanese poet Tamura Ryuichi, translated into English by Samuel Grolmes and Tsumura Yumiko. (jgreely - Wed, 15 Feb 2006)
• Living in postwar Japan. Hans Brinckmann's acclaimed autobiography 'The Magatama Doodle'. (Michael Rogge - Sun, 12 Jun 2005)
• The Genji Daigaku site has a lot of information about the Genji Monogatari. (Much of it is in the Japanese pages.)
• Tetsuya Ito has compiled an excellent resource page on the Tale of Genji. Particularly worth visiting is a collection of prints and music about the work.
• An interesting resource page on the Kokinshuu. (Sadly it's in need of some repair.)
• Kuniharu Shimizu has established a Haiga Gallery with modern haiku and pictures from all over the world.
• The University of Sheffield in the UK has an fascinating Waka website on which they are compiling 2001 poems. (They are transcribed in rather gruesome romaji as well as kanji/kana.)
• the huge Blue Sky collection of free digital books.
• Mitsuharu Matsuoka's Japan, my Japan! page. It has a good set of links for Japanese literature.
• An amazing set of links to files of Japanese literature can be found at Fukui University's Nihon-Bungaku page. (Japanese only.)
• Akira Kitauchi's collection of Japanese Literature, which is good for people who want to read Japanese texts.
• the Japanese Text Initiative of the University of Virginia Library's Electronic Text Center and the University of Pittsburgh East Asian Library. It contains a large number of important texts, including the Hyakunin Isshu (100 Poems by 100 Poets), the Ise Monogatari, an edition of the Kokinshu, the Manyoushu, Basho, etc. It now also has an interactive search facility. A very significant resource
• an interesting link to the World of Kenji Miyazawa, which contains a lot of information about that poet and story-teller.
• Michael Watson teaches literature at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo/Yokohama, and has some interesting links from his page.

Information about on-line WWW-server-based dictionaries is progressively being added to my Online Japanese Dictionaries page. Please refer there for server information.

• Babylon's Japanese Dictionary and Translation Software can be downloaded for free (sadly only for a short trial). Very nice on-screen popup translations and searches. (Take care installing as it defaults to setting itself as your home page, search engine choice, etc. etc.) (Jim - Mon, 16 Mar 2009)
• Wa-Qué Wakaru is a Japanese<->French online dictionary, from Québec, Canada. It also contains Enamdict, partly translated to French. (Alain - Mon, 1 Dec 2008)
• The Quicktionary 2 Kanji Reader is a handheld OCR/dictionary combination. Uses 3 smallish Sanseido dictionaries. Very impressive, but a little expensive. (Jim - Mon, 22 Sep 2008)
• The CJKdict page is a Chinese-Japanese-Korean dictionary page that allows searches for characters/words in any of the three languages and displays the results for the three languages at the same time. Uses EDICT, CEDICT and Hanjadic. (Eugene Kang - Fri, 23 Nov 2007)
• Japanese electronic dictionaries by Seiko, Sharp, Casio and Canon, at low prices, free shipping and including free warranty service, exported by beNippon, direct from Japan. Offers of 3% discount for anybody (developers, translators, etc.) working on Free(dom) softwares or GPLed projects. (beNippon - Mon, 16 Apr 2007)
• Japanese Web Dictionaries and Study Links, etc. (John Paul Loucky - Wed, 28 Feb 2007)
• Japanese electronic dictionaries online at GoodsFromJapan.com. For Canon, Casio, Sharp, and Seiko Japanese-English, Japanese-Chinese, Japanese-Korean, Japanese-French and many more types of electronic dictionary. (Sanborn Brown - Wed, 7 Feb 2007)
• OmoshiroiEigo.com contains informal and casual Japanese sentences with English translations. The page was created to give Japanese language learning an extra dose of fun! (Mike - Wed, 31 Jan 2007)
• JEDict is a highly regarded Mac dictionary package, supporting EDICT, Eijiro, etc. (Jim - Tue, 18 Jul 2006)
• HanDeDict, a free Chinese-German dictionary , words or fulltext can be searched online; the regularly updated dictionary is available as EDICT-format download. Around this dictionary, a variety of services have been started - personal vocabulary list and personal flashcards (after registration); HSK flash cards; words of the week, etc. (HanDeDict team - Fri, 5 May 2006)
• Denshi Jisho is a Japanese dictionary with word, kanji and sentence databases, drawn from the WWWJDIC project, with the goal of providing an easy-to-use interface and powerful search features. (Kim Ahlstr?m - Mon, 13 Feb 2006)
• [LINK] An online kanji dictionary that looks like more a traditional paper dictionary. Each compound has clickable kanji that link to other kanji entries. Includes radical and kanji index. (Stephen Ryner Jr. - Tue, 25 Oct 2005)
• Peter Rivard has a Japanese language tools page with complete versions of most recent (June `05) Edict (searchable by compound, reading, and English), Enamdic (searchable by compound and reading), and Kanjidic (searchable by kanji, on and kun readings, and SKIP code) files formatted in the common PDIC format (.dic) to run on WDIC on the Palm PDA and on various programs for desktop and Pocket PC platforms. Also resources to make Eijiro run better on WDIC and on the desktop PC. (Peter Rivard - Mon, 4 Jul 2005)
• The Papillon Project aims at creating a multilingual lexical database. An interesting project, with a lot of data already.
• Francisco Gutierrez has prepared a Spanish kanji dictionary (Kanji Al Completo) which can be downloaded in PDF form from his Nippein site. Follow the link marked "Kanjis/KAC". There is also a set of kanji flashcards based on the book.
• Another WWW server which does popups of translations is Alex Schonfeld's POPjisyo portal. (The parsing of Japanese is a little shaky, I see.)
• Tom Gally wrote an interesting review of the new Grand Concise Japanese-English Dictionary (Sanseido), and then a year or so later wrote an even more interesting article about his time working on the 5th edition Kenkyusha New Japanese English Dictionary.
• A simple Japanese-Chinese-English dictionary is available from this site. It is shareware for Windows, and the dictionaries seem small.
• A major step towards dictionary files covering Japanese and languages and projects other than English is Jean-Marc Desperrier's Dictionnaire français-japonais (Japanese-French Dictionary). This is a project to create French versions of the major EDICT entries. It has about 15,000 entries at present.
• Juan Cardona's Japanese-English/Spanish files of forestry terms. They can be downloaded from here.
• Ulrich Apel has compiled a huge Japanese-German dictionary. (WaDokuJT) It has downloadable (Win, Mac) and WWW versions.
• You can also download WaDokuJT versions suitable for JWPce from Hans-Joerg Bibiko's site. Hans-Joerg also has searchable versions of WaDokuJT and his kanji lexicon, the latter based on his German translation of KANJIDIC.
• Wladimir Carvalho has tables of the Jouyou Kanji annotated in Portuguese (stroke order and alphabetical order) (Seems to cause problems with Netscape.)
• One of the most exciting pages I have seen in years is Todd Rudick's Rikai mediator, which uses active HTML to display a translation of Japanese words when the mouse pointer is placed on them. Very impressive (uses the EDICT, etc. files.)
• A very interesting set of pages is Charles Eicher's Japanese Dictionaries set. He has useful descriptions and examples from the main Japanese dictionaries. (This page in now a bit dated, and in fact has vanished. The link points at an archived copy.) (Click on the top button when you get the first page.)
• a new page of considerable interest is that of Jack Halpern's Kanji Dictionary Publishing Society (KDPS). This covers Jack's lexicographical work, and has links for his New Japanese-English Character Dictionary, and the latest book, his The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary.
• A WWW edition of the KANJIDIC file, prepared by Lambert Schomaker. It has everything as in-line graphics, however no search facility; you select by JIS code.
• Chuck Muller's comprehensive WWW-based Dictionary-Database of CJK Characters and Compounds. Chuck has a wealth of information about kanji, with indexes on a number of keys.
• Although it really deals with Chinese matters, Rick Harbaugh's superb WWW Chinese Character Genealogy dictionary must be mentioned as an excellent source of material.
• A good jumping point for Chinese and Japanese online dictionaries is Marjorie Chan's wordlist and glossaries page at Ohio State.
• Francis Bond's lingdic Japanese-English dictionary file of linguistics terms. It can be downloaded from here.
• For manga fans, Iain Sinclair's Manga Glossary is essential reading.
• not Japanese at all, but well worth a mention is the CEDICT (Chinese-English Dictionary) Project, started years ago by Paul Denisowski. The file is now maintained by Erik Peterson and others, and has over 34,000 entries. CEDICT was inspired by the EDICT project. An interesting WWW driver for the CEDICT file is Erik's WordDict available on his Mandarin Tools page. There is also Richard Warmington's Chinese-English Lookup program for (Big5) Windows.
• for an amusing list of gairaigo which don't quite match their English equivalents or originals, try Keiichiro Sugimoto's Janglish list.
