Halolz Japanese Academy

Zink-sensei here, and welcome to your friendly local Moonrunes thread!

I know a significant number of us are studying Japanese, and perhaps there are some of you who wanted to start but don't really know where, so I thought it may be useful to lay down a multi-purpose thread around it.

So why not come in and post

• Your favourite study techniques
• Any cool or useful resources
• Questions for your peers or sensei~
• Anything Japanese related!

Disclaimer: I have just reached the end of a four-year degree that included Japanese, so it's fairly solid, but far from flawless.

I'd like to start by laying down two of the most vital companions through this journey:

Rikaichan for Firefox / Rikaikun for Chrome
These add-ons are extraordinarily useful. Once you click to turn it on, all you have to do is put the mouse over a Japanese word and it gives you the reading and translation. Must have.

Denshi Jisho - The EN-JP Dictionary
Obviously you need a dictionary. This is enormously comprehensive. After about 5 years of use (ie. when you become an advanced student) cracks begin to show a little, but for beginner and intermediate it is near flawless.
One of it's most useful extra functions is the bank of example sentences, searchable in both EN and JP

Here are two more advanced resources that are not as immediately accessible (if you need help, just ask), but have certainly helped me:

Anki - the flashcard program
A bit complex to set up, but well worth it, and I think some of you are familiar with it already. The premise is that you study a deck of virtual cards, either that you made yourself, or you downloaded from the seemingly endless online resources, and you tell the program whether you knew the answer or not. Depending on how well you tell Anki you know the answer, it changes how frequently it tests you on it.
A few hours drilling vocab this way before a test has worked for me excellently, and if you do it regularly it'll be in your long-term memory in no time!

"Zaidan Houjin Nihon Kanji Nouryoku Kentei Kyoukai Kounin - Kanken DS 3 Deluxe"
Next up is the excellently titled DS Game (Which I simply call "Kanji Game" for short)
As it's a DS game, obviously there are ways to get it if you don't want to import it. In any case I recommend trying it on an R4 or Emulator first.
For those who don't know, a "kanken" is a writing test - the kind that Japanese children do when they're learning Kanji for the first time. This 'game' is not for us foreigners, and as such is all in Japanese, but it remains an invaluable study tool.

That's all from Zink-sensei for now.
よろしくお願いします、メート

An add-on I like to use personally is Furigana Injector. Like the name implies, it puts furigana (the hiragana reading) on top of certain kanji. It also tries to give readings and translations for words like Rikaikun, but it's not as good as it. I use it to practice reading kanji, but it might be too small to read sometimes.

It's available here for Chrome and Firefox.

Speaking of studying kanji, one of my favorite sites to help me out with that is Kanji Damage. This site lists a lot of kanji and radicals, and helps you memorize them using really funny mnemonics to help you remember not only the reading and translation, but also how it's formed as well. Really funny to put on flash cards.

This guy. Is the best.

Leo E. wrote:This guy. Is the best.

I like the way he teaches but it seriously took him a few years to finally get to "I want to (verb)"

I wouldn't suggest him if you plan on learning Japanese anytime you're alive.

And with this may our moonruning skills become slightly less terrible day by day.

Zink120 wrote:
Rikaichan for Firefox / Rikaikun for Chrome
These add-ons are extraordinarily useful. Once you click to turn it on, all you have to do is put the mouse over a Japanese word and it gives you the reading and translation. Must have.

The only thing you'll ever need. You'll become so reliant on it, that you'll start wishing you could add it to your Google Glass and use it in daily life. ;__;

Zink120 wrote:
For those who don't know, a "kanken" is a writing test - the kind that Japanese children do when they're learning Kanji for the first time. This 'game' is not for us foreigners, and as such is all in Japanese, but it remains an invaluable study tool.

I'll add that this game is amazing at helping you assess your progress in the language. You can ignore the fact that it's all in Japanese, as the levels range from 6 year old speech (where most people started off) to university level Japanese (so there's something for everyone). There is no greater satisfaction than moving up a level given the game's rigidly hard criteria (it brings a tear to your eye). Definitely the best way to learn how to read/write kanji.