I know it's a few months early, but I'm going to get one of my New Year's resolutions out into the open now:

Never promise to have an update later in the week ever again.

Seems like every time I promise to update this later in the week or within the next week, it ends up being months. A strange, twisted amendment to Murphy's Law? Who knows. Perhaps if I stop promising, I'll actually end up posting regularly. We can only hope.


Today I'll be reviewing a site that has been sitting in my e-mail inbox for a few weeks now, theJapaneseTutor.com. The main author of the site e-mailed me requesting a review, so here we go!

Note: Supposedly you need Microsoft Silverlight to be able to access several functions of the site (I'm guessing the flashcards and quizzes). I believe Silverlight is already pre-loaded into both Windows Vista and Windows 7. I did not need to install it on my RC version of Win7 even with using Firefox to view the site.

Double note: I'm not sure if the site is completely up and running yet. It seems they are still in the works with getting everything up and running, so there may be areas that aren't as filled in as they could be.

Right off the bat, I love the front page. It's simple, centered, no scrolling required to see everything. There's a random phrase of the day-like thing with English, romaji, kana and kanji, plus a sound bite and a link to another random phrase. Very good way to get learners intrigued into what else the site has to offer. There's also a brief introduction to the site with links to get starting learning the language or the culture, as well as a brief highlight of a part of the site. Currently it's katakana on my screen, but on click of the "Home" link on the top navbar and it changes the background picture, random phrase and the highlight to another part of the site.
Speaking of the navbar, I like it's set up a lot. It's divided into "Home", "Language", "Culture", "Community" and "About" with all but "Home" and "Community" having drop-down menus that let the user pick the sub-section they want right from the start.

Let's start with the "Language" section, shall we?

Clicking on the navbar takes you to a start page for each section. This start page lists the same sub-sections as the drop-down menus on the navbar does, but also offers brief introductions to what each section is. My favorite part on the "Language" start page? Getting Started section! Every site needs a easy-to-find getting started section. Every site that doesn't, or makes it impossible to find, loses major points in my book.

The main thing I love about this site is how clean it is. There are ads, but they're well placed and don't intrude on the site. There's never too much going on for one page, so there's never any sensory overload while browsing. Subsections are further divided up into smaller sections, with a link menu carefully places on the left-hand side. theJapaneseTutor.com uses their "Getting Started" page as a way to further introduce what their site is all about. There's a nice overview about Japanese and suggestions for what to do on the site depending on what type of learner you are (casual, passionate, one-stop resource).
My only complaint about this section, is that none of the suggestions for the different learners offer direct links to suggested areas of the site. I would suggest adding at least one in-text link for at least one suggested area of the site for each type of learner listed. For the Casual Learner, I'd make a link to definitely the cultural articles, and maybe one to the vocabulary page. Passionate Learner, maybe link to the grammar section. The One-Stop Resource Learner would love a link directly to the kanji section!
One further note on the Getting Started page, the greeting on the top of the page is misspelled. It should be いらっしゃいませ (irasshaimase) not いらしゃませ (irashaimase). Also, ようこそ (youkoso) would be a better translation for "welcome". Irasshaimase is used mainly in stores as a way of saying "Welcome! How may I help you?" to customers. It is common to mix the usage of these up as if you look either up in a dictionary they both come up with "welcome" as their English translation.

Moving on to the hiragana and katakana pages, things are looking good.
There's a top menu on both with "Introduction", "List", Flashcards", "Quiz" and "Resource" links. Katakana also has a "Special Notes" page link. Both pages have the same subsections: an overview, basic chart, extended chart, usage and conclusion. The overview gives a bit on the history/usage of each script, which is a good start for the page. It lets the learner know what's going on before they even start. The basic chart for both appear directly under this introductory overview, making it very easy to get into the swing of learning. You don't have to go to a separate page just to get started; it's right there in front of you. You can even click on the individual characters and hear the pronunciation! Now if only it showed you the stroke order, the page would be perfect!
Under both charts there are several key points to writing both charts, things like small つ (tsu), particles, and special characters used in katakana but not hiragana. While this is really useful, there is one mistake on the katakana page. "Taxi" is written on the page as タクシイー (takushiii) when in actually it should be タクシー (takushii). Using the extender bar, ちょうおんふ (chouonfu), means you don't need the extra イ that the author put after the シ.
At the bottom of each page is a link to the next subsection, the extended sets. Both extended sets feature the characters that have diacritical marks as well as combined sounds. The hiragana extended chart is listed (and once again clickable), the katakana chart is not. I feel a katakana extended chart should be available on the page, especially to help learners comprehend the special combinations (wi, we, wu, wo, fa, fi, fe, fo, va, vi, vu, ve, vo, etc) a bit more than the written explanation on the "Special Notes" page offers. Instead, you have to access the extended chart by clicking the "List" menu option on the horizontal menu at the top of the page.
Also, both the hiragana and katakana extended set pages say that combined characters follow an easy pronunciation pattern with the exception of those made with し "shi" and じ "ji". I personally think those made with ち "chi" should be included as "exceptions" if you're going to say there are pronunciation exceptions.

The "Usage" page for both offer some good notes on how to use each set of characters, as well as a small foray into grammar (i.e. introduction particles and sentence structure a bit). These are very, very simple explanation, but I believe good for a novice learner just trying to get a start. Hopefully the grammar sections offer more in depth explanations.
One problem with the example sentence on the katakana usage page: the verb used (つぶす "tsubusu") means "to crush" or "to squash", not "to break". The correct verb should be こわれる "kowareru", the intransitive verb "break". Because of this, the sentence should read タイヘンだ！メリーのミルクのガラスがこわれました！(Taihen da! Merii no miruku no garasu ga kowaremashita!). Since こわれる is an intransitive verb, the particle が "ga", not は "wa", is more common. However, は "wa" is also usable depending on the context.

The katakana also gives more hints as to usage with foreign words and names, mainly how to form f-sounds, w-sounds and v-sounds. This is a pretty useful page, but having a chart of all the extra combinations would be nice. Also, there are slight mistakes with the katakana for "Wii" and "wink". Nintendo's official pronunciation for "Wii" is ウィー not ウィイ. The page also has "wink" as ウインク (uinku) even though the explanation directly above it says the イ should be small. This is most likely a typing error, and should actually be ウィンク.

Now the awesome part of both the hiragana and katakana pages are the Silverlight-based flashcards and quizzes. These are GREAT study resources. Both offer several options to customize the flashcards and quizzes to what suits your level of learning. For both the flashcards and the quizzes, you can choose what you want on each side of the card (usually audio, romaji or kana), if you want just hiragana, katakana or both, and if you want to include the extended sets. Both the ease of use and the customization possible makes both of these great ways to study if you have some extra free time on the net.

