[Enlil]

Here you can post some resources that you find useful for learning Japanese.

The Japanese Page: An absolute must for anyone with access to the Internet that wants to learn Japanese. They've got blogs, chatrooms, and even videos about anything related to Japan (except for the really weird stuff inspired by "The Fisherman's Wife." Yeah.) Great resource! I even learnt some calligraphy from their videos page a few years back.

WWWJDic: An online dictionary of Japanese that has a tremendous number of characters and words. Unfortunately, we've had some bad testimonials (notably from one of Rhea's Japanese lanugage sensei!) Use only if you do not have access to a good dictionary, preferably a hardcopy.

The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary: This is the book for anyone who's ever had to look up "that one damn kanji" without knowing its readings or the word it was used in. Since most English/Japanese dictionaries work off of Romanji or Katakana/Hiragana, not knowing how the character is pronounced was a death sentence. No more!

With this dictionary, you can look up a character with just two pieces of information: how the character is arranged, and the number of strokes the character has. An extremely useful "character lookup" is included on the first page after the cover, and by comparing the type of character ("left-right", "up-down", "enclosure", or "solid") against the number of strokes in each piece of the character (the number of strokes on the "left" side of the character, for example), characters can be looked up with amazing speed (pretty much any character can be found in two minutes or less if you know how to count strokes; thankfully, "How to count strokes" is included in the back!). For those more learned in Japanese characters, "cheat sheet" indexes are in the back that enable even faster look-up. It's a little pricey at forty dollars, but with the extremely fast look-up system, its portability (it won't fit in your pocket, but you can easily toss it into a bookbag or suitcase), and immense number of "extra" information that each character entry has (example words, sentences, pronounciations, and how to write it) make it well worth the cost.

So, what resources do you find helpful when practicing Japanese? What are the good, the bad, and the ugly? Why are they good, bad, and/or ugly? Am I rambling on and on? You betcha!

[Rhea]

I have found that I didn't get into Kanji learning all that much. I focused on grammar and vocabularly instead. So, I shopped around at The Japanese Page, got some magazine and books they offered, then perfected my grammar in Japanese. Well, sorta. I still didn't do so well when I tied a lot of things I was just trying together.

[Mixture]

Is there a reason to learn nihongo other than reading manga

[Rhea]

Yes! At least for me. The Japanese are crazy about invention, technology and business. I'd like to play on a level playing-field.

Now, if anyone knows me, they would point out that I don't know shit about business, which is why I'm taking my time while making Insanitek real and stable. (I'm not a huge risk taker, for the most part)

[Petra]

I'm going to go for watching anime in Japanese. The voices are much better, and I can't always catch the subtitles because I'm crocheting.