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!

Greetings and salutations, to those of you who are still faithful enough to follow this blog.
As soon as I got into the habit of updating this almost weekly, I left you all high and dry without an update for almost a month.
I could once again blame it on life but...

You know? I will blame it on life. Life tends to get in the way of things we want to do, doesn't?

I'm not going to give any excuses or anything, but I will say that hopefully this month I can get at least three updates in. The first of which, being this one, is yet another photo blog! [cue unenthusiastic fanfare here]

But this isn't just any photo blog, this is a photo blog that can only happen once in seven years. This is a photo blog about Zenkouji Temple's Gokaicho festival.

Zenkouji's main branch is in Nagano City in Nagano Prefecture. I had the privilege of living within the temple "city" for three months while I was an exchange student in high school. My third host family through the Rotary Youth Exchange Program was a monk's family who owns a shukubo (visitor/pilgrim lodge), named Ryoushouin, directly west of the Niomon Gate. They're the fifth picture down on the left side of that page, and if you look at the map, they are the bottom-most one in the blue square.

The quick story behind Zenkouji is a man named Yoshimitsu Honda (本田善光) had a statue of a Buddhist triad jump onto his back from out of a river. The statue in question is supposedly the first ever Buddhist image to come to Japan, and was tossed into the river following a feud between two clans. The kanji for Yoshimitsu's first name can also be read as "Zenkou", which is why the temple is now named "Zenkouji".
As Zenkouji was built before Buddhism in Japan had split into different factions and sects, so the temple is presided over by both the Tendai and Jodo Shu sects of Buddhism. It is one of the last remaining pilgrimage sites in Japan, and historically is one of the few temples to have allowed female worshippers and pilgrims. There is also a story about how a non-believing old lady followed an ox, who had gotten some of her laundry stuck on his horns, to the temple and turned into a believer. If you walk around the temple gardens, you can see a statue of the ox.
The main temple in Nagano also has a kaidanmeguri (戒壇巡り) : a pitch black tunnel under the building where everyone is equal in the darkness, searching for the "key to enlightenment/paradise". Those who find this "key" are said to have their sins washed away and are guaranteed a place in nirvana.

Now, the weird thing about Zenkouji is the actual Buddhist statue that Yoshimitsu found is a "hidden Buddha". Literally, it must be kept out of sight from everyone, including the head priest and priestess. Supposedly it is locked up in a vault in the bowels of the Nara Museum. Every six or seven years they bring out a replica for worshippers and pilgrims to gaze upon for about two months. Then that replica is hidden away from view until the next festival, the Gokaicho.


Zenkouji has since spread around Japan, and there are well over 100 different branches. Many of the branches were started by warlords in the Sengoku Period, and the ones in Gifu were started by Oda Nobunaga, while the ones in Aichi were started by Tokugawa Ieyasu. We have a branch here in Gifu City by the large Inaba Shrine near the castle, and there is one in the nearby city of Seki.



The last Gokaicho was held in April and May of 2003, the year after I had been an exchange student. This year's Gokaicho had me really excited, as I was finally in the country for it, but due to time/money/flu panic, I was unable to head to Nagano's Zenkouji to witness the festivities. However, for the first time in Zenkouji's history, six temples across the nation held Gokaicho at the very same time, two of which were Gifu Zenkouji and Seki Zenkouji!

Gifu's Zenkouji is pretty small, only one building, so I decided that Seki's Zenkouji was were I wanted to be for this thing. Sadly, I didn't get any time to go until the last day of the festival, May 31st.

But man, did I pick a good day to go!

The weather was beautiful, and I got one of the last parking spots that was less than a 10 minute walk away. Considering the temple in Seki is much, much smaller than that of Nagano, there weren't nearly as many people as I had expected.
Seki's Zenkouji is relatively old, supposedly older than the current 300-year-old main hall in Nagano. There are five buildings: one that houses a Buddha sitting on what looks like a pineapple but is really a bunch of tiny Buddha images, two that house smaller Bodhisattvas and Buddhas, one that house a quite large statue of the Buddhist Triad, and the main hall. The main hall and the Buddhist Triad building are connected by a wooden corridor that houses a Binzuru statue (a physician that followed the Buddha and supposedly heals ailments if you touch where you hurt), and a series of statues that I guess are either the Gods of Fortune, or the Gods of Hell. I'm not sure which and no one would explain it to me. There is also a bell tower up on the mountain behind the two smaller buildings, where one may ring the bell for a donation of 100yen. The bell makes a lovely ring.

