Not even a week has gone by since my last post, and here you guys get another!

Today, despite the rainy, dreary weather, I'm going to review what looks like it has the potential to be a very good site to learn kanji from.


Kanji-A-Day.com is just what it says it is, a different kanji is featured every day for learners. While some other places will have a word-of-the-day or a kanji-of-the-day, they are usually just a random word picked out of a dictionary, with no concern for the learner's level. I, myself, have a gadget on my iGoogle homepage that is a Japanese word-a-day thing. Today happens to be a word/kanji I did not know previously, but other days it will have words I learned 10 years ago when I first started Japanese. There's no way to customize it to different levels of study, which would make it a truly awesome feature.


Kanji-A-Day.com, on the other hand, does allow for customization, to a point. Visitors to the site can choose whether they want to see the kanji-of-the-day for any of the four levels of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. This is great because then beginners don't get bombarded with kanji way out of the league, and more proficient users don't have to deal with the same kanji they've known for years. By creating a login for the site, you can even make the site more personalized, and you can store your own vocab/kanji lists for further study later.


Okay, more in depth on this site, what does it offer besides kanji-a-day?

Well, for starters, there's a handy-dandy Japanese-English/English-Japanese dictionary lookup right at the top of the site. It takes romaji or kana for the Japanese lookup, which makes it more useful than using a translate site like Google Translate or Babelfish.

Now, for the actual kanji-a-day part, it not only gives you the kanji and English translation, but also the kunyomi and onyomi readings. Underneath all of the readings and definitions, most kanji (sadly not all) have an animated GIF showing the stroke order of the kanji, followed by a step-by-step diagram of the strokes. The thing I like about this GIF and stroke order diagram is not only do they know the order of strokes, but also the beginning of each stroke is orange so you know where each line starts! I don't think I've ever seen that anywhere before. Books and charts will usually have an arrow showing the direction of the strokes, or nothing at all as you learn the basic rules for stroke order. For those with no real knowledge of stroke order, this is pretty useful. Following stroke order makes you characters look so much better.

Under the diagrams gives you a button to add the kanji to your study list, if you happened to be logged in, then offers several useful combinations. The cool thing about these combinations is, every time I flip through the different levels, the combinations change! Occasionally there's even a "more" link at the bottom right so you can see more combinations. And just like with the kanji itself, there are checkboxes next to each combination so you can add them to a vocab list if you so please.


Another nifty thing the site offers is a kanji-a-day e-mail, once again tailored to the four levels of the JLPT. There's also a vocab-a-day if you want to learn regular vocab as well. Both of these are offered as "trials", which seem to be a month or so of free e-mails. If you'd like to continue, you have to sign up and pay for "premium" which offers not only the daily e-mails, but also quizzes and other study resources to help you study at your own pace, at your own level. The "premium" program costs only $9.99 and it seems they customizable with the kanji/vocab lists you make on the site, ad-free, and are unlimited. They're also working on adding in customizable feeds and a kanji-by-radical dictionary. Not bad for only $10 a year. That's less than a dollar a month, which is affordable for just about anyone.
If you like your XML Feeds, they also offer daily feeds for each of the four levels. You can get your kanji fix just about anywhere with this site!

For true beginners, the site also recommends two workbooks for learning hiragana and katakana, as well as a kanji-a-day practice calendar-pad-thing, which actually looks quite intriguing. There are also pages with hiragana and katakana charts that contain very brief introduction to both scripts. But, as it is a page concentrating on kanji, there isn't much other than that.

Another interesting thing the site offers is a list of the 100 most use kanji on the Internet! Each one is a clickable link to a dictionary page that offers readings, stroke order diagrams, and combinations. It's actually a cool feature I haven't seen before, and is probably very useful to people who browse Japanese websites and blogs regularly.

The site also offers a decent list of textbooks and workbooks to help you learn hiragana, katakana and kanji on your own. The lists consists of books and study materials that appeal to all different types of learners, which is great. You can choose a book that fits to your study style.

Under the textbook link is a very useful link to information about the JLPT. It outlines the point breakdown of the test, and gives a useful like to applying for the test in the US. There's also links to kanji and vocab lists for all four levels, which is really helpful. From the lists you can even add in kanji and vocab to your personalized lists, if you stumble upon some kanji you didn't know.


Oh wow, I know this is late, but I just totally noticed the kanji dictionary field on the upper right corner of the site! You can look up kanji by either the English, reading, copy-pasting the kanji itself, or even the stroke count! That's actually kind of nifty. There aren't many sites that allow kanji lookup by just stroke count.




Overall, I have to say this is the best site I've found yet. It's simple, easy-to-use, and offers a lot of different features. Reading back through my review, I don't think I found a single thing wrong, but then again I haven't browsed through all of the kanji to check for mistakes. I think this site could be very useful to anyone looking for a supplement to their kanji learning, or even looking for a place to start learning kanji on their own.
I think this in combination with the Anki flashcard program I talked about a few posts ago would definitely prepare anyone for the writing-vocabulary and reading sections of the JLPT.
If I had to rate on a scale of 1-10, I'd say a solid 8, possibly a 9 considering how well organized and how easy-to-use the site on a whole is. One day I'll have to create a login and check out how well the personalized kanji/vocab lists work, and check out their forums. This site could very well be a 10 if there aren't too many bugs.

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!