Moving on to the Kanji page, there's a lot more information to take in. The top menu is the same as that for katakana, and there is a side menu for each of the different subsections. One main difference between this and the kana pages is that all the information is on one page. All the explanations about On readings and the Kun readings, as well the difference between the Japanese Language Proficiency Test and "daily use" kanji lists, are on the same page, one after the other. While this may seem daunting, do not worry. The side menu takes you to each section of explanation separately so you don't have to scroll through the whole page if you don't want to. The "Special Notes" page gives more in depth explanation for the different readings, which I find to be a very good set of explanations. It's still a bit basic, but it's better than just saying "On is the Chinese pronunciation and Kun is the Japanese" like many resources tend to do.
The "List" page has lists of not only the "daily use" kanji separated by grade level, but also lists for all four levels of the JLPT. Once again, another great resource! Both sets of lists have the kanji, stroke count, English meaning, On reading and Kun readings. The readings are written in both kana and in romaji for easy learning. All the lists are pretty long, but it's a good set up to start with. Only thing I would probably find to be a neat addition would be if they allowed the learning to organize the kanji list by stroke order if they so wanted, though that would probably be pretty difficult to code into the site.
Flashcards and quizzes work much like the ones for kana, giving you options of what you want on both sides of the card (or on the quiz) and what lists you want to use. I approve!
The resource section for the kana and kanji pages list suggested books, which for some reason fail to show up on Firefox, but show up on IE just fine. They also all list some suggested websites for more information if you're still craving for more.

Once you get through briefing yourself on kana and kanji, you can move on to the vocabularly lists provided on the drop-down menu. There are nine lists of nouns ranging from animals to food, to time and weather. There is also a list of simple verbs and another of adjectives. All the lists are set up similarly: English, Romaji, Kana, Kanji, sound clip. Several words list the rarely-used kanji, which is nice because it's hard to pick them up as they aren't seen in writing as much anymore. Good way to impress people in Japan is to use kanji that no one uses anymore! For the most part, the vocabulary is very useful and contains many words that are used on a daily basis. There are a few where there's only one English meaning listed, but there are other uses for the same word/kanji, so be careful. If you go into this site knowing that one particular word can be used in several different contexts to mean several different things, you're fine. Usually the different meanings are similar, so you should be able to figure it out on your own later as your studying progresses. The one good thing about only having one meaning listed is it makes the flashcard and quiz functions less confusing. You don't have to guess which meaning the card or quiz wants as the answer.

Last subsection of the Language menu is Grammar. These currently are mainly in romaji, and are super-simplified in their explanations. They also commonly mistakenly list particles (like は wa, が ga, and を wo) as prepositions. Prepositions are things like above, under, next to. Don't get confused! Overall, the grammar offers good explanations, though simple. For true beginners, this may be a good way to start, but possibly slightly confusing. The sentence structure section is one of those that kind of makes sense, but kind of doesn't. There's too much in one section, and I would suggest possibly shortening it into smaller subsections to further explain how subjects and objects are used in Japanese grammar.
Overall, the grammar sections seem to be very well done. There are a few mistakes or things left out (like I saw 3000 written as sansen and 688 as roku-hyaku hachi-juu hachi. The bolded areas are wrong. 3000 should be sanzen and 688 should be roppyaku hachi-juu hachi and the explanation for why several numbers change sounds was mainly left out). The pages on particles give pretty easy to understand explanations, and there is pretty fair amount of detailed explanation for the particle に ni. There are also fairly good brief introductions to basic counters and the types of verbs in Japanese. Even the verb conjugation sections are well-thought out, putting each type of verb on it's own page. Currently the verb conjugation only has polite present and past tenses, but I'm sure it will fill out to include all verb conjugation in the future. The adjective section splits the adjectives into common -i and -na adjectives, which is common for most textbooks. They even point out that the colors that don't end as -i take の no instead of な na to become adjectives.
The section about "treating adjectives as verbs" maybe be a bit confusing, however. In Japanese, adjectives are often conjugated into past or negative tenses, and not the final です desu. This site refers to this as "treating adjectives as verbs" when many textbooks will refer to it as "adjective conjugation". Either way, same process. They use this section to teach not only how to conjugate -i adjectives, but also how to conjugation the copula, です desu, for use with -na adjectives. Picking up how to conjugate the copula here is nice, but I kind of wish I had seen the explanation for the copula on it's own as well.

Right now the grammar section seems a bit sparse, but if once there are more in depth explanations, I'm sure it'll be a decent resource to check your understand of how Japanese grammar works. I just hope that eventually there will be sections for intermediate and advanced grammar as well!


If you need a break from language learning, the site also offers information on several cultural topics. These are broken into categories of food, places, activities and customs. Within each of these are introductions to several well-known areas of Japanese culture. Give these a read-through if you have the chance. You may find out something you didn't know! I totally recommend the one about geisha. If we're lucky, this section will expand to hold information about areas of Japanese culture that aren't as well known to the Western world, as well as expanding on areas that are prone to misconceptions around the world.

While the site is still just starting, it's looking promising. Clicking on the Community menu will take you to the start page of their forums, which seem to not have opened for public use yet. It looks like once the forums are up and running, they will be quite useful resources as they are carefully planned out and organized to be used in conjunction with each section of the website.


Overall, I like where this site is headed. I like the ease which one can use the quizzes and flashcards, and I like how simply designed the site is. It's not cluttered with too much information on one page, and there aren't advertisements everywhere. It's a nice, simple resource that shows a lot of promise. Hopefully once the site is fully up and has more to offer, I'll be able to review it again to see how it's progress has come along!

Hello out there!
It's Thursday and here I am with another blog, just like I said I would!
Amazing, isn't it?


Anyway, as I'm between classes today, I don't have that much time to write any long, detailed reviews of intensive learning websites. So instead, I'm going to offer up a website that's geared more towards intermediate and advanced learners of Japanese, but can also be utilized by beginners just starting out who want more practice.


The site is Lang-8, an international blogging community. What makes it different from sites like Blogger, LiveJournal, or even Facebook and Myspace is that you write your journals/blogs in the language you are studying, and native speakers of that language will graciously correct any mistakes you have, and will usually provide feedback as to why they corrected why they did. As gratitude, you yourself find blogs written in your own native language and correct those. By doing so you not only improve your language skills by putting it into contextual use, you also assist others from around the world in learning your own language. Talk about give-and-receive!

There's also a variety of forum boards. These forum boards are in the form of groups, much like those on Facebook or Myspace. You join in a group for the language you're studying or something you have interest in, and there's a group discussion board where you can talk to others outside of the normal blogging corrections.
The site in general seems to really emphasize communication between native speakers and learners of each language.

If you create a profile, there's a widget-looking thing that matches you with other users who are either native speakers of the language you are studying, or students of your native language. This makes it easy to find blogs to correct without having to dig around the site very much. There's also a section that shows recently posted blogs in your native language that would like corrections made, which once again makes it so you don't have to dig around much.