• a useful source of words is Michel Porcher's lists of botanical names, which include Japanese plant names

• learn-hiragana-katakana.com offers free Japanese language learning games to learn hiragana, katakana, kanji, numbers, etc. Games are made in flash to be interactive and interesting. (martin - Wed, 10 Jun 2009)
• My Language Partner - Find a Japanese language exchange partner, or drill vocabulary and grammar with quizzes. (Anna Mar - Sat, 9 May 2009)
• Bonajo is an interactive e-learning site using online quiz and word game software for Japanese language study. Includes hundreds of kanji and thousands of kanji compounds. Kanji and compounds are learned cumulatively. (Tim Chambers - Tue, 31 Mar 2009)
• Kanjihacks.com is a site for students of Japanese share mnemonics for memorizing kanji. Students can post their own "hacks" or learn from those that others have posted. (Lauren Shindo - Fri, 20 Mar 2009)
• Online Japanese verb conjugator. (Romaji only) Includes a list of Japanese verbs and example sentences. (Pity about the romaji. Also it calls the -te form "gerund".) (Webbo - Tue, 10 Mar 2009)
• DailyNihongo.net is a compilation of tools for Japanese learners, including access to a searchable collection of Japanese texts, a dictionary, and a "smart" vocabulary flashcard system. (mgbelisle - Mon, 2 Feb 2009)
• Teacher-in-Japan is a teacher/student matching website for private lessons in Japan (Anthony Teixeira - Thu, 22 Jan 2009)
• Small English School in Chiba Japan with lots of nice pictures of Japanese children at play. (Chiharu Mori - Thu, 22 Jan 2009)
• Kanji revision tool using a digital photo frame. Video preview available. (Carol - Fri, 2 Jan 2009)
• Kanji Tester - a tool for studying JLPT levels 3 and 4 which generates randomised multiple-choice tests. (Lars Yencken - Tue, 2 Dec 2008)
• Fairly simple quiz system for kanji, hiragana, simple Japanese phrases, etc. (engless - Tue, 4 Nov 2008)
• "Ara-maa.com" describes itself as a free, fun website for anyone interested in learning some basic Japanese language. (Nick - Sat, 1 Nov 2008)
• Read The Kanji is a kanji quiz web application for testing knowledge of kanji compounds, divided by levels according to the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. (Joe Ellis - Wed, 22 Oct 2008)
• The Learn The Kana site offers a variety of Hiragana and Katakana mnemonics that new students of the Japanese language can use to help remember some of the more difficult and confusing kana. (Heron - Mon, 13 Oct 2008)
• LearnJapaneseLanguage is a guide to learning basic to advanced Japanese for people that want to learn quickly (Andrew Hillman - Sun, 28 Sep 2008)
• Furiganizer is a convenient online reading aid for Japanese text that inserts Furigana and offers easy access to EDICT translations. Learns interactively which Kanji the user already knows so to omit them in the future. Results can be easily printed. (Ben - Wed, 3 Sep 2008)
• Speak Japanese Fast is "special memorization technique", which claims to enable you learn words at an amazing rate. (David McGimpsey - Sun, 3 Aug 2008)
• renshuu.org is a set of personalized resources for studying Japanese vocabulary and kanji. Study materials are available for the genki, IJ, and JFBP books, as well as the JLPT and Kanji Kentei proficiency exams. (molesquirrel - Wed, 16 Jul 2008)
• The L-Ceps Person altrainer Japanese is commercial software designed for learners with little or no previous knowledge of the Japanese language. The audio-visual program is available for Windows, Mac and Linux and contains 30 lessons. (Max Schneider - Mon, 14 Jul 2008)
• The Waiwai Nihongo site offers online Japanese lessons (a rare example of a Japanese site aimed at non-Japanese.) (Ryutaro - Thu, 12 Jun 2008)
• A desktop Kanji flashcard program written in Java. (Matt Meyer - Wed, 4 Jun 2008)
• Japanese Teaching Ideas is yet-another site offering teaching ideas for Japanese or LOTE teachers. Downloadable grammar and topic worksheets for high school students. Practical behaviour management ideas for LOTE teachers. (Inge Korver - Fri, 18 Apr 2008)
• The WordBuddy site is for learning vocabulary. Has EDICT and other dictionaries integrated. (Marc - Thu, 17 Apr 2008)
• Takanori Tomita's Japanese podcasting lessons. Free Japanese podcasting lessons to learn to speak and write kanji, hiragana and katakana. (Takanori Tomita - Thu, 13 Mar 2008)
• iKanjiTrainer is a French site which offers a dynamic approach to kanji learning. (BENLAHRECH Kamel - Mon, 3 Mar 2008)
• Japanese Project X claims it can help you "memorize all vocabulary on the JLPT in a snap." Currently for Level 4. Japanese Project X (David McGimpsey - Sun, 24 Feb 2008)
• ToMOTko is a Zaurus flashcard program to learn foreign language vocabulary. (Frederic Bergeron - Sun, 6 Jan 2008)
• Kanji Box is a multi-user flashcard system (kanji, vocab. etc.) running on the Facebook system. Interesting concept. (Jim (tip-off from Pedro) - Tue, 18 Dec 2007)
• TheJapaneseProject is a blog with regularly updated free Japanese lessons. Readers can use RSS or subscribe to the newsletter to be notified of updated lessons. (David McGimpsey - Sun, 16 Dec 2007)
• Free Japanese Lessons is a site offering a series of Japanese lessons. (Seems a bit simplistic to me, and too many advertisements - Jim) (Eric Hauck - Thu, 6 Dec 2007)
• About Japan: A Teacher's Resource is an interactive website providing practical teaching materials created collaboratively by Japan Studies specialist and K-12 teachers, a variety of documents and resources, critical essays, and numerous areas for discussion and contributing ideas about Japanese studies and how to teach about Japan. Materials are maintained and updated by Japan Society staff and scholars and teachers in the field. (Robert Fish - Fri, 26 Oct 2007)
• Kanji Explorer is a site where you can browse kanji and jukugo with English or German translations. (Werner Weingraber - Wed, 24 Oct 2007)
• Digital Dialect's Japanese page has interactive games for learning the language (Rōmaji based materials) (Craig Gibson - Tue, 25 Sep 2007)
• About Japan is a practical language and cultural resource for upper primary and secondary students. It is the result of a grant from the Queensland Program for Japanese Language Education (QPJLE). (Natalija Denis-Picton - Sat, 8 Sep 2007)
• Peter Ho's Japanese in 20 weeks is a beginner's guide to Japanese, following the progress of a Japanese language student at university for 20 weeks. (Peter Ho - Wed, 5 Sep 2007)
• BILINGOZ is a free Japanese language-learning website that offers 100,000 terms of targeted vocabulary in 27 categories and 6 levels of difficulty. There is a Flash-based "Study" section and a multiple-choice format "Quiz" section, each with native audio pronunciation. (Mark MacIntyre - Mon, 3 Sep 2007)
• White Rabbit Press publishes excellent kanji flashcards, as well as selling dictionaries, etc. Its WWW site also has some useful forums. (Jim - Sat, 11 Aug 2007)
• A collection of phrases for travelers. Includes over 1,400 (MP3) sound files. (Kochi - Fri, 6 Jul 2007)
• Nihongo Memo is a great resource site for teachers of Japanese. (Jim - Wed, 20 Jun 2007)
• Repekanji Lite is an online video series for learning the 1,945 General Use Kanji. (10 Kanji per day) (Uses Flash) (Carol Barrett - Wed, 13 Jun 2007)
• A novel podcast system for native English speakers who are students of Japanese; intended to help increase vocabulary by mixing spoken word vocabulary lessons over instrumental DJ Mix Sets. (DJ Destructo - Mon, 28 May 2007)
• Free writing practice sheets for gakushu kanji, joyo kanji, JIS X 0208, kanken level 10-2, kanken level pre-1, JLPT level 1-4. (Zipped pdf files also containing an explanation of the contents.) (Michael Engel - Sun, 22 Apr 2007)
• Repekanji is an online TV show for anyone trying to learn the 1945 General Use Kanji. (CarolTV - Mon, 2 Apr 2007)
• Pazuru Alfabet is a freeware Windows program for learning hiragana and katakana. (Horazio - Wed, 21 Mar 2007)
• At The Fox's Ear there are original, mnemonic-based tutorials covering katakana, hiragana, and the 410 kanji officially required by the College Board AP exam which begins in 2007. The relation of all this to such a strange title may forever remain a mystery... (Zeshin - Sat, 3 Mar 2007)
• World CALL Directory is a portal that integrates and gives instant access to online dictionaries, encyclopedias, language learning links and teaching activities for over 100 major languages and thousands of language pairs. (John Paul Loucky - Wed, 28 Feb 2007)
• Jobba.net (Jobs for Japanese bilinguals) provides a job listing service and a candidate database. (Sri Seshan - Thu, 22 Feb 2007)
• Nipponster.com describes itself as "The Japan-Enthusiast's Search Engine" and claims to use powerful "social" search technology. Looks awfully like yet-another community blog system.(Review comments by JimB) (Tori Taiyo - Fri, 16 Feb 2007)
• The Japanese Choices and Perspectives pages are designed to help intermediate to advanced learners to develop interpersonal skills in the homestay and other contexts. (Pamela Carpenter - Thu, 25 Jan 2007)
• Loquela Japan Online - Open learning space and community forums on all aspects of Japanese language and culture. (Loquela - Wed, 24 Jan 2007)
• Nihongojouzu is a blog dedicated to "stuff for learning Japanese". Reviews of books and software for learning Japanese, links to Japanese study resources, study tips and tricks and interviews with people who have learnt Japanese as a second language. (Will Jasprizza - Fri, 19 Jan 2007)
• Learn-Japanese-Right-Now is yet-another site offering Japanese language lessons. New lessons added everyday. (David McGimpsey - Sun, 29 Oct 2006)
• Some useful reading material for an advanced Japanese course. Has texts with linked vocabulary lists. (Jim - Wed, 25 Oct 2006)
• Learn Japanese for Video Games is a blog dedicated to teaching Japanese to a level to be able to play an RPG in Japanese. (John - Mon, 23 Oct 2006)
• Visit Learn Amazing Japanese to learn Japanese via real-world examples from Japanese TV commercials, movies, manga, anime and more. (Eric Jackson - Sat, 30 Sep 2006)
• Online Sensei is a fun way for Japanese people to study English. It has three dififferent levels so the whole family can benefit from one membership. (Ben Duffy - Tue, 5 Sep 2006)
• A Japanese <-> English language exchange Mixi community for learners of both languages. Users post and answer questions about translation, grammar, vocabulary, and idioms. (Jay - Sun, 3 Sep 2006)
• The Japanese Language Resource offers print-outs for teachers and intermediate students of Japanese on topics such as verb bases and conjugation formulas, adjectives, etc. (Tiffany - Thu, 10 Aug 2006)
• Free Sudoku with Kanji characters (numbers, by topics or by shape), hiragana crossword puzzles (logical, puzzlegram, kana transliteration, cryptogram) and writing practice sheets. Online kanji match games by topics. (Claus-Ulrich Liepke - Thu, 10 Aug 2006)
• Kuizu is an online Japanese vocabulary quiz program, featuring flash cards, multiple choice quizzing, and matching games. Adjusts word frequency based on success rate, tracks progress and mastery. (Ginger Booth - Fri, 14 Jul 2006)
• At StudyStack, users have contributed information that can be studied online in the form of flashcards, matching, hangman, word search, and a crossword puzzle. Data can also be exported to PDAs, cell phones, or iPods. See the Japanese collection. (John Weidner - Thu, 15 Jun 2006)
• Learn Japanese claims to be a site for those who want to learn Japanese Language For Real Communication. (Takanori Tomita - Wed, 7 Jun 2006)
• The Kansuke site introduces a novel kanji lookup technique devised by Kumiko Tanaka-Ishii. Very effective for finding kanji rapidly. (Jim - Wed, 7 Jun 2006)
