Jim's Home Page

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

• 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)
• 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.

• 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)
• How to set up Japanese input under X-Windows on Mac OS X. (Bryn Davies - Tue, 20 Jun 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.
• Strongly recommended for Linux users is Scott Robbins' Inputting Japanese text page. Scott also has a page of general information including a lot of Linux tips.
• 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.
• Andrew Shuttleworth's Pocket PC Japan page and mailing list has news and views on Pocket PC and Japanese-oriented software. Andrew is a former president of the Tokyo PC Users Group.
• 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.
• A useful starting point for PC/Windows users is Fabian van-de-l'Isle's Japanisation FAQ for computers running Western Windows. There is now a Monash Mirror available.
• 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.

• 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)
• rikaichan is a (much) improved version of the rikaixul Firefox extension. As such it displays in a pop-up the meaning of the Japanese word under the mouse pointer. (Vincent ISAMBART - Fri, 21 Apr 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.

• 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.

• 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 new pages is Charles Eicher's Japanese Dictionaries set. He has useful descriptions and examples from the main Japanese dictionaries. (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

• Furiganzer 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
  • 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)
  • Professional language translation and interpreting services Prestige Network is a UK company specializing in translation and interpreting 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.

• 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)
• Okara Cookie introduces Japanese Okara cookies (a popular diet food of Japan). (OKARA COOKIE - Wed, 15 Nov 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 publ