A neat feature for the corrections is the implementation of "thanks points" and "nice correction points". "Thanks points" are points that the original writer of the blog gives to each correction suggestion made in the comments. If it's a good correction, the more "thanks points" (up to five) the writer may give. If the correction isn't helpful or is wrong, the writer doesn't have to give any points. "Nice correction points" are points other correction givers give out to other corrections they see. Read a blog and found a correction comment similar to the one you were going to give it? Hit the "thumbs up" button to show the blog writer that this correction is dittoed! Both points also have their own rankings, so you can see who gives out the most thanks and has the best corrections for what ever language you're studying. There's also a "native nod" point, which I guess is a point that native speakers can give you to as a sign that your grammar and word usage is native-level or getting there. Sadly, the help section doesn't have an explanation for that type of point.

Overall, I think this site is a great tool for those who want their writing to become more native-like. It won't help you very much with conversing face-to-face, but it'll help you get written grammar, which is almost always more formal, down pretty good. Beginners and advanced students alike can put this site to good use if they are truly motivated to learn the language.

It's free, so why not give it a shot?
I'm writing my first entry there as soon as I post this. You can find me here.

Look at this!
Last week I said I would write another blog on either Thursday or Friday, and here I am writing one! Wow! Maybe I'm back into the swing of things.
We'll see how long this lasts.


Hubby has been messing around with the computer a bit, and I recently got a good deal on a digital SLR, so I have yet to really mess around with more pictures to put on deviantArt other than some test shots from my new camera. I really need to go through pictures to put up there. Maybe this weekend. Maybe not.


Anyway, back to the point of this particular post. Let's get cracking on a new Japanese learning webpage!




Today, I'll be reviewing Study Japanese.org. First impressions upon opening the main page is: Hey, this looks nice!
The front page is set up quite nicely without being too cluttered or too empty. Big image links to a flashcard review section, a forum and online lessons, as well as a "New here? Start here!" link for first time visitors. There's also handy lists right up front about new articles and latest forum posts. Currently in the center of the page there is an image link to an article about Tanabata, the star festival, that occurs at the beginning of July. I'm guessing this image link changes with the months or season to introduce and explain various seasonally festivals and cultural events.
There are a few advertisements for various books and resources on the right side of the screen, but they aren't intrusive like other sites have been. Overall, a very nicely set up front page.

I also just noticed the dictionary and kanji dictionary lookups that are above the advertisements. That's always a good feature to have. And it seems they appear on all pages so you don't have to constantly search and hit back to find them.

Clicking on their newbie link, Quickstart, gets you sent to a page with links on how to register to use the forums, how to get Japanese text support on your computer, where to begin in lessons, and the flashcard trainer thing. It also looks like the flashcards will remember your results if you register, which is a pretty good thing if you can't download the Anki flashcard program, which I talked about back in April. There's also a small intro letter from one of the creators of the site, encouraging users to have fun while learning at their own pace, and it mentions that if you register, you can even add in your own flashcards. This site is looking better and better.

The Japanese character support page is actually very helpful, giving instructions and links out to Japanese text support sites for just about every operating system, including a few different flavors of Linux. Usually, you're lucky if you get links to anything other than Windows.

Now, getting into the bowels of the site, let's take a gander at their first lesson, Greetings.
I must say, I really like how they have these lesson pages set up, especially if they are all set up like this. Right at the top you get a list of key topics, i.e. the goals of what you should be able to do/say when you've finished reading the lesson. They even split it into "content" and "grammar" so you know exactly what you'll be learning.
Next, they bring in a small sample dialogue that follows a brief introduction to the topic. I like the set up for this dialogue because it offers it in hiragana first, then romaji for pronunciation if you can't read the hiragana, then English translation. All three of those are then followed by a sound file of the dialogue being read out, which is great for both listening practice and trying to get your pronunciations down fluently. Even the vocabulary list under than has a sound file that reads out each word in the list at both native speed and slowed down so learners can practice saying them aloud and matching the pronunciation and intonations. There's also some brief usage notes for several of the vocab words, which are concise but easy to understand.
If all the dialogues in this particular lesson are set up like this, I don't think I will have a single complaint unless I find something blatantly wrong!


Continuing down the page, the second dialogue is set up in the same way, and give several explanations to translation issues and grammar usage in a very personal manner. Seriously, the word usage in the English explanations make it very comfortable to read. Nothing feels like it's dumbed down; nothing feels like the writers are trying to discourage you by talking over your head. It's like having a friend who knows you well explain it in a manner they think you'll understand. I like that.

Lastly, there is a small exercise on the bottom of the page to practice the grammar and vocab learned in the lesson. Very simple multiple-choice questions, but my one complaint is that the answers are right there. They don't even try to hide them further down the page, so it's very easy to sneak and peek and cheat if you're not completely motivated.
Before the lesson completely wraps up, there are some brief, but very important cultural notes about the handling of business cards. I completely recommend this small little second for anyone who will ever do any sort of business transaction with a Japanese company. Business cards are serious business in Japan. Seriously. Business cards are more serious business than the Internet could ever be. You should see the stack of business cards my job gave to me. Sadly, I don't go anywhere except for class and the office, so I never meet anyone to give them to. Mostly, my students want them.

I forgot to mention that after every dialogue there is a link to the corresponding flashcard drill, which if you ask me is absolutely awesome. I don't think I've ever seen a site yet that has had that. This site must have several major servers running to be able to offer flashcard drills for each dialogue/lesson, and customizable ones.

Lesson two, regarding the particle は "wa", is kind of disappointing, mainly for the fact that they do not include any of the sound files as they did with the first lesson. Still, it's a very well set-up lesson. I was at first hesitant as they translate は as "is" in the big image banner on top, but they explain it much better further down on the page, and introduce many grammar structures that build off of the simple "[topic]は[noun/adjective]です" grammar pattern.
However, they once again put the answers to the exercises directly under the questions. As a teacher, I find this to basically negate the reason for having the exercises in the first place. At least have them in white text or something so the learn has to actually use their brain for a while before they check to see what the answers are!
A neat thing this particular lesson offers is a downloadable crossword puzzle for the vocabulary learned in the first two lessons, with the answers in a separate file! There are also plenty of links to on-site references for those who need a bit more in-depth explanation of the grammar presented in the lesson.

Overall, after skimming a few more lessons, the site is put together very well and very professionally. While it does seem they pull some of their example dialogues straight from textbooks, they usually include an image of what textbook it came from so learners can reference that book if they would so like.


Skimming over the flashcard section, which how they have it set up is still a neat thing to me, I noticed that they have free flashcards for many of the most often used Japanese textbooks! That is actually really useful, because it means this site is an excellent resource for those learning Japanese at school and need extra study materials at home. They can use the flashcard program to supplement their own learning, which is always helpful. The flashcards on kanji radicals is also a neat thing to have, and I don't believe I've ever seen kanji radical flashcards anywhere. Most flashcard sites that offer kanji cards usually don't offer cards to learn the different radicals. Learning radicals is probably one of the most useful things you can pick up once you get further into the language *HINT HINT HINT* and these flashcards are awesome for it as they even tell you the pronunciation of the radical itself. I've had a hard time learning what the individual radicals themselves are called, so this is definitely going in my bookmark list back home.