• JLPT Study Page - grammar, kanji, vocabulary and expression lists for JLPT Levels 2-4 as well as quizzes, transcriptions and readings from past exams. This site is updated regularly and the content is checked against the latest JLPT Test Content Specification. (Peter van der Woude - Sun, 4 Jun 2006)
• Kanji Networks is Lawrence J. Howell and Hikaru Morimoto's online etymological dictionary, organized on the framework of Bernhard Karlgren's word families in Chinese schema as refined by Akiyasu Todo. The authors employ phonosemantic principles to support their contention that Chinese characters devolve nearly entirely from seven primordial concepts. (Lawrence J. Howell - Wed, 31 May 2006)
• Learn Japanese Online Free Japanese lessons online. Comprehensive grammar lessons and vocabulary sheets. Kanji JLPT study sheets, Katakana and Hiragana lessons. (James Dunn - Wed, 31 May 2006)
• LearnJapanese is simple and playful tool for learning Japanese hiragana and katakana. (Uses Flash.) (Nandor Gyerman - Sat, 6 May 2006)
• Mash Satou's Online Japanese Conjugation Builder , which is a Javascript program to generate a huge set of conjugations (in romaji). (Jim - Mon, 1 May 2006)
• [LINK] Site designed to assist in increasing vocabulary and kanji recognition. User can create lists of words or kanji to study and use Applets to study them. (Chad Meyer - Fri, 7 Apr 2006)
• [J-OS] (Japan Online School) offers private lessons with native Japanese teachers using a webcam. (Koike Kei - Tue, 4 Apr 2006)
• Kanjiroushi is one of a growing number of drill, blog, etc. sites for learning Japanese. Includes an EDICT/KANJIDIC dictionary lookup. (kanjiroushi - Sun, 5 Mar 2006, edicted by Jim)
• Diagrammar is a web based tool used to diagram Japanese sentences from Brian Kay's Reading Japanese pages. It also provides grammar notes and English equivalents of vocabulary. (Brian Kay - Fri, 3 Mar 2006)
• Japanese! Japanese! is a group blog website that explores the many aspects of studying Japanese. We cover tips and tricks, study habits, grammar and vocabulary points, product reviews, useful links, and a lot more. (Nathan Yeldell - Tue, 28 Feb 2006)
• An online kanji flashcard program for testing the readings of Japanese kanji. The site allows you to customize which reading you're testing against. (Andre Prefontaine - Sun, 26 Feb 2006)
• Languageplus provides a wide range of interactive activities for Japanese teachers and learners, to use in class or at home, includes grammar, reading, writing and listening exercises. (Franck - Sat, 25 Feb 2006)
• The Yamasa Institute 's online center for Japanese studies has a great set of online courses in mulitple languages (graded by a native japanese speaker), and an online kanji dictionary with animated stroke order. The first lesson is free. (Colin - Sat, 18 Feb 2006)
• Japanese Online Institute An online school offering courses from an enthusiastic team of teachers using voice chat technology. Free software trial available. (Moses Musoke - Mon, 13 Feb 2006)
• Study Japanese includes free personal glossary drills and tests, grammar, lessons, a dictionary, and many other useful tools. (johan eliasson - Fri, 3 Feb 2006)
• Nihongo.Tigersan.com, featuring a Chihuahua from Okinawa, contains resources on learning the Japanese language and is broken down into subcategories: lessons, script, media. The "Vocabulary" section was created by Tigersan to offer a unique way of studying Japanese words. (Tigersan - Fri, 13 Jan 2006)
• Terrific server which adds furigana to the kanji on a WWW page. Here is a sample using the front page of the Asahi newspaper. (Jim - Thu, 12 Jan 2006)
• Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana study resource. Java Applets (requires Java 1.4.2 support) that make it fun and easy to study using flash cards, quizzes, and games. (Ray Owens - Thu, 12 Jan 2006)
• Japanesepod101 allows you to learn Japanese with daily podcasts direct from Tokyo. 10 minute lessons in your pocket incorporating culture and current issues. Something for all levels! (Peter Galante - Thu, 12 Jan 2006)
• Nihongo Juku is a study blog in Japanese with audio (so you can listen while you read). Articles written for intermediate and advanced students of Japanese on topics relating to learning Japanese, including common mistakes made by English speakers and how to sound more natural in Japanese. (Rieko - Thu, 8 Dec 2005)
• A Portuguese website about kanji. (tinho - Wed, 30 Nov 2005)
• Anthony Bryant's medieval Japan resource site. A lot on culture and crafts. (Emil - Wed, 9 Nov 2005)
• Nihongo Resources features a J <-> E and Kanji dictionary plus many study tool recommendations. The author has also written and made available online a concise introductory Japanese grammar book. (Raymond Calla - Tue, 8 Nov 2005)
• Shows correct stroke order for kanji. Click on a kanji to see it written out stroke by stroke. Kanji are listed according to reading. Japanese only. (Jesse - Tue, 12 Apr 2005)
• Kana Challenge page. (needs Flash) (Fri, 6 May 2005)
• Japanese for Busy People (I) learning supplements (Fri, 6 May 2005)
• WWW-based material at the Media & Systems Lab at the University of Nagoya (Fri, 6 May 2005)
• GenkiJapan, a flash based talking language site, with sections of useful phrases, an animated numbers song and a series of "matching pairs" katakana games. (Fri, 6 May 2005)
• Mystère des kanji is a new kanji and compounds game (Francis Delaunay - Fri, 20 May 2005)
• Another Grammar/teaching site. (Mon, 20 Jun 2005)
• The Speedanki site offers a system of Japanese kanji words (mostly jukugo) in flashcard format divided by level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. Designed to help students drill to memorize kanji and expland their vocabulary quickly. (Quinlan - Wed, 17 Aug 2005)
• SpeakRealJapanese offers free Japanese lessons, information about Japanese culture, useful links, Japan news, photos, and more. (sushi-king - Fri, 30 Sep 2005)
• Kantango is a web based kanji learning, flash card, webfolder system.
• David Hallgren's Nihongo page has wordlists, a Java kana editor, etc.
• A Reading Tutorial Toolbox which parses Japanese text and explains the words in English or German.
• Taishukan, the publisher of the (Morohashi) Daikanwajiten kanji dictionary, has a Kanji page (in Japanese) which has a wealth of information, including an interesting Q&A section.
• One of the best lists of sites for Japanese educational resources is the one built and maintained by Charles Kelly. A new feature from Charles is the Daily Page with 36 kanji each day. It has a "mouse over" for the day's kanji, and you can click through to futher information, quizzes, vocab. lists, etc. (example) Charles also has a search engine pointing at his site.
• The Japanologie Wien Studentenseite is a site (in German) by students of Japanese Science at the University of Vienna, Austria. It has a growing number of articles how to use Japanese on German computers, useful software, learning resources and also reports and seminar papers.
• My Japanese Lessons contains a series of web based quizes in Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji.
• Nihon2go is a site focused on vocabulary and kanji training. Has lists from the Japanese for Busy People series and an extensive collection of sounds and example sentences.
• Brian Peters' site of JLPT Resources, Levels 1 and 2. Includes a JLPT Guide, grammar, kanji, etc. Looks good.
• Videos from KISC Channel (Kobe University International Student Center) Each week (Friday) new videos are uploaded to enable practice in listening to authentic Japanese. There are usually 3 levels, intermediate, advanced and superior.
• Stephen Nightingale's Yomihoudai site has a number of texts with the English translations of words as popups. Good reading aide.
• The kenkyuukai interactive online community for students of the Japanese language. Features include in-depth product reviews, forums, live chat (separated by romaji and kana), news from Japan, various articles, and more.
• A new kanji resource is the Taka Kanji Database. It features very nice animated stroke-diagrams implemented in Java.
• jp-lesson is a commercial site offering Japanese lessons online.
• Jim Rose's Kanji Cafe includes his Ice Mocha, which among other things has configurable kanji and vocab drills. Now includes JLPT wordlists. An interesting project there is a collaboration to build Stroke Order Diagrams for kanji.
• Jeff Blum's Kanji a Day email list lets you subscribe to a daily instructional email. Uses Jack Halpern's stroke-order diagrams. There is now a Grammar a Day mailing list as well.
• Another site oriented to the JLPT is JLPT Kanji. Contains drills of kanji sets at various levels, and links to EDICT entries.
• english2day is one of a growing number of "community" WWW sites offering support for language students. This one covers both English instruction (for Japanese) and Japanese for foreigners. They host a mirror of WWWJDIC too.
• Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese Grammar sets out to explain Japanese grammar in a systematic step-by-step process. Contains rational and intuitive explanations of grammar in a way that makes sense in Japanese.
• The Bible Japanese page may be of interest to learners. It has parallel Japanese/English texts, vocab, grammar points, etc.
• Renaud Bouret has developed a WWW-based kanji dictionary specifically as a teaching tool. Available as a CD-ROM too.
• The CosCom Language Service in Japan has a lot of interesting e-Learning materials. They also have some WWW-based instructional pages (if you enter via the English page it starts as romaji, but you can get it in kana/kanji by clicking the buttons on the right).
• For people struggling to remember katakana, there is the Learn Katakana site. More than you ever wanted to know about katakana.
• The jGram site has a lot of useful information, as well as JLPT information, Business email summaries, etc.
• The Japanese Study List is site enabling Japanese learners to practice translating Japanese newspaper articles, with feedback and discussion.
• Fuyosoft sells software-based instructional material based on manga. (I rather like it.) A Flash demo is here.
• Lawrence Howell has written a self-teaching program for assimilating kanji according to word families which has a lot of information about kanji. You can also see Lawrence's Learning about Kanji series of articles on Kodansha International's theJapanPage.com site.
• Language Express has some vocab. kana, etc. cards that would be useful for elementary Japanese study.
• Here are some links specifically related to the JLPT (Japanese-Language Proficiency Test):
  • The Japan Foundation's introduction to the JLPT.
  • Charles Kelly has an interesting page linking words in the JLPT Vocabulary Lists to various online dictionaries. Useful for drilling.
  • Thierry Bézecourt has prepared some vocabulary lists. Recently Norbert Burger added the English translations from EDICT.
  • The Meguro Language Centre, as well as having course information online, has some very useful vocabulary lists, etc. for the JLPT.
• Some links related to Japanese language proficiency:
  • The Oregon Japanese Oral Benchmarks have some useful metrics for language proficiency.
  • An extract from the 1987 ACTFL Japanese Proficiency Guidelines (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) relating to Japanese proficiency.
  • Another ACTFL Proficiency guide
• The JapanEd company in NZ sells the Mac-only Understanding Japanese Verbs & Adjectives package and book.
• The Kanji Study Guide site has online aides for learning kanji, plus useful links.