My husband and I were lucky to get there about and hour before the closing ceremony started, so we checked out their replica of the Buddhist Triad (which was tiny and hard to see), listened to a priest tell the story behind Gokaicho, and did Seki's kaidanmeguri. Seki Zenkouji is one of the few, if not the only, temples that has a kaidanmeguri tunnel in the shape of a manji, 卍. It has some really abrupt turns in the dark, and while most of the time you end up fumbling through the dark on your own, only to run your nose into the wall, they tied up a rope for people to follow, and had a small blue LED light over the "key" to make it easier. I thought it was a cop out, but then again I've done the kaidanmeguri there twice before, and at least five times in Nagano. I can tell you the differences between the two, but I won't go into that much detail. I already type too much as it is.

After getting out of the kaidanmeguri and grabbing a few pictures of the crowd and buildings, we headed up the hiking path past the bell, just to see what was up top. Not much, but it was a good hike. When we got down to the bottom again, it was time for the ending ceremony, a mochinage. I believed I talked about mochinage with the Tagata Shrine festival, but for those who missed it, a mochinage is where they pelt a crowd with lucky mochi rice cakes. Not wanting to get bulldozed by several scores of grannies and grandpas who'd rip the dentures out of their best friend over a lucky mochi cake, my husband and I took refuge on the staircase up to the bell tower. A family who was helping set up for the mochinage noticed me taking photos of the crowd, posed for a picture, and even sent their kindergarten-aged son over with a mochi cake just for us before the official mochinage started. Then the fun ensued.

I'll let the photos below speak for themselves.

Golden Week's over, and I spent most of the week being lazy.
Saturday was spent in my pajamas.
Sunday hubby and I met up with a friend who had come home from his job in Tochigi for karaoke and drinks.
Monday was karaoke-overload-recovery day.
Tuesday was a trip to Inuyama (more on that later down the page!).
Wednesday was laziness in pajamas again.


Overall, a nice, relaxing vacation. I only wish it had lasted longer.


I said that if we'd go anywhere (i.e. Inuyama) I'd post any pictures I'd take.
Well, Golden Week is over but that doesn't mean I can't spend my hour before my night class starts uploading pictures for your viewing pleasure!


Inuyama Castle is considered one of the oldest remaining castles in Japan. Wikipedia says there are 12 that remain from before the Edo period, but the four most famous are Himeji, Matsumoto, Hikone and Inuyama. Out of these four, I had only been to Matsumoto Castle several times. You can find pictures browsing around my deviantArt account.

Inyuyama Castle is only a half hour from the nearest Meitetsu train station near my apartment. I've been in Gifu for almost two and a half years and I had yet to go, so I made it clear to my husband that we were going come rain or shine.

Well, it rained. Right when we got out of the station in Inuyama City.
And I forgot an umbrella.
But, being the crazy American tourists we are, we braved the 20 minute walk up to the castle without an umbrella!

Got there and being Golden Week there were more tourists than usual out on a rainy day. The walk up to the castle from Inuyama Station is nice because there's a whole area of old-style shops and galleries. I wish I had stopped to take pictures, but I wanted to get to the castle before it started pouring. There are also several oddly tall buildings along the walk. These hold the mikoshi for the Inuyama Matsuri and Inuyama Castle Matsuri that are held every spring in the beginning of April. Inuyama's mikoshi are quite taller than the normal mikoshi found at festival, and I believe are on wheels. I haven't actually seen them, so I'm not sure.


By the time we got to the castle it was starting to rain pretty good, so everyone was trying to get into the castle at the same time. Being an original castle with original flooring, one has to take off their shoes and put them in a plastic bag before entering.
This makes it quite dangerous to walk around the castle. The reason being, the stairs are insanely steep. To put it simply, castle builders made the staircases steep with narrow steps to keep invaders from rapidly climbing up the floors in the case they were invaded. I still wonder how samurai got around the castle in full armor during battle. There is no safe way to run up and down those stairs.