On every single lesson page there is a link to the site's grammar reference page. The thing I love the best about this is it has everything grouped together in a way that one can easily go from one topic to another very smoothly. You don't have to jump around the page looking for related topics. Also, everyone should look at their word order page just for the top image. This is EXACTLY how my college Japanese teacher would explain word order. Then again, she was a 60+ year old, tiny Japanese lady with a life-size Yoda poster on the back of her office door. She also once taught a class explaining the connections Star Wars has with Japanese culture. Sadly, she taught that before I entered into the school, and despite petitions from practically every student in the Japanese department, I don't believe she ever taught the class again before she retired last year. But you could really get her to take up class time sometimes if you told her you didn't think Star Wars was at all related to Japanese culture.

The article page is a collection of links to other resources that don't really fit anywhere else, such as Japanese holidays, games, idioms, and slang. While not as useful as the rest of the site, there are some interesting things on there that may catch your fancy. I best most of you would be interested in the 200 slang expressions, though most are not what I would consider "slang", but rather "casual" Japanese. There's also a page with kanji for tattoos, but I would strongly suggest not getting a kanji tattoo until you at least pass the third or second level of the Japanese Language proficiency test just so you know the tattoo artist isn't screwing up the characters. There's also a useful article on 4-character idioms, which Japan has tons of. I actually need to study up on these, because they are a popular subject on the quiz shows I watch on TV. There are also links to suggested textbooks and dictionaries, including a downloadable kanji dictionary that actually would be pretty useful for intermediate and advanced learners who run into kanji every other word.

Overall, I think this is a WONDERFUL site. I will definitely have to register and try out the forums and chat to see if there's anything useful in there, since you can't even preview them without logging in.

If I had to give this a score out of 10, I'd say a 8, possibly a 9 depending on what the forums and chat turn out to be. The only thing bringing the score down are the few English typographical mistakes I've found. They fix those, and this might be the first page to get a 10!



As much as I'd like to write more, I must leave you all for class. I'll try to get in a post either Tuesday or Thursday next week, but no guarantees. It's a pretty busy week!

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.

It's been about a week and a half since my last massive posting spree, so I guess I owe you guys a post!

Since none of my three posts on the third were reviews of websites, I think it's about time I got back to the reviews!


Today I want to talk about easyjapanese.org, a site I mentioned last post for its kanji flashcards.
It's a very simply set -up website, but some helpful resources. Once you get past the occasional English spelling mistakes and Japanese mistakes.

The thing that appeals to me about this site right off the bat is the fact that the Writing page offers a concise explanation of the development of hiragana and katakana. I don't think any of the other pages I've reviewed so far have had this. From here you can choose to see either a simple explanation/chart of either hiragana or katakana, and from that chart see a "full" chart. I put "full" in quotations as the chart isn't completely full. But before I get into that, let me just say that they set up their chart in an odd manner. Most places set their charts with the vowels aligned, like this chart from Wikipedia:

<- The right-most column has the vowels in order A, I, U, E, O Every column left of that keeps the same vowel order, just shoves on a consonant sound before it, in the order of K, S, T, N, H, M, Y, R, W. So if you were to read the chart like you read the alphabet, you'd say "A, I, U, E, O, KA, KI, KU, KE, KO, SA, SHI, SU, SE, SO..." Turn it vertical, and still the same. Just gotta make sure the "A" line is to the right and work your way left to "O". easyjapanese.org has theirs running across, left-to-right, AND connects two lines. The vowel line and the "K" line end up running together, the "S" line and the "T" line as well, and so on down the chart. While not necessarily wrong, I find that it could be confusing for learners. The reason hiragana and katakana charts are set up the way they are is so learners (both Japanese children and foreigners) can more easily identify kana that end with the same vowel sound. It's also useful to have charts in this manner when learning to conjugate verbs later on.
Also, this set-up creates a problem when showing kana with diacritical marks. The "G" line, which is created by adding two marks to the upper-right of "K" line kana, appears under the vowel line, not the "K" line for easier identification. It does have all of the diacritical kana, which is a good thing, but I believe it could be set-up in a manner that's easier to understand at first glance.
Now the reason I say the charts aren't completely "full" is the chart is missing two characters. "Chi"(ち) and "Tsu"(つ) can both have diacritical marks added to them to change into "Ji"(ぢ) and "Zu/Dzu"(づ), but have been left out and turned to "S" line characters (じ and ず).
Also, when the charts list character combinations (kana ending in "I" plus a small "Y" line character), it's missing all "Mi" combinations and "Ji" combinations.

Wait, "Ji" combinations? But I see "Ja", "Ju", "Jo" right there!

Those "Ji" combinations are the most commonly seen combinations for "Ji", using "Shi" with diacritical marks. As I mentioned, this chart lacks "Chi" with diacritical marks. This is a major mistake, because despite being rarely used, it found in certain verb conjugations. It's also common for younger women and high school girls to substitute "Chi" for "Shi" when writing "Ji" in their emails and text messages. Messes me up all the time when my friends do it.


Other than those two complaints about their "full" kana charts, easyjapanese.org has one of the easiest-to-understand kana pages yet. They even offer a flash-based kana quizzes where you can test yourself. Further down the left-side navigation bar is a link to flash-based katakana memory game, a kana "Space Invaders"-inspired flash game, and a flash-based hiragana chart that lets you click on individual hiragana and see their particlar stroke orders. For beginners really looking to get a hang of hiragana, this is the site for you! The "Kana Invaders Game" is actually kind of challenging, as it gets faster as you destroy the target kana.

If you need a break from blowing up kana meteroids, there's a small page with basic useful phrases. It has your basic greetings, as well as useful phrases such as "thank you", "please", "I'm sorry", "I don't understand", etc. Under the greetings sections there's even a brief explanation of pronunciation. It's not to the extent of other websites (listing out how each of the vowels are pronounced), but it does bring up the point of the "u" sound on words ending in "su" is usually omitted, and explains elongated vowel sounds.

The one section of this site that I do have a bit of a problem with is the basic grammar page. While it does give a pretty decent basic explanation for several of the more commonly-used particles, the top section on pronouns has some mistakes. Mainly, this paragraph:

For "you" males can say "kimi", informally. But "kimi" is not dependent on the gender of the person to whom it relates, but on the gender of the one who talks. Only men can say that! It's a very specific feature of the Japanese language too.