• Some good audio resources for Japanese are at these sites:
  • Peer-to-peer (P2P) broadcasting is available for Japanese radio. Here is a list of stations and some software.
  • University of Victoria (Real Audio)
  • Stanford (QuickTime)
  • NHK's Japanese lessons on Radio Japan (Real Audio)
• A Japanese Typing Game (xletters) for Mac/Linux. Falling words have to be typed before they reach the bottom of the screen.
• Making a return after being missing for a few years is a revised form of the DL (dictionary linking) system for aiding text reading.
• The Kanji alive site at the University of Chicago is a searchable, interactive web-based tool to help students learn to read and write kanji. (It looks terrific and reflects the large amount of work that has gone into it. My only gripe is that it uses Quicktime, which means it can't be used from Unix/Linux systems as Apple refuses to release plugins for those platforms.)
• A very nice package is WaKan, a freeware Windows system for learning Japanese and Chinese. Combines character dictionary, word dictionary, simple editor, vocabulary management, etc. Incorporates the Tanaka JE sentence corpus.
• MIT's Open Courseware page has links to some introductory Japanese courses. The MIT JP NET page also has some useful material and links. Perhaps best is their language curriculum material, which includes some brushstroke movies of kanji.
• Robert Bodnaryk's Kanji Mnemonics is an instruction manual for learning Japanese characters. Available as a book and/or CDROM.
• An interesting concept is the 121sensei.com teacher/student matching site.
• Laurie Arizumi's Nihongo Web at the University of Alabama is a very interesting Japanese language and culture distance learning course.
• Kumiko Kaneniwa has developed some interesting and challenging WWW quizzes. Here are links to the ones on Grammar and Newspaper reading.
• An excellent set of pages called A Logical Japanese Grammar have been written by Mash Satou. He also has a page on verb conjugation. (Mostly in romaji, but some kanji and kana.)
• Richard Harrison at the Nagoya University Education Center for International Students has a set of listening comprehension exercises online called ECIS Internet Hosokyoku. (Uses QuickTime, with RealPlayer being added.)
• A novel product is International BABY101 English & Japanese, a DVD to assist raising bi-lingual children.
• Andres Guillermo Stenner has prepared a page of educational material in Spanish.
• Bruce Dailey's ii-Kanji site is a WWW-based kanji and vocabulary learning tool that can be used on compact devices like i-Mode phones as well as normal browsers. Can be used for personal study lists.
• Another useful page from Jouji Miwa at Iwate Univ. is an easy page for using Goo's furigana service. Enter a URL and the page is returned with furigana added to the kanji.
• A rare piece of educational software for Unix/Linux is the kanatest kana drill program. Needs GTK 1.2+.
• An elementary Japanese course based on the Nihongo Shoho, with audio files, etc.
• Dan Mereweather has developed some pages of information and comments on Japanese grammar and counters, etc. (Don't take his spelling too literally.)
• Kim Allen's Japanese Tutorial contains an excellent summary of Japanese grammar and related topics. All the Japanese is in romaji.
• Petit Kanji is an interesting site created by Patrick Benny which uses the ruby/furigana feature in IE5+.
• Barry Waid's Gengogaku page has useful systems for inflecting verbs and adjectives and generating counters.
• Friedrich Kemler has developed hyperlinked set of kanji-learning pages, based on KANJIDIC and EDICT.
• Francesc Corbalan has written some interesting flash-card pages to drill kana and kanji. They use a lot of Javascript, and need IE5 or NS6.
• For people considering teaching themselves Japanese I recommend Collin McCulley's Guide to Japanese Self-Study.
• Mary Sisk Noguchi at Meijo University in Nagoya has a Kanji Clinic column in the Japan Times. The WWW site has copies of the articles, plus a number of here other articles and reviews on Japanese language education.
• LL systems have another interesting page with Japanese Reading exercises which use selectable furigana (it says IE only, but seems to work in Firefox).
• An interesting Reading Tutor page is at Tokyo International University.
• Brian Kay's Reading Japanese pages have elementary Japanese instruction. Note that you need to be able to read kana.
• Nihongo Parotto is a beginners' Japanese package available on CD. It was developed by Denton Hewgill, who wrote the Kanji Gold program, and Hiroko Noro. Has ear training facilities as well as writing and grammar.
• The Homeschooling in Japan site has links and resources on Homeschooling and Afterschooling in Japan.
• Jack Halpern has written some interesting pages on Japanese Writing. You will need a Japanese-capable browser to read them. The Kanji Mnemonics from Henshall's "A Guide To Remembering Japanese Characters". They were keyed by William Clausing, and this page covering the kanji taught in the first six grades of school has been compiled with permission from Professor Henshall and his publishers, Tuttle. -->
• TV Oceania in Australia produces video and other educational material for Japanese language teaching (Select the Education menu item).
• Takako Tomoda at Monash University has prepared some interesting online courseware on her Sakura site which uses Java for interactive exercises in association with the Interactive Japanese 1 text.
• Jlearner is new site with introductory Japanese lessons. I like the way it starts with kana.
• A brief summary of some Japanese grammar which I keyed from some old notes. Needs a Japanese-capable browser, and has no romaji.
• Collin McCulley has some useful resources and links on this page.
• Juan Cardona Granda has written a Spanish-language Japanese Grammar summary based on Keith Smillie's shorter document (below). Available as a PDF file.
• I have always liked Hitomi Hirayama's Pera Pera Penguin instructional column in the Yomiuri Shinbun. The PDF versions can be downloaded from here.
• The Japanese Language Schools in Australia site has useful information about courses, etc.
• Andy Searls has made a new version of Tad Perry's Quick and Dirty Guide to Japanese, with the romaji changed to kana. A great improvement.
• The Digital Learning site in Japan offers the MISJ (Mikiko Iwasaki's Systematic Japanese) online Japanese course for beginners.
• Some Japanese educational resources for Spanish-speakers can be found at the Gunkan site.
• Keith Smillie's 25-page Japanese Grammar Summary. In its original form it is available as a downloadable PDF or PS file. Keith also produced an HTML version (here). Juan Cardona Granda converted the romaji in the examples to kana and kanji, and his version is here.
• The Japanese Language Resource Center has a lot of useful material and links.
• Kanji School is a set of inexpensive Windows programs for learning kana and kanji.
• Some Kanji learning links from Young Joon Moon.
• Ron Schei's WWW-based Flashcard system. Uses files from the EDICT family.
• I finally put a copy of Tad Perry's 1992 Quick and Dirty Guide to Japanese on my server.
• An excellent source of WWW reading material in Japanese is the Hiragana Times newsletter. It has versions in "normal" Japanese, hiragana and English.
• A new CD-ROM-based teaching package is called Human Japanese (as opposed to inhuman Japanese :-)). Haven't tried it at all. They also host a free forum on Japanese language and grammar.
• At the Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka is a page of kanji from their textbook: Genki, published by The Japan Times. Each kanji is hot-linked to a QuickTime movie showing how it is written. Also available are hiragana and katakana lessons.
• Cornell University's Intensive FALCON Japanese Language Program - Fellowships Available.
• The Infortech company in Japan has some interesting educational software, including Kurobi, which is a Japanese instructional program, and Power Nazoler, which is a writing instruction program aimed at kids in Japanese primary (elementary) schools.
• Able LL Systems have an interesting Verb Inflection Analyzer. A trial can be downloaded.
• Around for a while, but new to this page is the Center for Applied Japanese Language Studies (CAJLS) at the University of Oregan. (Keiko Schneider at the University of New Mexico is the Webmaster.)
• An excellent source collection for learning Japanese is Andrew Horvat's Total Quality Japanese site at the David Lam Centre for International Communication, Simon Fraser University in Canada. Well worth looking at. The site also has sample chapters from his new book Japanese Beyond Words, which are changed regularly. (Andrew also has a collection of links to articles by him here.)
• Shinji Takasugi's Teach Yourself Japanese makes a good start at providing an insight into Japanese orthography and grammar.
• The CONJUGATE (CONsortium for Japanese Language Materials Using GlobAl TEchnologies) project, hosted at the University of Tsukuba International Student Center, is a starting point to a mass of useful material.
• The Joyo 96 Kanji Study Home Page. This is a series of pages devoted to aiding the teaching and learning of written Japanese. It includes: an interesting Paper Maker for making pages of printable Japanese text; a 144 page Katakana Tutorial based on Jorden's Reading Japanese; materials for studying the Joyo Kanji. Well worth visiting.
  Joyo has just introduced a Japanese Poem greeting card service, using classical poetry.
• An interesting page full of useful links is Maki Kamimura's Japanese Language page.
• An interesting Japanese Writing Tutor by Blake Sterzinger. This has some amazing animated examples of kana and kanji.
• Gerald Laabs' How to Japanese (sic) site, based on his CD-ROM of the same name.
• Jouji Miwa's LESSON/J system, which does dictation drills, using Java Applets.
• David Sitsky at the ANU has developed a kanji flashcard system called flashkanji. It runs on a Unix box with Perl and C involved, and generates HTML kanji testing files. His site has gone, but you can get the code from the Monash ftp site.
• Also doing a kanji flashcard system is Marshall Ramsey's KanjiFlash. Go to the Monash ftp site and search for "KanjiFlash". Freeware Java (source included.)
• And another good flashcard system is Kanji Gold for Windows, developed by Denton Hewgill. It's GNU-licensed freeware.
• the Nihongo Learning Systems company has developed some interesting kana, kanji, gairaigo and vocabulary drilling systems
• and to help people who keep asking me for the "Japanese alphabet", here and here are images of the hiragana syllabary.

• General
  • Japanese and Chinese translation articles (Felicia - Tue, 16 Aug 2005)
  • An interesting lecture by Royall Tyler on translating The Tale of Genji, and an interview he gave on Australian radio on that topic. Royall's recent translation is now available in paperback.
  • Some interesting articles relating to translation are available on the Japan Association of Translators (JAT) page.
  • Tom Gally, a senior and experienced translator in Japan, has some interesting links and documents in his translation page.
  • Complementing Tom's page is John De Hoog's short Job of a Professional Translator article.
  • J-Net is the Japanese Network sub-group of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting, the UK's professional body for translators and interpreters.
  • Honyaku (Japanese translators mailing list) Home Page. There is also a searchable archive of the mailing list postings.