I will stop talking now and just let you guys look at the few pictures I have. All of these can be seen in larger on my deviantArt site which is linked up top. You can also download the full resolution photo from dA, but they aren't big enough to be wallpapers. If you would like a wallpaper from any photos you see on deviantArt, let me know and I'll see if I still have the original on file somewhere.

I think I'm starting to get into the swing of once-a-week posts on here. What I need to do now, it convince my boss to let me start doing this from home so I can post more things when I feel like it, not just went the office tries to schedule me in.

Anyway, today I'm going to take a break from the website reviews and write about something probably every other single blogger about Japan is blogging about.



Yesterday, on April 29th, Japan entered perhaps its most famous set of holidays, Golden Week.
If you haven't heard about it, Golden Week is a one-week period between April 29th and May 5th that houses four national holidays. Yes, four. These four are:

April 29th - Shouwa no Hi (昭和の日)
May 3rd - Kenpou Kinenbi (憲法記念日)
May 4th - Midori no Hi (みどりの日)
May 5th - Kodomo no Hi (こどもの日)

This year, because May 3rd falls on a Sunday, May 6th is a Furikae Kyuujitsu (振替休日), basically an observed holiday.


While April 30th through May 2nd are not technically holidays, many businesses will close to let their employees travel. The most common destinations are major tourist spots in Japan (Kyoto, Tokyo, Okinawa), returning to your hometown, South Pacific islands, the west coast of North America, and Europe.
During this week it is nearly impossible to find flights or vacant hotels without paying through the nose. Most bullet trains and super express trains are also completely booked way in advance. The few train cars on them that are not reserved seats are usually packed like a Tokyo subway car at rush hour: like a can of sardines.

Last year I was smart enough to stay at home and not really go anywhere. My husband hadn't been in Japan for even a month yet, so I didn't want him to be turned off of Japan by the mass exodus out of the city.
However, the year before I had a former student come visit me from the US for her high school senior project. We decided to rough it out and make a trek from Gifu up to Nagano City. Oh man, was that a mistake.
The train from Gifu to Nagoya wasn't all that bad, but the 4-hour express train from Nagoya to Nagano was standing-room only in the non-reserved cars. We ended up shoving our bags into the luggage racks at the one end of a car, and sat in there for the 4 hours. The weather was quite warm as well, so the train cars, despite being air conditioned, were still quite stuffy due to the fact that everyone who got on the train was sweating from standing out in the heat on the platforms.

I know now, because of that trek, that if I am going to travel during Golden Week, I better make plans and reservations about 6 months in advanced. Well, maybe 2 months at the least....



Now, I can't find anything to back this up, but I once heard on a TV show here that the name Golden Week was originally created by travel companies and movie theaters. Basically, the long row of holidays created a surge in people going on trips and going out to movie theaters, so the PR guys for the travel companies and movie theaters decide it was a "golden" opportunity to get some business going. As such, the week was labeled "Golden Week" as not only a "golden" time to go spend time with your family in an exotic location or at the movies, but also a "golden" time to make a lot of money.
Whether this is actually true or not, I don't know. However, I do know that because of so many travel deals that are marketed for this week, many employees started taking off the whole week to travel, and eventually many businesses started shutting down for the week as well.
Even though I have class and a meeting tomorrow (out of all the teachers, I'm the only one with a class), our office is technically closed from the 1st through the 6th for Golden Week. A friend of mine is coming back home for the first time since New Year's, as Golden Week is one of only three long holidays his company in Tochigi gives him (the others being New Year's and Obon in August).


Anyway, I figure it's probably a good "work thing" if I go into a bit of detail on the holidays that make up Golden Week. While it's all easy to Wikipedia and all, at least it'll all be on the same page on my blog!



Originally, April 29th was only celebrated as the birthday of Emperor Hirohito (posthumously called Emperor Shouwa). However, upon his death, the day was made into a national holiday called Greenery Day (Midori no Hi みどりの日). This name was chosen to represent the Emperor's love of plant without specifically naming him, basically just to keep scandals away.