While "kimi" is used mainly by men, it is not a male-only pronoun. Maybe in olden times it was, but I hear women left and right using it nowadays. "kimi" is a form of "you" that is used to address children informally, and also to address others rudely. The best rule when dealing with saying "you" in Japanese is, if you know the person's name, use that instead of "anata" or "kimi". It's more polite. The Japanese don't actually like using pronouns, and many women will talk about themselves in third person rather than use a form of "I".

Another major mistake with their pronouns is their translation and explanation for "they". "They" can be written four ways in Japanese:
Karetachi　 彼たち
Kanojotachi　彼女たち
Karera　彼ら
Kanajora　彼女ら
The two ending in "tachi" are formal, while the last two are informal and casual. "Karetachi" and "Karera" are used if there is at least one male in the "they" group, much like "Ils" is used in French for "they". However, it's not as black and white as French is. If 80% of the group is female, you're still safe using "Kanojotachi" or "Kanojora", despite males being in the group.
This site doesn't mention "Kanojora" at all, and misspells "Kanojotachi" as "Kanojochi".


Moving on to Lesson 01, we're presented with a flash-based interactive lesson.
The girl on the screen talks to you in Japanese (romaji, then kana, then English translation all in the same speech bubble), and you pick the correct response from the three given to you.
First thing I notice?

They have how you introduce yourself wrong.

After submitting your name, the girl greets you with the usual "Hajimemashite", but puts a weird space in the hiragana translation of it. It's all one word! Don't need a space in there! Once you click the right answer, she introduces herself as "Mitsuko". Both the romaji and the English have it correct (except they keep the English in the same word order as Japanese), but the hiragana adds in a "san" to her name. And in the answers, they add a "san" to your name in both the hiragana and English!



You NEVER add "san" onto your own name. Never never never. It makes you seem very full of yourself, and just isn't proper.
Small children will occasionally add "chan" or "kun" onto their own names, but quickly learn that it's not proper and by the time their 5 or 6 years of age, completely drop it off of their names.

The next screen isn't bad, but then Mitsuko tells us she's Japanese, and we have to respond back with "You are Japanese". However, you just don't do this in Japanese. Seriously. I have never heard a conversation go this way. And you most certainly try not to call someone you just met "anata", especially if you just learned their name. That's just rude.

Then the lesson ends. Leaving me with a "WTF?!" feeling. There's nowhere on the site that gives you any of the vocabulary, other than the greetings.


Looking at this "mini lesson" makes my head hurt, and makes me afraid to glance at the Numbers page. However, this isn't as bad as I expected. The numbers are presented quite well, at least up to nine. After nine, they just list out ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand, and one hundred million. AFTER that, they finally tell you how to form numbers after ten. Personally, I would have listed numbers 1-20 first, to show how numbers 11-19 just add 1-9 to the end of 10, and how 20 is "two tens". They do it a bit more mathmatically, and actually give equations for numbers above 10.
Underneath the chart of 10 though 100,000,000 they state "It can be noticed that the Japanese counting is not based on the power of thousands (million, billion, trillion), but on the power of hundreds." I'm not sure if I necessarily agree with that. I think in English we tend to count by power of hundreds, which is why we can't have "one thousand millions". In Japanese, they tend to count in the thousands.
For example, let me write out how the different places are. Remember when you'd learn big numbers in elementary school and you're start at the "ones" place and counts "tens, hundreds, thousands, 10 thousands, etc"? Same thing.
Ones->1
Tens->10
Hundreds->100
Thousands->1,000
10 Thousands->10,000
100 Thousands->100,000
Millions->1,000,000
10 Millions->10,000,000
100 Millions->100,000,000

See a pattern? In English we change the counter for every 100. Now let's look at Japanese:
Ichi->1
Juu->10
Hyaku->100
Sen->1,000
Ichi man->10,000
Juu man->100,000
Hyaku man->1,000,000
Sen man->10,000,000
Ichi oku->100,000,000

In Japanese, they tend to change the counter every thousand, not every hundred like English does. 10 thousand has it's own special name, "man", that must be preceeded by "ichi". The words for 100 and 1,000 both do not need "ichi" in front of them. It's just assumed that if you don't add 2-9 in front of "hyaku" or "sen", you're only talking about one "hyaku" or one "sen".
After you reach "ichi man", you start counting 10 "man" (ten ten-thousands), 100 "man"(one hundred ten-thousands), 1000 "man", then switch from "man" to "oku" and repeat the process.
I think because of this, easyjapanese.org's explanation that the Japanese count in powers of 100 is not correct. It's actually the opposite.



All in all, easyjapanese.org offers some really useful resources. The games and quizzes to learn kana can be real useful for anyone trying to pick up the basics. The kanji flashcards I mentioned in my previous post are great for those of a more intermediate level, and need practice with kanji.
Outside of that, the site disappoints. The flash-based mini lesson has several mistakes, explanations for pronouns have mistakes or are wrong, and the number page and kana charts are just confusing.

If I had to score this site on a scale of 1 to 10 (which I should start doing for my reviews), I'd give it a 4. If it fixes the mistakes, I think I'd rate it a solid 6 or 7, but for now, it's subpar.

Almost a month after the move, and I'm still without internet in the new apartment. NTT guys came, landlord said they can't install fiber optic in the walls, so we're bringing it in through the window. You would think that because they don't have to do much installation compared to bringing it up through the walls, that we could get internet quickly. Nope. We don't get the line installed until the 21st. And that will be a fun day as I possibly have classes that afternoon (trial classes that if no one signs up for I don't have to go to!) and the installers might have to deal with my English-only husband. This shall be interesting if I have to go to class and leave him to the insstallers.


And a quick self-promotion (because I just can't help myself), I signed up for a "Dream Photo Shoot" contest. I got the link from The Daily Coyote earlier today and had to sign up. I love photography and would really like to hone my skills one day instead of just taking wannabe photos with a floor model point-and-shoot I picked up cheap at Sears last summer.
Click the badge below and read my dream. And if you are inclined to do so, a vote would be very much appreciated!






Okay, back to work.

Last week I was scheduled to put up a blog on Tuesday, but due to a teacher coming down sick suddenly, I had to take over classes and couldn't get into the office. So you guys get a blog today instead! I was hoping to have more time this month to get in some blogging time, but with the end of the school year, prep for the new school year, TONS of trial lessons, trial students, and starting private lessons for two students on top of my regular classes, I'm pretty much pushed to the limit.

Still, in the hour and a half I have to type right now, I'll try to get in some info about Learn Japanese Free.
While I would say this is a good resource for learning Japanese, I would not make this your main source of information.
It is very simply set up, and easy to navigate. Each topic having it's own link to it's own page. This is the main reason why I say it's a good resource to find information easily.
However, on the very first lesson, Hiragana, there is a major mistake.