  • HonyakuCafe.com - Social networking community for freelance English-Japanese translators. (honyakugirl - Mon, 15 Jan 2007)
• Agencies
  • Bubbles offers professional language translations. Based in the UK, but equipped with a number of in-house Japanese natives, Bubbles can accommodate all Japanese website localisation and document translation requirements. Anon - Wed, 17 Jun 2009)
  • Tomedes is an Israel-based agency, offering fast online quotations. (Ofer - Thu, 19 Mar 2009)
  • Direct Languages is a multi-lingual translation company that provides Japanese translation services (Matthew Johnson - Fri, 4 Jul 2008)
  • Online translation: Professional translation service, 24/7 live support and fast turnaround. (Michael - Mon, 29 Oct 2007)
  • Prestige Network is a UK company specializing in interpreting and translation services in over 150 different languages including Japanese. (Dylan - Mon, 30 Jul 2007)
  • Axis Translations offers professional translation services of all language combinations, including Japanese. (Nigel Massey - Mon, 25 Sep 2006)
  • GSI Shop specializes in Chinese and Japanese patent and competitive intelligence research. Translation services available. (irene - Fri, 25 Aug 2006)
  • WLP Translations claims to be a large and highly flexible translation company that can translate just about anything to or from any language. Their services include plain text translations, books and manuals, email and websites. (Seems to be an agency.) (Cath - Mon, 7 Aug 2006)
  • Gongwell provides Japanese translation, Japanese multilingual desktop publishing and localization services. (irene - Mon, 10 Jul 2006)
  • General
  • Intac is a Tokyo-based translation company with expertise in the game industry, media, and other areas. (Dave - Wed, 14 Jun 2006)
  • Your Translation Matters provides translation and localisation services to businesses from virtually every sector of trade and industry. (Adina Popa - Mon, 12 Jun 2006)
  • New Lingo translation services - professional translation services with operations in the UK and New Zealand (Diana Stan - Mon, 12 Jun 2006)
  • Bilingual E/J site offering post-translation editing and rewriting of translations from Japanese into English (Adam - Sun, 4 Jun 2006)
  • Your-Name-in-Japanese offers Japanese character translation and short phrase translation service for tattoo designs, advertisement, craft, artwork, gifts, etc.. (Ken Suzuki - Fri, 26 May 2006)
  • Adelphi Translations specialises in turnkey solutions from the translation itself to the production of the final format, be it a printed brochure, a website or a voiceover. Specialists in complex scripts including Japanese, Korean and Chinese. (Steve Sutcliffe - Mon, 8 May 2006)
  • Lingo24, a UK based agency, provides Japanese translation services. Their site includes an interesting career guide as well as other general information about translation.
  • ak2 translation, a company in San Diego, California offering very high quality Japanese Translation. (Tom Graham - Thu, 12 May 2005)
  • SAECULII.COM Japanese language translation services. (Ivan Vandermerwe - Mon, 13 Jun 2005)
  • WTB Language Group is a Canadian based translation agency. (Felicia - Tue, 16 Aug 2005)
  • Japanese Translation - Green Crescent offers a wide variety of Japanese language services including medical, legal and technical translation. (Jonathan - Wed, 12 Apr 2006)
  • Mi Marketing - Japanese Translation Services. Supplier of Japanese translation and business services to clients throughout the world.
  • Han Translation, as the name implies, does Chinese translation as well as Japanese.
  • Applied Language is a commercial agency offering Japanese Translation.
  • BJ Japanese Translations is a UK-based translation partnership which among other things has an online business card service.
  • Bilingual PC Web is a commercial outfit concentrating on E/J WWW pages.
  • the home page of Foreign Ink, a translation agency specializing in Japanese, Chinese & Korean translation.
  • Hiromi Yamazaki's Japanese Website Translation Service is a commercial operation with a WWW flavour. Also has Kyoto information.
  • John Glenn's eTranslate, which is more localization than translation.
  • the Japanese Translation Network specializes in computer documentation. The page features a free online Japanese course for travellers.
  • Translation Experts Ltd is a company offering (commercial) translation software.
• WWW Services
  • James Phillips has begun an Online Patent Translation School which has a lot of interesting material, including a good glossary with examples.
  • This interesting site has comparisons of the results from a number of popular JE/EJ translation programs.
  • Another WWW service based on AmiKai is at Nifty, the Japanese ISP. Nifty also hosts a URL-based translation too. And another AmiKai-based service is at OCN.
  • Yet another WWW server that translates text is at Excite in Japan. Use the URL or text options. Looks as though the EJ is better than the JE. Uses the Amikai software.
  • I finally got around to adding a link to the Altavista Babelfish server, which uses the SYSTRAN package.
  • Among the sites which offer online translation of text and/or WWW pages is Worldling I don't think much of the quality of the results.
  • The Amikai page makes a number of multi-lingual chat groups available, and also has a translation function for WWW pages and portions of text. A bit crude, but serviceable.
  • An interesting usage of the EDICT file is Hilofumi Yamamoto's WebGloss and MailGloss systems. Both take Japanese text and return it segmented and glossed.
  • Announcing the WWWJTRANS frontend to the word translation facility in my WWWJDIC. It allows a text page and a WWWJDIC screen side-by-side in frames, facilitating cutting and pasting of text. (Thanks to Kirk Masden, whose DicLink page gave me the idea.)
  • My own WWWJDIC doesn't translate text, but it has an option for translating the words within Japanese text. Try it here.
  • Another WWW page translator is the Zip-Translator from the National Institute of Agrobiological Resources at Tsukuba. Part of the LSD project, and uses the LSD dictionary file.

• My Tokyo Guide offers customized guided tours, travel packages and hotels in Tokyo and throughout Japan providing a truly genuine Japanese cultural experience (Eri - Fri, 8 May 2009)
• A very informative site about Tea Ceremony. (Jim - Thu, 19 Mar 2009)
• Togeii's weblog by Dave Pike is focused on Japanese ceramics and antiques with an occasional post about the village he lives in. (Dave Pike - Sun, 25 Jan 2009)
• A fairly light-weight overview of Japanese culture, language, etc. (Jim - Fri, 21 Nov 2008)
• News and information site about J-Dorama (Japanese TV series) and artists appearing in those series. (Daniel Franz - Thu, 25 Sep 2008)
• A very interesting site about temple lodging in Japan. (Hori - Wed, 4 Jun 2008)
• Fascinating Visualizing Cultures site at MIT with essays and images of recent japanese history. (Michael - Fri, 23 May 2008)
• Must Love Japan is a video travel guide to Japan. Contents cover various famous travel spots like Asakusa, Roppongi, nature, historical monument, hotels, restaurants, shopping districts, etc. (Toshi - Fri, 9 May 2008)
• Japan-San is a personal guide to the Japanese culture including Japanese customs, holidays, folklore, etc. (Lee - Sun, 20 Apr 2008)
• WJAAS (Western Japanese Audio Appreciation) is a blog site about audio systems with a Japanese flavour. (twogoodears - Wed, 5 Mar 2008)
• Japan-Zone says it is one of the longest-established online guides to Japan and Japanese culture (since 1999), with a focus on popular culture. Includes a forum, daily entertainment news, and a friend finding network, ideal for anyone looking for a Japanese language exchange partner. (Mark McBennett - Wed, 6 Feb 2008)
• JapanGifts.com offers a fusion of traditional Asian and contemporary styles from many diverse places in the world. (Hayashi - Mon, 3 Dec 2007)
• A gateway to Japanese online-shopping sites. The site introduces Japanese online-shops and provides intermediate service. (Junya Sebata - Tue, 2 Oct 2007)
• For something different, Renaldo is a literature researcher in Tokyo currently investigating the influence, for better or worse, that Tsubouchi Shoyo's advocacy of "realism" had on post-Meiji literary history. His blog is both in Japanese and in English, and is at once a blog, a photo journal, a link to literary texts, a language course, a documentary and film collection, as well as a collection of music performances (some by Renaldo himself). (renaldo, or "gonbee" - Sun, 29 Jul 2007)
• Gallery Sakura is an online gallery dedicated to Japanese fine arts such as paintings (framed, scrolled) and prints (woodcut, lithograph). (Minoru Kuniya - Mon, 16 Jul 2007)
• An interpretation of Japanese architecture and what it can teach us. Attempts a philosophical take to dissect its nature and to reveal how it's different from the rest. (dino - Wed, 18 Apr 2007)
• The GoGoD site is devoted mostly to historical and social aspects of the game of go/weiqi/baduk. Covers also China and Korea but much of it relates to Japan. (John Fairbairn - Sat, 14 Apr 2007)
• Dancing Chopsticks is an educational, bi-lingual website focusing on the people who produce and sell food in Japan. (Aaron Kingsbury - Tue, 27 Feb 2007)
• JapanVisitor.com provides: online hotel booking services, flight reservations, Japan city guides, mobile phone rental, a select guide to what's on in Tokyo & Kyoto, and nightlife info, including restaurants, bars, clubs, cinemas and theaters. (Sanborn Brown - Thu, 8 Feb 2007)
• Tokyonodoko is a guide to Tokyo and Kanto area. The best restaurants, bars and cafes, good music, and the ten best things to do while in Tokyo, thousands of restaurant reviews, political opinions, comments and more. (David Jones - Mon, 29 Jan 2007)
• Japanese Temari from Barb Suess, Kiku Designs. New book (2007), photo gallery and free patterns. (Barbara Suess - Mon, 15 Jan 2007)
• A very nice page about Japanese dolls . Lots of links. (Terry Brown - Mon, 18 Dec 2006)
• Bilingual sermons (Japanese/English) by Pastor Takao Kiyohiro of the Shoei Church in Tokyo. (M.A.F. - Thu, 24 Aug 2006)
• Cultline is probably the largest Russian site about Japan, with a lot of information about literature, great artists, art of Japan and its writers. (cultline - Tue, 15 Aug 2006)
• Mark Schumacher's Japanese Buddhist Statuary site has been online since 1995. Over 1,000 photos of the Buddha, Bodhisattva, and Deva, plus reviews of hundreds of deities and demons in the Japanese Buddhist & Shinto pantheons. This site is widely referenced by universities, museums, galleries, art historians, Buddhist practitioners, and lay people from around the world. English, updated frequently, with deity names given in Japanese. (Mark Schumacher - Tue, 25 Jul 2006)
• Buddhist Artwork Store is Mark's online store specializing in hand-carved wood Buddhist statues made by master artisans for the Japanese market, and hand-crafted Buddhist artwork from China and Southeast Asia. Delivery to 50+ countries. All artwork is accompanied by useful reference notes, including Sanskrit, Chinese, and Japanese spellings. (Mark Schumacher - Tue, 25 Jul 2006)
• A site about Daruma dolls. Explanation, shopping, etc. (darumajp - Wed, 12 Jul 2006) The
• Kamakura Print Collection features photogravure etchings by Peter Miller, on Japanese washi or etching paper. The site focuses on Japan, with prints in the Temples, Furusato, Winter Gardens, Seascapes, and Dreamscapes Series. Other Series whose style and mode of perception are influenced by Japanese aesthetics include the Silk Road, Mongolia, and other Series. (Peter Miller - Tue, 6 Jun 2006)
• Unique and traditional Japanese gifts made by Japanese artisans. One of a kind Tea Ceremony bowls, indigo dyed Noren and more... (Stephen Genova - Sat, 27 May 2006)
• Centering upon FushidansekkyO is a site for those who are interested in this aspect of Japanese Buddhist literary arts and performing arts. (Hitomi Dever - Wed, 26 Apr 2006)
• The slightly quirky JDorama site is for fans of Japanese (TV) drama. It has a database of both works and artists. (Jim - Wed, 1 Mar 2006)
• Neculai Amalinei is a pioneer of Japanese education in Romania. His Shogun site is dedicated to the people interested in the study of Japanese Culture. The site will be related to Japanese History and Japanese Civilization as well, in an attempt to reveal the importance of the Japanese Nation in the cultural background of the world. The site is in both Romanian and English. (Neculai Amalinei - Thu, 17 Nov 2005) - amended by Jim
• Consists of photos taken during a 3-year residence in a rural farming town on the Pacific coast east of Tokyo. Many of the photos are of temples, shrines, and other places far off the tourist track. (Michael Thaler - Fri, 3 Jun 2005)
• Douglas Brooks has been studying wasen zukuri traditional Japanese boatbuilding since 1990. He has built boats for museum in the United States and Japan and has published numerous articles on Japanese boatbuilding. (Douglas Brooks - Mon, 29 Aug 2005)
• Japanese Free Clip Art provides copyright-free clip art images related to Japan. Check out the Ukiyo-e and Kamon clip art and wallpapers! (Dai - Sat, 24 Sep 2005)
• Edo-Tokyo is a non-profit-website about architecture, urbanism and related culture of Tokyo (and Japan). (In German, but English will follow bit by bit.)
