Japanese

Here’s some useful resources and tools for studying Japanese. Please note: Most of these resources work fine for beginners. However please keep in mind I’m an intermediate learner, and these are sources that I personally find useful. Basic kana and kanji knowledge is needed in most cases.


Websites
Lang-8
Community type website where people can practice and exchange languages and help eachother out.

smart.fm
An excellent website with a great system for learning vocabulary and even kanji. You can create your own lists or you can study lists already in the database.

The Japanese Page
Has a lot of very useful tools, information, fora and more, all about Japanese.

The Japanese speaking community & Correct Japanese @ LJ
If you’ve got a Livejournal, these are two excellent communities to keep on your friends list. You can ask questions about the Japanese language and can have your Japanese corrected. Even just observing the posts is very useful to improve your Japanese.

All Japanese All The Time
I don’t believe what this guy is doing is suitable for most people. However, he’s writting some quite interesting stuff, it’s worth reading.

List of Japanese conjunctions
Very useful list of Japanese conjunctions. There’s one on Wikipedia too.

Webtools
Rikaichan
Great webtool for Firefox. Hover over words to see the translation and hiragana/katakana of the kanji.

Furigana Injector
Firefox tool. Adds furigana to kanji. Doesn’t always look pretty, but is reasonably useful. Personally I don’t use it often though, I usually go with just Rikaichan.

Dictionaries
Kanji sonomama DS Rakuhiku Jiten
If you’ve got a Nintendo DS, get this. Best low-budget, easy-to-use ‘electronic dictionary’ out there. Not as good as the expensive Casio dictionaries for example, but it does a very good job just being a dictionary. It uses the touch screen of your DS to insert kanji and kana words, and it can recognise kanji easily even when your kanji is barely recognisable and sometimes even when the stroke order is wrong.

Langenscheidt Pocket Dictionary J-E/E-J
Not the best dictionary out there, but good enough, cheap, light-weight and easy to use.

Casio XD-GP9700
If you’re getting more advanced at Japanese, got some money to spend and are looking for an electronic dictionary, I can highly recommend this one. Currently it’s the best electronic dictionary out there and although it’s expensive you get great value for money. It’s got a lot of dictionaries, from the Kenkyusha to the Oxford Learner’s dictionary to a katakana dictionary and I can go on and on. It’s got handwritten kanji input, a back-lit screen and a jump function, amongst many other functions. And best of all, it can recite Shakespeare! Okay, don’t choose a dictionary based on that. But hey, it is kinda cool!

Online dictionaries
WWWJDIC
Jim Breen’s online Japanese dictionary.

Learning tools
Zaidan Houjin Nippon Kanji Nouryoku Kentei Kyoukai Kounin: KanKen DS
This is an amazing game for the Nintendo DS. It lets you practice all aspects of kanji (reading, writing, stroke order, etc.). Best of all, you learn the kanji in the order Japanese kids learn them. Japanese knowlegde is required for using this, so I recommend this mostly for students at intermediate level or up, who want to practice their kanji.

Anki
Not my first choice for studying. Making decks is a little annoying, and the self-judging system isn’t very good imho. It’s a nice tool, but I’d probably recommend smart.fm over this.

Books
Minna no nihongo
I learned my basic Japanese with these books. I do think this method works better in combination with actual classroom lessons…