Now that I have two fun posts up, and I'm running out of time at the office, I need to put up that resource post I was talking about earlier.


For those of you studying Japanese on your own, or even though a class, one of the best ways to study on your own is with flashcards.
Random vocab for those learning Japanese, vocabulary flashcards are usually called 単語帳, tangochou, in Japanese.
However, in today's world, printing out or writing out your own paper flashcards can be a waste of time and paper, especially if you put a lot of effort into making them, then never use them.


If you do not want to waste the paper and time making flashcards because you aren't sure you'll use them, or if you just don't have the time to commit to making your own, let me introduce you to several sites that offer online flashcards!

Kanaflash - For those still trying to pick up the basics of kana, Kanaflash is a great Flash-based hiragana and katakana flashcard site. Just hitting the "Launch it!" button opens up a pop-up where you can choose if you want hiragana, katakana or both. You can also check off if you want just the basic characters, or if you'd like those with diacritical marks and compounds (small ya/yu/yo) added in as well. While it doesn't teach how to write, it's great for remembering which character is which.

Chez Schei Flashcards - While I cannot get the main site to load, Chez Schei offers a very simple browser-based flashcard program. However, it seems to be more for vocab and remembering proverbs than really learning kana or kanji. Users can set what cards they'd like to study, and choose Japanese-to-English or English-to-Japanese flashcards. Users can also choose "Auto-pilot", which automatically loads the answer after a few seconds, rather than pushing the "answer" button.

Easy Japanese.org - The website easyjapanese.org offers a flash-based kanji flashcard page. The cards list the kanji, the different readings, how many strokes, the grade level, the radical and meaning. Next to the meaning, there is a little green checkmark that you can click on to change to a red "X", which puts the cards into "test mode". Test mode blanks out the meaning, so you can quiz yourself on what each kanji means. You check your answers by pressing the mark two more times to see the English translation.
While the mark is a red "X", you can click a third time to turn it into a gray stop watch. This is called "test mode with instant verification" and grants you several seconds to guess the English meaning before the answer is shown to you. Personally, I'd use this one plus Kanaflash to practice my own kanji.

Anki - Anki is not a web-based flashcard program, but actually one that is downloaded onto your computer. It is a fully-customizable program. You can use it to study just about anything you want, be it kana, kanji, or even a language that is not Japanese! I personally have used this to study for my Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), as it comes with a pre-loaded set of flashcards for the kanji portion of the 2nd level of the JLPT. As you go through the cards you choose how difficult it was for you to recall the meaning or Japanese translation of each card. The easier the card was for you, the longer it will be before that card comes up again. The harder the card was, the more often the card pops up. You can chose if you want Japanese-to-English or English-to-Japanese, and you can even create your own flashcard decks. If you want to study kana and kanji and vocab, this is the best flashcard program to use, in my advice. I need to redownload this onto my new harddrive so I can study for my 1st level JLPT that I have this winter.


Lastly, I would like to introduce possibly the internet's best kanji dictionary.
Jim Breen's WWWJDIC - This has been my one constant resource since I first started Japanese back in high school. This dictionary looks up just about ANYTHING. Kanji, English-to-Japanese, Japanese-to-English, Japanese-to-seven other languages, jargon for different fields, etc. It even has a kanji look up by radical, which is what I use the most. You just check off the box for each of the different parts of the kanji you want to look up, hit "find" and it finds all the kanji that contain those radicals. Want to know what 語 is? Check the boxes for 言, 五, and 口, press "find" and there you go! Gives you all the readings (both Chinese and Japanese), as well as the English pronunciation!
Seriously, the best online dictionary I know of.



And while I would much rather like to list some more, I need to move on out for my next class for today.
I'll try to get a blog up sometime in the next two weeks, but if not, I guarantee a post on the 20th at some point, since that's when the office has me scheduled to blog next.

Until next time!

Well our move it finally well over. We still have a few more things we need to pick up for the new apartment, mainly bookcases and bins to put all the junk we have. How in the world we managed to store all this stuff in my tiny 1-bedroom for two years is beyond me. We have literally three times the amount of space of my old apartment, but nowhere to put anything. I guess we were so used to just stuffing things in boxes in the upper part of my closet to really notice how much stuff we have.

This weekend the NTT guys come to see if we can install fiber optic or not. I can't wait for Saturday to come. I just home the day they want to come and actually install it, myself or my husband will be home. I have a majorly busy schedule next month, so who knows.



I would review a Japanese site today, but am still looking for a good next page to review. I need to start a running list of all the sites out there so I can keep better track. Big sites I'd like to review are definitely JapanesePod101 and About.com's Japanese pages, but I want to get my feet wet with more smaller sites first.



In other words, expect a review sometime next week. Most likely sometime on Tuesday. I'm going to spend the rest of my "blogging hour" searching for a list of websites to review.


I will leave you with one promotional thing. If you are serious about studying Japanese, and are in the market for a good kanji dictionary, I completely and totally suggest The Kanji Dictionary. It's a $70 dictionary that is unique in that you can search for a kanji combination (i.e. kanji that comprises of two or more kanji) by ANY kanji in the word. Most make you search by only the first kanji, but if you're not sure on the radical can be difficult. My friends got me this for my 17th birthday and I have now taken it to Japan three times and used it constantly in my college studies. It also has many useful appendices in the back, such as a conversion chart for Japanese calendar years, diagrams of Japanese school and political systems, and many maps of the country.
For those not willing to plunk down $70 on a dictionary, they make a smaller Learner's Dictionary version, usually for $25. My university's Japanese department had several of these for student use. While they don't have as much as the $70 version (they lack a lot of older, rarely-seen kanji), they are still just as useful and as easy to use.

I still prefer to use my big, fat, heavy, can-bash-someone's-head-in $70 dictionary to look up kanji combinations than my designed-for-Japanese-people electronic dictionary. So much easier to use, in my opinion. I wouldn't trade this dictionary in for the world. My first year here in Gifu I thought I lost it, and it heartbroke me, until I went home and found it in a box of stuff I moved out of my old room at college when I graduated. It promptly went back into my suitcase back to Japan.



As I think of more books and dictionaries that I think are useful in studying Japanese, I'll be sure to post links. If I had access to more Japanese textbooks other than the one I used in college and the one I use to teach my husband, I'd also do textbook reviews.