• The Hina Matsuri selection of electronic greeting cards has Japanese themes.
• The Japanese Connection site has a mass of arts and craft information (commercial site).
• The Japanese Myths site is a reference for people interested in the gods, heroes, monsters, etc. from Japanese legends and myths.
• The Hello from Nippon page has been made two university students researching "How do people in the world feel about Japan?" It is perhaps most useful as a reflection of what (some) Japanese people think foreigners think of Japan. The questionnaire is a delight.
• JapaneseLifestyle: an Australian site detailing Japanese culture, lifestyle, fashion and food. Includes detailed coverage of Japanese events held in Australia.
• The Shoji Styles site contains essays on shoji decor and designs.
• The Takumi Japanese Dolls Shop sells Kokeshi and Sasano-bori dolls, as well as having some general information on Japanese dolls.
• Watashi to Tokyo is a personal magazine about living in Tokyo.
• An interesting set of pages (in Japanese) have been compiled for the town of Kuka in Yamaguchi. Of particular note is a Kuka Today page posted by the local high school. It is added to several times a week and carries a photo of the town or of some activity, along with a brief weather report and short explanation.
• Youkaimura is an online village of youkai, or Japanese supernatural beings.
• A new site with potential is The Foreigner - Japan online newsletter. Still limited material.
• The a wealth of information. Part of its site is an encyclopaedic WWW directory called Web Japan.
• Also in the Web Japan site is the Nipponia (magazine in furiganaed Japanese for foreigners) magazine.
• JapaneseStreets is a site which follows Japanese street culture and the fashion trends of Japan's trendy youths.
• A page on Japanese incense.
• The World Haiku Review is the journal of the World Haiku Club. A recent page was about the Parade of Life Kukai held at the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery.
• The Trek Japan pages have photographs, recipes and information about Japanese schools.
• theJapanPage.com is the official web site for Kodansha International documenting the best in Japanese culture, including Language, Martial Arts, Home & Gardens, Hobbies, Travel, Cooking, Art and Literature.
• Barbara Chambers has built some very informative pages on Enka and captioning little-known shoujo animation.
• The page of the Sennin Foundation Center for Japanese Cultural Arts contains information about classes in traditional Japanese systems of yoga, healing arts, martial arts, and fine arts (calligraphy/painting and flower arrangement).
• Michi Online is a new electronic journal of the Japanese cultural arts, sponsored by the Sennin Foundation, Inc. Has an excellent arts-oriented link collection, as well as articles.
• I agonized a little before putting in this link to Kris's Young Dudes Guide to Japan. Maybe I'm too old.(I have even received requests that the link be removed on the grounds that the site has mysogynistic and homophobic material. I am considering this, but in the meantime I am adding this warning if you choose to visit it.)
• Peter Van Riel's postcard collection is worth a visit (if you can stand the advertisements that litter "free" sites.)
• The About.com site has an interesting page on Japanese Culture, with articles written by an American student of Japanese culture.
• Georges Bouvier has a page devoted to Kutani ceramics.
• Ed Kaspar has assembled a well-annotated Photos of Japan gallery of his photography.
• The Kansai Now page has a lot of useful information links, mainly dealing with Osaka and surrounding areas.
• Well worth a visit is the Tokyo Q weekly guide to happenings in Tokyo (the recently gave this page "Link of the week"!)
• Ako Naoi's Gaijin Hotline, which contains a messenging service for foreigners living in Japan.
• The Japan Echo bimonthly journal on topics of interest in Japan today.
• The current month's issue of ISSHO News.
• Matt Malcomson's Japanese Accents page, which has useful information for foreigners living in Japan, including; information, destinations, fiction, and links.
• the Linc WWW Server, which has some interesting stuff, including information on the XVIII Olympic Winter Games in Nagano-ken.
• Don Weiss's Echoes of Incense, which describes his book about his 88-temple pilgrimage in Shikoku (a lot of in-line gifs).
• An interesting page of Japanese information and links at the Mining Company, developed by Namiko Abe.
• For haiku devotees there is the Shiki Internet Haiku Salon.

• RentafoneJapan offers convenient and low cost Japan mobile/cell phone rental. Low call rates. Free incoming calls. Free shipping. (Justin Giffin - Wed, 24 Jun 2009)
• Book Japan hotels online at Japanican.com. Over 3,000 hotels available from all over the country. (Dee Barizo - Sat, 20 Jun 2009)
• The Language Realm site, which is part of a translation agency, has some interesting glossary lists and articles about Japan and Japanese. (Jim - Fri, 19 Jun 2009)
• NengoCalc is a page that converts Japanese dates into their Western equivalents. (Jim - Thu, 26 Feb 2009)
• Find Jobs in Japan is an online employment resource site in Japan. (Rieko Fujime - Thu, 29 Jan 2009)
• Japanese green teas and authentic Japanese Aritayaki porcelain teapots, teacups and tea sets directly from shops and kilns located throughout Japan. (Jeff Sarvis - Tue, 20 Jan 2009)
• A site dealing in very elegant Japanese ceramic tableware. (Hiromasa Sunaga - Fri, 5 Dec 2008)
• Futon, Tatami and Screens from Japanwelt online shop. Offers a huge range of traditional Japanese products such as tatami, futons, screens, shoji and Japanese lights. (Japanwelt - Tue, 18 Nov 2008)
• Virtual gallery and online shop of modern, authentic and original handicrafts made by Japanese creators and craftsmen. (exposhopjapon - Tue, 9 Sep 2008)
• www.OnsenJapan.net has an interactive Google Maps interface and an ever-growing database of onsen, descriptions, reviews, and onsen tours of Japan. (Goemonburo - Sat, 6 Sep 2008)
• Facts About Japan provides an overview of Japan featuring interesting facts and a photo gallery of Japanese artifact from the Jomon to Meiji Periods. (Greg Hackney - Wed, 3 Sep 2008)
• An interesting page on accommodation in Japan . Still a bit basic, but being expanded. (Brett - Thu, 24 Jul 2008)
• MyJapanPhone provides cell phones and Blackberries for visitors to Japan. Special offer: put "MONASH" in the coupon code area, get 30% discount on rental fee and a dual time watch as gift. (Kevin - Tue, 8 Jul 2008)
• ASAKUSA Underground is an alternative Tokyo travel guide produced by a group of Japanese writers. Also see its directory of links. (Shinsuke Kono and Naoto Matsumoto - Sun, 15 Jun 2008)
• Gallery of Japanese kanji symbol tattoo design (sic). (Nao - Wed, 7 May 2008)
• MyJapanPhone provides cell phones and Blackberries for visitors to Japan. (Jim - Wed, 12 Mar 2008)
• Japanese Social Networking site. Learn Japanese, share your own knowledge of Japanese, share pictures, videos, chat, forum discussions about Japan. (David McGimpsey - Mon, 11 Feb 2008)
• The Japanese Green Tea Shop for Organic Japanese Green Tea and Organic Matcha powder. Sells to consumers all over the globe. Sourced direct ly from a family-run farm in Uji. (Daniel Souter - Mon, 4 Feb 2008)
• Tokyo word-of-mouth reviews - Sunnypages.jp : Sunnypages is the place to review and discover everything you love, or not, in Tokyo. (Masa - Fri, 21 Dec 2007)
• Database of Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research in Japan (S.A - Tue, 11 Dec 2007)
• Information site about the Japanese National Health Insurance plans. Everything you want to know about getting on or off the NHI. Compares the government plans with private insurance plans. (Webmaster - Sat, 6 Nov 2007)
• the Executive Planet guide to business culture and etiquette in Japan. (Phyllis Paryas - Wed, 31 Oct 2007)
• Piqniq is a social network for English-speaking families living in Japan. (Jim - Fri, 3 Aug 2007)
• SentōGuide - a guide to public baths in Japan (Wouter Kloos - Sat, 28 Jul 2007)
• J-Tokkyo is a collection of creative inventions, gadgets and products and an online database of Japanese patents. (saka - Mon, 23 Jul 2007)
• A bit like Google maps Japan in English. (nick may - Sun, 8 Jul 2007)
• Information about Japanese travel, culture, language, foods, etc.. (Takanori Tomita - Mon, 25 Jun 2007)
• Offers Japanese symbol translation and short phrase translation service for tattoo designs (Takanori Tomita - Fri, 22 Jun 2007)
• Importers of affordable Japanese Antiques, Art, Textiles, Decor & Garden Ornaments. Delivery Australia-wide. Visit our huge warehouse at Mittagong in the NSW Southern Highlands (Japanache - Wed, 9 May 2007)
• The PhotoPassJapan website hosts 3000+ Japan Pictures sorted into regional and thematic albums. Recent and in-depth scenes of Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Nikko and many other cities introduce a more real-life Japan - narrated to act as a visual (travel) guide. (peter - Sun, 21 Jan 2007)
• A useful set of tables of units, measures, etc. in Japanese and English, including conversion tables. (Nora - Wed, 3 Jan 2007)
• Travel Japan with World Travel Quotes. Also has general travel information and advice. (Wally Pike - Tue, 19 Dec 2006)
• Nihon Classifieds - No.1 classified site for people living in Japan. Japan Jobs, Japan personals, Japan accommodation and much more. (Daniel Souter - Tue, 7 Nov 2006)
• Cheaper than Hotels - Japan offers a selection of accommodation from hostels to hotels and from the last minute to one year in advance (Alistair White - Thu, 24 Aug 2006)
• Columbia University's Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies has many resources and links on medieval Japan. (Jim - Wed, 5 Jul 2006)
• Ideogear has gone, but Kanjiya seems to be an alternative, offering "Meaningful Kanji T-shirt, Custom Kanji T-shirt With Your Name, Japanese Kanji Symbol Translation For Tattoo". (M.T - Tue, 13 Jun 2006)