Obviously, as there is no explanation of stroke order, this site is designed to help you learn to read and speak Japanese, not write. While the charts of hiragana themselves have no mistakes, and actually cover all of the combinations and diacritical marks making it a wonderful chart to study from, one of their explanations halfway down the page is wrong.
Under the first hiragana chart they list two exceptions to the pronuncation rules they mentioned on the top of the page: one for the subject marker は(ha) and one for the directional marker へ(he). The page has the explanation of " は[ha] is pronounced "wa" when it is immediately follows the subject. It is usually only pronounced "ha" when it is a part of a word" which is correct, but the explantion of へ(he) carries the wrong hiragana.
The website has "ひ [he] is pronounced "e" when it immediately follows a place or direction. Both of these are very simple to detect" as the explanation, but the character listed is ひ(hi) not へ(he). Mixing up ひ and へ is a very common mistake, mainly because how they are pronounced compared to the common romaji reading of both. ひ is pronounced as the English pronoun "he" but is written as "hi" in romaji. へ is prounounced very closely to "hay" but is written as "he" in romaji. Confusing, eh?

The first few lessons of introductions, greetings and intro vocabulary are very, very sparse without much explanation of usage other than definition. While not bad, the last of example sentances or situations to use the vocabulary may be confusing at first. Lesson 4 (vocabulary) includes a link to a second vocabulary lesson. Once again, a lot of useful vocabulary but no explanation, despite having two different words for "this". They also leave out some related vocabulary that is usually taught all at once in most classrooms.

Lesson 5, grammar, is the first page with any real explanations. The page introduced the word order for Japanese sentences, but concentrates more on sentence particles. The main page states that this is a page of minimal grammar points, and boy were they not kidding. While the explanations are easy to understand, there's not a lot said. It's about as minimalistic of an explanation as you can get for the subject markers. If you don't know much about English grammar terminology (like what direct and indirect objects are), you'll be pretty confused.

After this lesson, the order that the beginner lessons continue in doesn't make much sense to me. Instead of trying to tie the learned vocabulary and grammar together with useful phrases (lesson 7), they introduce 16 kanji characters first. Personally, I would have put this AFTER basic grammar, sentence structure, and example sentences have been thoroughly covered and explained. Lessons 8, 9 and 10 give pretty good practice dialogues, except that much of the vocabulary used in the dialogues have not been covered anywhere in the previous lessons. If you have a dictionary on hand this won't be a problem, but for those without, you're on your own for figuring out which word in the Japanese sentence corresponds with the English translation.


Past lesson 10 starts the "intermediate" Japanese lessons, which strangely start with "Basic Japanese Sounds". I don't know about you, but if the title of the lesson contains "basic" it should be under the "basic lessons" section, not intermediate. However, this is by far the best lesson yet. This should have been Lesson 3 right after hiragana and katakana. How you can get this far into teaching Japanese online WITHOUT explaning pronuncation thoroughly is beyond me. If you chose to use this website as a Japanese resource, PLEASE look at Lesson 1 under "Intermediate" before you go to any of the grammar or vocabulary pages. Otherwise you'll get into bad habits of pronouncing things with English pronuncation rather than Japanese. Please, do yourself a favor and learn pronuncation rules before you learn vocabulary. It'll make it so much easier and make you look less like an idiot when you actually try to converse in Japanese for the first time. And just so you know, EVERYONE looks like an idiot the first time they speak Japanese. Learn to laugh at yourself and your mistakes, and move on. I can't begin to tell you how embarrassing it was to get to Japan my first time and realize how horribly my pronuncation was when I first tried to converse.


The rest of the lessons in "intermediate" are things I would consider basic as a teacher. Lesson 2
FINALLY gives detailed explanations of particles, along with examples! It also includes several links to pages detailing Japanese adjectives, pronouns, basic verb conjucations (though this could be more detailed), differences between the verbs "aru" and "iru", the copula "desu", and tenses/politeness forms. The numbers lesson has a few instances where they have the reading for "10" as "jo/joo/jooo" instead of "ju", but is a good start to learning numbers.
Other lessons finally introduce ways to address others, find out names, and also have several links to related topics that may come in handy if dining/shopping in Japan or in Japan on business. Many of the lessons include handy phrases and words you hear often in everyday Japanese conversations.

Overall, a pretty decent basic page. However, there are several mistakes in both the English and in the Japanese throughout the page, so be careful. Out of all the lessons, those in the "intermediate" section are by far the most useful. They offer more detailed information, examples, and cover much more grammar and vocabulary than the "basic" lessons. I wouldn't even consider the basic lessons a "toe in the water" for those wanting to learn Japanese. Other than the hiragana and katakana charts, one could possibly skip over them all and move right into the intermediate lessons, granted they have other sources to learn from as well.

The best pages, by far, of the whole site are the last three links on the page to sites for Japanese songs, downloads (Japanese word processing software and games), and Japanese newspaper sites. If you are really interested in learning more about Japan and Japanese, I totally and completely suggest the four links found here for Japanese newspapers in both English and Japanese. Best way to get an eye into Japan's world from inside Japan from your own home. Many of the newspapers' English sites offer articles written by foreigners in Japan, usually detailing little odd bits of Japanese culture and life that many Japanese themselves don't think twice about.



And while I'd love to write more, especially in detail for the later "intermediate" lessons, I need to run to the grocery store to get dinner stuff before heading to my afternoon classes.
Look for a new blog sometime during the middle of next week!

Moving in Japan is always an adventure. Luckily, I was able to get it all done with quite painlessly and quite quickly.

My husband and I got our keys on the 6th and had everything moved out and cleaned up by the 13th, turned in the keys that morning and we were done. AND we should be getting most of our security deposit back. I have to ask the boss exactly how much it was because that dictates how much I'll owe on the new apartment's security deposit.

Only complaints about the new apartment are that it lacks a "washlet" toilet seat (i.e. heated toilet seat that also had butt-washing sprays), and there are no windows in the room we use for our bedroom. However, the latter isn't much of a problem considering if we open one of the sliding doors we get plenty of sun in from the next room over, our living room.

One day, once we get Internet access, I'll post picture of the new place compared to the last. I'll also post pictures of the NTT guys installing fiber optic Internet (yeah, you know you're jealous).



Other news, I completely bombed my Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). I took the highest level with no studying whatsoever just to see how horrible I'd actually do. Amazingly, I got just around the 40% I thought I would be lucky to get. Only 30% more to go until I pass. Let's see how well I do this coming December!





Anyway, onto the main course! Today, I'll be reviewing a random website I found at work, Free Japanese Lessons.


First impressions: Much, much simpler front page compared to the last website. Straight forward links to all available 10 lessons, videos, chat, and the FAQ. Not flashy, but very straight-forward and easy to navigate. Only downside is the abundance of ads around the front page, but even then they aren't very intrusive. I like the "Today's Kanji" and "Today's Phrase" boxes on the upper right. The link to information about hotels in Japan is also convenient and not something I've seen on many other sites.


