In the last few years there have been quite a few tools coming out to help students learn Japanese. One of my favorites is Rikaichan. Rikaichan is an add-on for Firefox that will give you the readings and definitions for Japanese characters when you mouse over them. It is a great tool for anyone learning Japanese or for someone who wants to read a Japanese website.

But what about a way to learn Japanese when you are reading websites in English? That’s where Kanjilish comes in. It is another add-on for Firefox that, when active, changes the first letter of English words into the equivalent Japanese Kanji. For example, the word “new” will become “新ew”.

Now to be honest I wasn’t really thrilled with this idea. I felt it is better to learn Japanese by studying Japanese. However, after a recommendation from @zirchi  on twitter, I gave it a try. It turns out it is a great way to review the meanings of Kanji and a great companion to Remember the Kanji.

Kanjilish gives you options of which word meanings you would like to choose based on a few popular systems, Kanji in Context, Remembering the Kanji, KanjiDic, and remembering Traditional Hanzi.

The only bad thing I have to say about it, is that it does require slightly longer for pages to load. Not ridiculously long, but longer.

Give it a try and let me know what you think. Combined with Remembering the Kanji and Rikaichan, I think it’s a pretty good tool for learning Japanese.

Kanjilish

The last two tools I have written about (Remembering the Kanji and Reviewing the Kanji) have all been about learning the kanji. When learning kanji it’s important to not lose focus of why we are studying in the first place, “to read Japanese”. And it just so happens, that this next tool is a cool website called Read the Kanji.

Read The Kanji gives you Japanese words in Kanji or kana (depending on what you are studying) and  asks you to type in the correct reading. It automatically converts to hiragana so you don’t even have to worry about having Japanese input set up on your computer. The words are also used in sentences so you will learn even more words, usage, and some grammar along the way as well. The site keeps track of your progress and shows you new words and kanji once you have mastered the ones you’ve already seen. It also tracks how well you know the different readings of each character.

The website is great for seeing new sentences and learning new Japanese words and Kanji, but there is actually something about it I like even more, it’s addictive. The feeling of always wanting to do “just one more” means that you will spend ample time learning Japanese. I recommend that you head over to the page right now and check it out. You can find it at the below link:

Read the Kanji

Yesterday, we covered what I consider to be an essential set of books for learning the Japanese kana and kanji. By themselves, Remembering the Kana and Remembering the Kanji are great tools for learning Japanese. So great in fact,  someone has created an entire website to help you use them more efficiently. Besides being a website, Reviewing the Kanji is an SRS (spaced repetition system) that contains all the the kanji in the Remembering the Kanji series.

It keeps track of what you need to study, when you need to study it, and also keeps track of all your progress with various charts and reports. One of the best parts about the site is the social aspect. You can write your story for each kanji and also see what other people are using for theirs (this will make more sense once you get the books).

As far as I know, there is currently no way to sync Remember the kanji and Anki, so you will have to choose which one you want to use from the beginning. Though there does seem to be a plugin for Anki to import “Reviewing the Kanji” progress. Both have pre-made decks containing all the kanji, and in fact the deck for Anki even contains links to the Reviewing the Kanji page. I recommend you try them both out and see which one you like the best. You can find a link to Reviewing the Kanji below:

Reviewing the Kanji

Next in the line of helpful Japanese tools are a set of books. Remembering the Kanji 1 & 2 and Remembering the Kana are extremely useful tools, and combined with Anki, will hep you learn the Japanese kana and kanji before you know it. The system used in these books to teach the Japanese characters in not orthodox, but it works. If you are struggling to learn the kana or kanji, or maybe have been putting it off because the task looks to daunting, then you need to get these books. Once you get started you will be wishing you had started sooner.

If you want to get the books now, and I recommend you do, you can find links to purchase them in the right sidebar.

If you want to get started while you wait for your books to arrive, you can download the sample containing the first 276 Kanji now:

Remember the Kanji Sample

You can find more information on the books at the below link:

Remembering the Kanji