• A multimedia eLearning tutorial for managers and professionals doing business in Japan who would like training in the business etiquette. Free downloadable demonstration for organisations and HR departments. (Tom - Tue, 30 May 2006)
• Japan Travel Photos Our site is dedicated to photos people have taken while travelling around Japan. Please visit, view the photos and, if you like, upload some photos of your own. (Frank and Tomoko - Wed, 10 May 2006)
• Yumeya produce Japanese gifts and gifts with personalised Japanese Calligraphy. Based in Germany. (Yumeya - Mon, 1 May 2006)
• Kataaro sells embroidered black belts, martial arts uniforms and apparel, etc. with translations available in Japanese. (Tom - Wed, 1 Mar 2006)
• France-Japon.net is a website serving the French community in Japan.(All in French, of course.) (Jim - Thu, 24 Nov 2005)
• Saiga is an online gift shop which sells Japanese calligraphy (Shodo), Oshie, Sensu, and Chirimen, as well as having some general information on Japanese calligraphy and crafts. (chokurin - Tue, 22 Nov 2005)
• This website is a comprehensive guide to resources on the internet about Japanese law , mainly in English. It includes information about primary sources of law, legal institutions and secondary commentary. (Jim - Tue, 15 Nov 2005)
• The Australian Network for Japanese Law (ANJeL) is an initiative of the law faculties at the Australian National University (ANU), the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and the University of Sydney (USyd). The core aim of ANJeL is to promote scholarly engagement with Japanese law, especially in Australia. (Jim - Tue, 15 Nov 2005)
• What Japan Thinks is a collection of translations of various Japanese public opinion polls. (Seron Chousa - Tue, 18 Oct 2005)
• Ainu-English Word List, culled from The Languages of Japan by Masayoshi Shibatani by Mike Wright (Jim - Fri, 6 May 2005)
• On line antique discount shop with a shop in Japan and an office in the UK. A family business. Myself and wife Yoriko look after the UK end while my mother inlaw takes care of the JP end (Mark Smith - Sat, 7 May 2005)
• Pictures of Tokyo. While being stationed at Yokota AB Japan I have decided to make a website dedicated to my findings of the Tokyo area. With over 250 pictures of Tokyo, And other pictures of Japan. Come visit and enjoy the History of Edo. (Carlson - Thu, 12 May 2005)
• TokyoDiary. Business events calendar covering conferences, seminars, exhibitions, networking events, tradeshows etc. in the Tokyo region. (Edwin Hayward - Tue, 14 Jun 2005)
• A guide to business etiquette in Japan covering aspects of doing business in Japan, including negotiating, entertaining, gift giving, and public behavior. (Eric Paryas - Thu, 16 Jun 2005)
• Japanese Game Guide. Guide to which Japanese video games are playable for non-Japanese speakers. Now includes a blog about Japanese games, as well as purchasing info for English speakers. (Jam - Fri, 8 Jul 2005, updated 12 Sep 2008)
• Probably you don't know the Constitution of Japan RENUNCIATION OF WAR .In the historical fact, the Constitution of Japan was enacted by U.S.A army in 1946 year. (Kazuo Ueda - Sat, 9 Jul 2005)
• Over 300 Pictures of Tokyo. Come visit the history of Edo. Helpful for planning a trip, school reports, and Japanese culture. (Carlson - Wed, 24 Aug 2005)
• Hanami Web sets out to expose Japanese lifestyle and "inside culture". A bit cheesy. Has a BBS included. (Jaakko Saari - Wed, 24 Aug 2005)
• Japanfinders.com finds anything you want from japan, adds on a fair `finding fee'and sends to you, after your `Pay Pal' payment is made. What do you need? (David vick - Sat, 3 Sep 2005)
• Akatsuki Kitamura's Kanji Miscellany page (in Japanese) which has a large number of interesting articles, lists, etc.
• The Japan Focus weblog offers constantly updated reportage and writing not only about Japan but also about the Asia-Pacific region, much of it by Japanese authors and others who engage their debates on issues ranging from international, regional and domestic politics, economics, society and culture.
• GaijinInc is an automotive solutions company for expats living in Japan or coming to Japan.
• Yasuharu Dando's Japan Research and Analysis through Internet Information consists of columns which discuss social phenomena in Japan. Some good articles.
• The Wintersturm company sells high-quality calligraphic art. (Page in German)
• Another bloggish site is On Campus, which seems to be mainly used by people in Japan learning English. May be good for asking questions.
• TokyoFriends is a site for meeting people in Tokyo, pen friends, etc.
• The KanjiStyle site provides downloadable kanji images in calligraphic styles.
• An online Kotowaza database in Japanese, English and Dutch.
• A useful supplier of things like Wordtanks is Smart Imports, which despite its name is really an exporting company located in Tokyo.
• A monster link site: JapanReference. Not as old as this page, but has more links, nicely categorized.
• Information for foreigners in Nagano Prefecture. (Slight JET flavour).
• Zac Craven's photograph collection, which includes plenty in and around Matsumoto (my first experience of Japan.)
• Astronomy in Japan: Science, History, Culture.
• John Dower at MIT has compiled an online exhibition of Black Ships & Samaurai describing and depicting Commodore Matthew Perry's mission to Japan in 1853/4. Highly recommended.
• If you like weblogs with reader-contributed information, try Weblog Japan, aimed at foreigners living or travelling in Japan. Still in its early days.
• The New Testament in Japanese as a set of Real Audio files. (The site is coded in EUC_KR, and you may have to fiddle with the coding to see it properly.)
• The WWOOF Japan site introduces people to staying on farms, etc. in Japan. (WWOOF originally meant: Weekend Workers On Organic Farms".)
• The JapanKnowledge site comes from Net Advance Inc., a subsidiary of Shogakukan. Its aim is to allow users to search multiple encyclopedias, dictionaries, etc. (In Japanese only.)
• The CorText-Japan site is a useful guide for people starting a business in Japan or visiting Japan on business. (CorText builds Japanese WWW sites too.)
• The JapanVisitor pages are an excellent set of resources for tourists and business travellers.
• An interesting site about the case of Kamal Sinha and his legal battle with Mitsubishi Electric. Just Kamal's side of the story, but worth reading. Hmmm. Seems to have been replaced by this.
• The Children's Rights Network WWW page has a wealth of interesting information, including a growing amount on the Japanese Family Courts and Family Law. A must-read before marrying a Japanese citizen.
• The Wikipedia entry on Japanese Language provides a useful overview. (It says nice things about this page too.)
• For news, etc. articles using slightly simpler Japanese, the following sites are useful: Asahi's Asagaku, NHK's Kodomo Nyuusu and NTT's Kids Goo. ("Goo" is a useful general information service funded by NTT.)
• Japan Today is an online news site that allows users to post comments against stories. In may ways better than the English editions of the Japanese dailies. Also worth visiting is its Metropolis magazine page.
• A very useful page is Shinichi Suzuki's summary of Japanese numbers, counters and weights/measures.
• A collection of photographs of obscure Chinese characters.
• Also from Joseph Gourneau (see below) is a side-by-side bilingual text of the Japanese Constitution. Some browsers may find this a bit small to read clearly, so there is a larger version here.
• An interesting new site is Ideogear. They sell customized mugs, T-shirts, etc. with kanji you select on them.
• A new service from Kokken (the National Institute for Japanese Language) is their JiBOOKS which allows searches for Japanese books in print, either in the Waseda library, or in the database of the Japan Book Publishers Association (Books.or.jp). Kokken's server uses images for output of Japanese text. You can use the Books.or.jp site directly if you have Japanese support in your browser. The Waseda library can also be used directly.
• Aiko Trading specialises in Canon Wordtank and Japanese electronic dictionary related products as well as Japanese language computers.
• Ridgeback Press publishes about Japanese history (particularly the Meiji Restoration).
• For anime fans, Giuseppe Albanese has produced a Anime Checklist site, covering animated figures produced in Japan since 1917.
• A useful page (in Japanese) about Japanese search engines and related issues. A good portal for Japanese search sites.
• An interesting article, Practical Aspects of Litigating in Japan: An American Lawyer's Perspective by Joseph Gourneau provides some fascinating insights into the Japanese legal system.
• A good resource for Shogi is the site run by Pieter Stouten, which acts a portal for most things shogi related, and is the home home the European Shogi Federation.
• Kaz Okazaki has a short page of very useful links about Japan for foreigners.
• Dan Mereweather has a site which indexes Japanese University and College sites.
• The From Hanna site is an English language portal for foreign residents living in Japan, and provides information on day-to-day issues.
• The Shouka site has a database of Japanese traditional songs in shockwawe (Macromedia) format. Each song is displayed with a simple animation plus words and voice/accompaniment. You need a good link and a fast processor.
• Bruce Dailey's Japanese Slang pages are generated from a database, and are open to contributions from users.
• An interesting site is the Bell & Tree Global Chat Community server which provides a sound and image Japanese chat facility.
• An excellent collection of links can be found on Jim Becker's Japanese page.(Updated)
• An interesting new resource is the page of the Japan Center directed by Anatoly Solntsev at the Moscow State University of Linguistics. Most of the interesting material is on the Japanese and Russian pages.