Obviously a beginner's website, the first lesson they offer dumps you right into hiragana with a chart of all hiragana, including those with diacritical marks and combinations. It has a short but concise explanation of pronunciation, which with everything considered is actually a pretty decent explanation. Japanese pronunciation isn't that hard once you realize that vowels will never change how they sound no matter what comes before or after them in the word.
A major point for this particular lesson, which I don't think I've ever seen explained on the same page as a hiragana chart, is the pronunciation exceptions for the characters は and へ ("ha" and "he" respectively). Most wait until certain grammar points are learned to bring up the pronunciation exceptions for these two characters, but this site puts it right out there are the beginning to try to defuse any confusion down the line. They also offer a neat little explanation on why these two have second pronunciations, an explanation I actually did not know myself. I was always told in my learning that they are sometimes pronounced differently because "that's just how Japanese is". Their explanation actually makes sense and makes me mutter なるほど (that explains it) under my breath.
They also include the standard explanation of why there are two "zu" and "ji" characters, and also a brief thing on how to know when to use them. All in all, a decent intro to hiragana. Only thing missing is stroke order, which is very important when learning to write. Due to there being no stroke order explanation, I'm guessing this site is more geared towards reading and speaking Japanese, rather than writing.

The next lesson brings you to katakana, which just like hiragana offers nothing but a chart. Also, the explanation about how katakana is used for foreign names and borrowed words is not entirely correct. Yes, katakana is used for foreign names and borrowed words, but it is also used for scientific names of animals and plants, and often as almost a replacement for italics in writing when emphasis is needed/wanted by the writer. However, it is a decent explanation if you're looking for a short-and-to-the-point explanation.

Moving on, we have vocabulary. We're given a very spartan list with a very loose organization. 23 words, including words for "you", "I", "him", "her", "this/that", "here/there", greetings, and random nouns (person, cat, dog, house). While these are all really good things to know, they aren't presented in an easy-to-remember format. Just a list. A list with the kanji, hiragana, romaji, and English meaning. The site does try to explain that there are different types of formalities when dealing with greetings, and offers both forms of "thank you" and "good morning". However, they only offer the casual form of "goodbye", さよなら (sayorana). Formally, it should be さようなら (sayounara).

Lesson 4 brings on grammar, and once again we're looking pretty spartan. The whole page is nothing but explanation about particles, which while are an essential part of Japanese grammar, it is kind of different to see the main 5 listed all together right off the bat. Also, they don't even go into much explanation about へ (e) as a particle. Once again, very basic, very to the point explanations about the remaining four particles, but perhaps too basic. Part of me hopes they go into more details of the particles and how to figure out what is the topic and what is the subject and all that. They do mention that "I" is usually dropped from the sentence in spoken Japanese, due to being implied. This is something many textbooks do not teach, as textbook writers want to make Japanese grammar closer to that of English.

Fifth lesson on the page makes me wonder if the person making this site is just winging it and creating lessons as he goes along. We go from vocab, to grammar, back to vocab. And of all things, numbers, time, days of the weeks and months. Considering how basic this vocabulary is, I would have put it directly after Lesson 3 with the greetings and other basic vocab. Once again, a very spartan list, and instead of listing out a good portion of the numbers, time and months, they give you the start of the "pattern" and tell you to run with it. While they do explain that "4" and "7" both have two pronunciations, they don't go into detail about why you shouldn't use the one pronunciation of "4". For those curious, "4" can be pronounced よん or し ("yon" or "shi"). The pronunciation of "4" as "shi" is avoided a good 60-80% of the time as "shi" also means "death". Because of this, "4" is also an unlucky number. My old apartment complex and my new apartment complex both do not have rooms or parking spots ending in "4". So the first floor rooms go 101, 102, 103, 105.

I really don't have any complaints about the days of the week part of the page. It's straight-forward and simple enough even without a thorough explanation.


Now, back to grammar. Lesson 6 starts off with verb conjugations right away, specifically those of godan verbs. Godan verbs are verbs that the verb stem changes depending on the tense. There are five stem changes, hence the "go" or "five" in the name of the verb type. This site actually sets up their explanation much like my high school sensei did, which for me made it very easy to understand. Only complaint about the whole page is how they explain the conjugation of "te" and "ta" forms. It would be easier to understand with a second chart, rather than just text.
Next lesson continues verbs with ichidan verbs, and once again only gives simple explanations of the conjugations. In their simplicity, the explanations are slightly confusing. They try to compare ichidan verbs with godan by giving them five "bases", or stems. Technically, only have one stem, hence the "ichi" for "one" in the name "ichidan". In their attempt to connect new material with what has already been learned, they actually make it a bit more confusing than it would have been to just introduce them as having only one base, not five. Personally. I would have introduced ichidan verbs first, then godan. But that's me.
Also, their "five base" system of organization they have going on here makes it a bit confusing for the only two irregular verbs in the language. Only really useful thing on this page is a small link to verbs that sound like ichidan verbs but are actually conjugated like godan verbs.


Earlier on, I believe in Lesson 4 or 5, it was mentioned that polite tenses would be discussed in Lesson 8. Well, not really. Yes, they list the polite forms of different verb conjugations, but that's about it. No explanation on when to use them or anything. Also, while they give an explanation for each verb tense, they don't give any examples of how to use them in sentences. And come to think of it, I haven't even seen any explanation about the copula, です (desu) at all. Usually that gets explained way before verbs ever do.

Lesson 9's explanation of adjectives is a bit confusing as well. Not sure where they got "dv" and "dn" for the two types of adjectives in Japanese, but it's something new to me. They mention how "dv" adjectives (commonly called i-adjectives in many textbooks) can be used as adverb and modify nouns, but give no explanation further than that. No examples or anything. They do, however, show how "dn" adjectives (commonly na-adjectives) can be used as adverbs.

Lesson 10 leaves us off at how to introduce yourself to someone and other common phrases. The further I get into the site, the more I start to not like how simple it is. Simple is good, but there are places where it does need more explanation on grammar points. Keeping it too simple misses out on a lot of subtleties in Japanese grammar that need more time and attention.


Overall, a good start to a website. I hope it eventually starts developing into a fuller website, but at this point I'm not keeping hopes up. It's a good place to dip your feet it and get a brief overview of what you're in for when you actually buckle down and start studying Japanese for real.



And that's it for this time. End of this month the NTT guys come on the 28th to check out what they have to do to get fiber optic into the apartment, so hopefully by middle of next month I'll have home access again! Not sure what website I'll do next time, but I'm always up for suggestions.

Finally, here we are at the true purpose of this blog: introducing and reviewing "learn Japanese" websites.



Today we'll start with The Japanese Page (TJP).



First, I want to say I am using the office's laptop to view this page, and it won't let me update IE to 7, nor will it play nice with Firefox. I blame my boss for never running an anti-virus on here, so if what I say seems to be different than what you see on your own computers, I apologize in advance.