Wait? Midori no Hi? Didn't I type that up as being May 4th?
Well, after the Emperor's death, Japan was all afraid that there would be huge scandals and controversy and such, and decided not to name it directly after him. But, starting in about 2000, several attempts to change the name of the holiday were brought to the Japanese Diet and finally in 2005 one of them passed. Starting in 2007, the name of the day was officially changed to Shouwa no Hi.


May 3rd, Kenpou Kinenbi, is an easy day to explain. Literally, it's Constitution Memorial Day. May 3rd, 1945 was the date that the new Japanese Constitution was put into effect. Japan likes to make holidays, so they commemorated the turning of a new page in Japanese history by making May 3rd a national holiday. Many news outlets use this day to talk about democracy and bring up issues in the constitution that are constantly being battled about in the Diet, mainly the issues of Article 9 (no offensive military, just defensive), and whether or not the royal line can be passed down to a princess.
The common man, however, just sees it as a day off. Nothing more, and no one really cares it seems. They're all too busy drinking fruity cocktails out of coconuts in the South Pacific.


May 4th, the current Greenery Day, was originally just a "day of rest" between two national holidays. Japan didn't like the fact that there was a holiday on the 3rd, a day of work on the 4th, then another holiday on the 5th, so someone got the bright idea to make the 4th a holiday as well and just give everyone three days off in a row.

Whoever came up with that idea, thank you. You deserve a medal.

Once April 29th was renamed to Shouwa no Hi, Greenery Day got moved to the 4th to make it an official holiday. Much rejoicing was had with, once again, fruity cocktail-filled coconuts.



May 5th is probably the most well-known and celebrated of all the holidays in Golden Week.
Originally called Tango no Sekku (端午の節句), it marked the beginning of the summer rainy season on the 5th day of the 5th lunar month. (Which is total news to me. I'm learning this right along with you guys!)
This day was also used to celebrate the health and prosperity of boys born into families by the hanging of carp banners, and displaying a set of armor and arrows in the home. Some houses only display the kabuto helmet of the armor set, but there are immaculate, full-armor sets in some older homes. One of the kindergartens I teach at has a full-set from the Heian Era (794-1185).
The banners, koinobori, are kinda neat. One day I will post pictures of the set Gifu Kindergarten made last year in an event we helped out at. Basically, the banners are a family of carp: a large black one for the father, a slightly smaller red one for the mother or eldest born (depends on who you ask, it seems), and then smaller blue, green and purple carps for each subsequent son. They're pretty much giant windsocks, and are usually on a pole that has a spinny-thing on top followed by streamers.
Carps were picked because of a Chinese legend about carp becoming a dragon if they swam upstream, but you don't really hear anyone mention that anymore. There are a few songs about the carp banners and the day in general, but once again, I've never actually heard them.
On the largest, black carp, you will usually see a half-naked, red-skinned child hanging on for dear life. This is Kintarou, a character in Japanese history/myths that was known for his strength as a child. Supposedly he played around with wild animals and rode on the back of a bear, not a horse. Not sure why he's on the carp and not a bear, but I have a feeling it's to wish that the sons born into that family become strong like Kintarou was as a child. If I can find out anything more on why Kintarou is on the carp, I'll be sure to add it in. On the same note, if you know why Kintarou is on the carp, please leave a comment!

There's some controversy over Kodomo no Hi, mainly as it has traditionally be considered "Boy's Day". Though the name has changed to "Children's Day" to celebrate all children, it still focuses mainly on boys, while Girl's Day (Hinamatsuri) on March 3rd is not a national holiday. Many feminists and women's rights people have gotten their panties in a twist over this fact, but nothing has changed still. I think it would be awesome if Girl's Day became a national holiday. One more day off for me!



Once again, this blog has gone on way too long.
I need to stop writing walls-of-text. Maybe then some of you would stick around to read the whole thing.

I may or may not post from home during the holidays. Currently we have no plans to go anywhere except karaoke with my friend coming home from Tochigi. If we feel up to it, we may venture over to Inuyama Castle for a day. If we do, expect a photo post.

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.

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!