• The Nippein page provides Japanese related information in Spain. (In Spanish.)
• Wladimir Carvalho has prepared a page (in Portuguese) for Brazilian people in Japan. (I can only get it work with IE.)
• Shinobi Chirlind-Byouko (real name?) has compiled a table on transliterating English words into romaji and kana. (It has errors, e.g. with "ch".)
• The JUN Japanese Gifts and Souvenirs page is an online shop of Japanese knick-knacks, and includes a lot of other useful information about Japan.
• Charles Swenson has published extensively on Japanese Philately, and has an excellent WWW site devoted to the topic.
• For financial advice in Japan, a useful site is Meyer Asset Management.
• For something different, the TokyoDV site has a lot of video clips of popular thingos around Japan. Most use QT.
• Greg Pringle's Introduction to Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese pages are a valuable resource.
• A very nice Unicode True-Type font, the Sword Kanji Font, develeoped by Jim Kurrasc, and converted to be a Unicode font by Didier Mas.
• The Tokyo Connections pages carry many links to English-language resources relating to finding jobs in Japan, as well as information for Japanese speakers looking to work overseas.
• For people who live in the USA, Curtis Hoffmann's Japan Texas site has a large state-by-state listing of Japanese businesses and stores.
• The Find Japan site has a lot of interesting comments and information about life in Japan.
• Alexander Nosovsky has a page on various Japanese games such as Go and Shogi.
• Kjeld Duits has compiled this impressive site on images and information on Japan. You need to work out his search system.
• The AsiaDragons site is an interesting combination of links and search engine covering many topics.
• Links2Go has an interesting way of providing links to a lot of Japanese-related sites.
• The CareerCross Japan site offers free bilingual recruitment and general Japan information.
• One of a growing number of Spanish language resource pages about Japan is Juan Carlos Rodriguez's Japon page.
• Mark Richards has a site with a large collection of digital images from a Japan trip.
• Another photograph collection is Nick's Days in Okayama.
• Although in Japanese only, the Inter Press Service IPSNihongo site has a lot of interesting articles on contemporary and controversial issues in Japan. The site is also linked to, and sponsored by The Asia Foundation.
• The Japan In Your Palm page has a lot of useful material and links, wih a particular Palm Pilot and Hiroshima flavour.
• A very useful table of kanji radicals, with links to indexed kanji.
• A very useful Web Colour List, with all the colours named in Japanese, with the occasional English translation.
• Based on Sugiura & Gillespie's 1993 book Traditional Japanese Culture & Modern Japan, the Key Aspects of Japan site has a wealth of information on a large number of topics.
• Michael Watson has a very useful page of online resources.
• Just picking out one of Michael's pages, I find his table of Nengou (Nengo), i.e. Japanese era names and dates very useful.
• Paul Barclay has a useful resource page on reading Japanese mainly targetted at scholars.
• The Japan Information Network is a mega website of the Japan Center for International Communications (JCIC). It provides a wealth of information on Japan (largely in English, with some Japanese).
• IS Japan Information. Inter Support Co., a Kansai-based relocation service, provides practical and cultural information and news on Kansai and Japan (in English).
• The Global Communications Platform at the International University of Japan has a lot of recent articles and debate material on contemporary issues.
• Fujisan.com - Japanese Online Superstore is an on-line store selling everything imaginable that is Japanese.
• The NewsOnJapan web site provides an impressive resource for business and Internet related news on Japan. It has daily news, archive search modules, business and academic links, newsletters, etc.
• a useful resource is the Japan Documentation Center at the (US) Library of Congress.
• A very useful WWW-based map of Japan. You can zoom down to the street level by clicking on parts of each map. All in Japanese, of course.
• For people desperate to write romaji with macrons, here are some useful links: a Garamond Macron Font developed in NZ for writing Maori, and a Jaghbub Macron Font for use with Macs. (There is also a Mac font on the Monash ftp archive.)
• An interesting set of pages on Japanese writing including video clips of printing and typewriting.
• Yuji Tai's Japan Apple Watch page, which has information and links about Apple Macs, etc. in Japan.
• Andrew Grimes' Counseling & Support in Japan page. Andrew is at the Ikebukuro Counseling Center and Hozumi Clinic.
• Kazuhide Yamamoto's really useful page on Japanese dialects. (English version here). There are more links on the Japanese page.
• A nicely categorized set of links to the English language websites of listed companies is provided by Mizuho Securities on its extensive Research and Links pages on Japanese finance, economy, politics and law.
• Sunset Radio's page allows live radio broadcasts from Japan to be heard. You need the latest version of Real Audio Player (G2).
• the Mapion Maps of Japan site, which allows you to zoom down to towns and streets (all in Japanese).
• Roger & Marilyn's Photo Tour of Tokyo contains a huge collection of recent images, combined with useful text. Good for would-be tourists.
• Luis Poza's Teaching English in Japan pages are a useful source of information, with guides to the work itself, and also on living in Japan.
• Well worth a visit is the page of the Japan Policy Research Institute (JPRI), at the New Mexico Japan Center, hosted by the University of New Mexico.
• Also found at the NMJC is Keiko Schneider's famous Bookmark collection.
• Forest Linton compiled, and Rob Murphey maintains the Japan Web Guide, which contains over 300 links of the best Web sites in Japan.
• A list of company sites provided by Maynard Hogg.
• Sarah McLellan's very professional pages include this one on Language Resources, which is worth a visit. Her Japan Etcetera pages are also worth a visit.
• An excellent set of links for resources dealing with Japanese laws and the legal system is the Japanese Law Link Page provided by Rominger Legal Services.
• Some papers by the World Bank including one that is in both English and Japanese, and thus may be of interest to students of Japanese.
• Konrad Hernblad's Japan Information Resource Center
• the NYCAS Newsletter produced by the New York Conference on Asian Studies. Lots of informative articles.
• the Japan Related Web Links page from the School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield, UK.
• and also in the UK is the Japanese Resources page Language Institute at the University of Sussex.
• the University of Washington Technical Japanese Program
• the Stanford University U.S.-Asia Technology Management Center which leads to their Guide to Japan Information Resources.
• the SunSITE Information about Japan pages. (This one even has a copy of my Ukiyo-e gallery!)
• the WWW page for the ftp.funet.fi files at /pub/culture/japan.
• Hitoshi Goto at the Dept. of Linguistics, Tohoku University, has very useful pages of Linguistics Web Sites and Humanities Web Sites in Japan.
• of great interest, and not at all confined to Japan, is the Electronic Buddhist Text Initiative page, coordinated by Charles Muller. An important starting point for a wealth of Buddhist sources. Charles has other Buddhist information sites listed on: his page
• an interesting accommodation search database for the Tokyo area is available from Venture Match Mates - Japan. Specializes in "foreign friendly" accommodation, and has a roommate referral service.
• Mieko Inaba at the University Sydney has some Interesting Links.
• Daisuke Ochiai also has a page of interesting links.

• Books
  • Reviews of books about Japan - reviews of a small selection of books about or set in Japan. (Danny Yee - Fri, 27 Oct 2006)
  • A Thousand Years of Love is a historical novel set in ancient Kyoto, Japan in the Heian Period, the same time as Murasaki Shikibu's "Tale of Genji." Links to other writing on Japan. (Avia - Sun, 23 Oct 2005)
  • Kevin Bucknall's Japan: Doing Business in a Unique Culture is an excellent resource for people doing business in Japan.
  • Bob Ridge has written an interesting book on living in Japan, which is available here.
  • An excellent resource is is Jerry Siegenthaler's list of over 2,300 books on Japanese topics, plus some of the bookshops and WWW sites dealing with them.

• Bookshops
  • For bibliophiles a good site is Asian Rare Books, which has some Japanese material and good links to other book sites.
  • Evelyn Leeper's Bookstores in Japan page, which has a huge list of stores, as well as a glossary and other useful information. (Jim - Tue, 23 May 2006)
  • Paul Lang has a useful Japanese Bookstore page, which indexes many of the books on Japanese topics available from Amazon.
  • A guide to the Bookstores in the Jimbocho and Hongo districts of Tokyo. (Jim - Fri, 28 Oct 2005)
  • The Kinokuniya chain (link below) also has a site called Bookweb which provides an online shopping service for books and magazines. The site is in Japanese, (their English overview page seems to have vanished).
  • The Kinokuniya company, which among other things operates book stores in Japan, the USA, Australia and Asia.
  • The Sasuga Bookstore which has some interesting information, including an excellent newsletter.

• Publishers, etc.
  • Floating World Editions publishes an interesting variety of books on Japan and East Asia, and are happy to receive submissions. (Ray Furse - Thu, 25 Oct 2007)

• A in J FORTUNE American-owned company, founded and based in Sapporo, Hokkaido,Japan, since 1999. Foreigners will find the Sapporo 8 and 15 day homestay programs with Japanese Language Study Progams of particular interest. In addition, Sapporo City Tour Programs are available as well. (none - Mon, 20 Mar 2006)
• The Yamasa Institute . A nonprofit Japanese immersion school located in Aichi prefecture that has a large selection of web resources. (colin - Sat, 18 Feb 2006)
• Auspeak A Sydney/Japan Friends group based in Sydney Australia which meets up every fortnight to participate in various group activities. We believe socialising is one of the most important tools for developing cultural and language skills. (John - Mon, 11 Jul 2005)
• Japanese Business Council. Not for profit organisation aiming to build networks and activate Japanese relevant business in Australia.
• Japanese Tourism Council. Not for profit organisation to promote and increase the number of Japanese inbound tourists to Australia and to maximise inbound opportunities for members.
• JaponLink is a programme that provides the opportunity to host a Japanese professional in a Spanish institution to help promote and develop the relations with Japan or the Japanese culture. (In Spanish)
• the NTT Home Page.
• the Home Page of the Japanese Prime Minister's official residence
• The home page of the EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation, which has many interesting links, and a summary of the information on many WWW and ftp sites.
• the Home Page of the German-Japanese Society Karlsruhe.
• The Tuttle Home Page, covering the activities and recent publications of that company.

• Innocent English Funny English mistakes from Japan and around the world. (Bryant Oden - Tue, 13 Sep 2005)
• Jack Herbert's Japan for the Uninvited page has slightly twisted articles about Japan and Japanese culture, from a foreign perspective.
• This site is called Japan for Dummies, but it might well be called "Dummies in Japan".
• Try the qUirKY jaPan HomEPage.
• Engrish.com and Japan Life are wicked sites which have images of mangled English in Japan.

DEAD LINKS