First impression of the main homepage is cluttered. I seriously don't know where to start. First, half the page is taken up with an ad from the main supporter of TJP (a Japanese pen pal website) . It's a giant text promotional ad calling people to buy a membership to the pen pal site. Takes up a large part of the screen, and runs into the next part of the site. Not sure if it's an introduction to the site or an ad for reading a story in Japanese while listening to it being read in Japanese. Looks like both together.

There's also a login box, a sign up box for a newsletter, a poll, links to articles, ads everywhere, a shoutbox, a list of top posters, etc. And it's all meshed in with poorly placed ads. I can't tell what image is a link to an article and which is an advertisement. One also has to scroll to the bottom of the page to find links to articles separated by level. There are links to the normal website fare of a chat, forum, videos, audio and the like up top, but that's the only thing I find useful on the entire front site.



Clicking on the FAQ link, one has to scroll through rules for the forums before even getting to the main FAQ. However, the FAQ is easy to use, once you get to it, and offers help on how to install the necessary files to both read and type in Japanese on your home computer. It also offers, if you scroll though, some good links to find downloadable audio files and pen pal sites. There are some basic questions about Japanese that are answered in the FAQ, but they don't seem to fit into the section of the FAQ where they are placed.





As for the site's lessons page, this may be the page set up the best on the entire site. Lessons are listed in order of Beginner, Grammar, Kanji, Culture, Vocab, General and fun stuff. It's set up really simply and is easy to figure out what is what, but is it all beginner level stuff? What happened to intermediate and advanced? Does the website not offer those? One may never know from just looking at this page. Clicking on the Beginner link, the beginner "lessons" are no more than a collection of flash cards, video and audio clips explaining simple grammatical concepts or vocabulary, and downloadable podcasts. There seems to be no real set path, no "Try this first" or "Do this next". One just starts with whatever one wants to, it seems. The New to Japanese Advice page gives some hints at where to start, what textbooks you might want to consider, and some reasons to learn Japanese, and finally at the very end it gives a "Try this next" link. There is no real guidance or rhythm to the page or the lessons, but instead encourages visitors to log in and join in the forums, where you can talk to other learning Japanese from TJP and other means, and possibly find help. There are some good links to other sites for resources, but nothing concrete.

Following the link to their 15 Minute Japanese Lesson, however, does give a good introduction to the basics of the language, even if all at once. It's a good page to see what you're getting yourself into, but once again doesn't lead to anywhere. The Japanese Page leaves it completely up to the learner to decide what order and how they want to learn. While this can be beneficial for those who like learning things sporadically, this can be detrimental as learners have no real path to follow in learning. Once you learn how to read and write Hiragana and Katakana, where do you go to learn basic grammar? What if you don't care about reading and writing, but need to get some basic conversation skills down for when those Japanese visitors at work come by next month? There doesn't seem to be any real flow.

The Hiragana and Katakana pages, however, are quite well set up. They break the two writing systems into chapters to make them easier to learn than cramming them all at you at once. It also has sound files to hear how each character is supposed to be pronounced so you can practice mimicking the sounds yourself without guessing what they're supposed to sound like. There are also quizzes and flash card links (only on the Hiragana page) that one can use to test themselves. Overall, the set up of these two pages can be very useful in learning and mastering two of the writing systems in Japanese.


Moving onto the Grammar page, while the Lessons page lists four categories of 3kyuu Grammar (What happened to 4kyuu?), 100 Grammar Points, Word Order, and Particles, clicking on the link to the main page just gives a long, uncategorized list of the available "articles" and lessons within the grammar section of the website. There are two large image links for the 100 Grammar Points section and the 3kyuu grammar section that actually aren't that bad. The 100 Grammar Points is split into 8 chapters, and each chapter is further split into 12-13 subsections, many of which do have some sort of relation between themselves. The 3kyuu page, however, is a bit lacking and is just one long list of links, with no real organization it seems.

Out of all the pages up until now, the Hiragana and Katakana pages were set up the best, by far. However, the Kanji section definitely blows them out of the water. The top of the page offers links to a "Kanji-a-Day node and a Kanji Dictionary via TJP, as well as a small link menu to different sections of the Kanji page. While the link menu is slightly confusing, it's easy to skip over and scroll to the main gist of the site, the kanji lists for all four levels of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. Levels 4 through 2 offer a list of all the kanji in that level, different subcategories of kanji (usually containing 20 kanji each), quizzes on each set of 20 kanji, a PDF file of all the kanji, a randomizer and flashcards. Level 4 also offers a test on all 80. Sadly, the Level 1 page is unfinished, and only offers about 80% of the kanji required for that level of the proficiency test.
Back at the main Kanji page, under the link to the 4 levels of kanji, there are several useful links, such as stroke order, kanji of Japanese origin, reversible kanji combinations, and country names in kanji. All of these actually can be very useful and are probably one of the best things the whole website has to offer.

After the Kanji page, nothing else lives up. The Vocabulary page is just like grammar, and offers just a giant list of different articles in no particular order. While there do seem to be some useful articles, you might have to search and read through several non-related things before finding what you want. Same with the Culture page. While there is a lot of information, some of which is quite interesting, there's just no order. General Lessons just seems to combine a little bit of everything, mainly from the vocab and culture pages. The Fun page just seems to be a conglomerate of everything that didn't fit into the other pages of "lessons". It does have some quizzes and unusual-but-useful vocab lists, but is mainly just...stuff.


Glancing at the Video page, this may also be up there on the same level as their Kanji page was. Videos are arranged in order of level or subject, with several continuing series of videos. Each section also has three videos shown so you can get a brief idea of what each section involves, making it a bit easier to navigate. However, those with slower computers, such as this laptop, may be in for a wait while all the videos load up. The Audio section offers some audio-only versions of several of the videos, as well as audio files of different traditional songs mentioned throughout the website. There are also links to some Beginner-only Podcasts, and several audio lessons. I'm intrigued mainly by the list of traditional folktales they have for download. These wouldn't be a bad thing to download for real listening practice.


For those who create an account on the site, there are also member-run study groups, forums to ask for advice and help, and user-posted blogs. The groups seem to be their own forum where only members of that particular group can post. They're more to bring people at the same stage of learning together rather than help, it seems. While there are thousands of members in several of the groups, the group with the highest post count only has 34 posts. Seems the action is all in the forums, which, frankly, I am afraid to wander into. I will let you guys decide on that for yourselves.



As a Japanese teacher, I think this site does have a lot to offer, but the set-up is lacking in organization and flow. The kanji lists are useful, and the audio files may be a great way to practice listening skills, but there just doesn't seem to be enough meaningful content. Most of the content seems user-created and is frankly quite amateur. There are other places to get the same information, but more up-front and easier to use.

All in all, I say it's a confusing site to start with, and a confusing site to look for resources. If I had to give it a grade, I'd say no more than a C. It has potential, but is to confusing and tries to do too much all at once with no order whatsoever.