The one, the only, the "Hey that's a useful site" Thread.

[njt]

So.... in my 5+ years of studying and searching around for nice cool fun useful sites~ I've ran into quite a few... so I thought I'll spread the wealth of knowledge .

NOTE: ANY OFF TOPIC POSTS WILL BE DELETED. Thanks .

Anyways~~ here we go .
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Dictionaries[/center]

Goo Dic
A Great dictionary that has quite a bit of info packed into it
for those that don't know the basic kanji yet I'll give a brief explination of them...
英和 is English to Japanese
和英 is Japanese to English
国語 is Japanese to Japanese
辞書すべて is All the dictionaries.
the thingy below the input area says...
前方一致 is from the begining of the word
後方一致 from the end of the word
完全一致 whole word
説明文から from the explination of the word

Yahoo JP Dic
Yahoo JP is really good too, generally one of the two will have the word you are looking for. The plus thing about the Yahoo dictionary is that it bolds the words that you are searching for. Which is quite useful when trying to know the meaning and see what meaning it takes in the examples that it gives.

an explination of this site goes like this...

国語 Japanese-Japanese
類語 Synonyms
英和・和英　eng-jp jp-eng
すべての辞書 all the dictionaries.

then in the little drop box you have...

で始まる。 beginning
に一致する。 exact match
を含む。 Include~
で終わる。ends with
を説明に含む。 included in the explination

For you I prefer to use an english only/all website people you can use...

Dictionary + Lessons
It's based of the Edict, which is pretty good, but not VERY trustable... thus why you should use the top two before coming to this one...But while you are there, you should try his lessons. They are free. This site is ran by a friend of mine, who I swear, has to be the god of Japanese grammar. He runs a channel on irc highway, #nihongo so stop in. His name is Pomax, and yeah there are lots of people there that will help you out.

Bunch of links
and finally a site that has the three dictionaries I mentioned above, but with much much more .


PDA Dictionary
Ah, and one more... for those of you who have a PDA, this is a great dictionary. Not only does it have Kanji recognition by you writing out the kanji, but it also shows you the stroke order of QUITE a lot of kanji.



[center]Kanji Related[/center]

Kanji Test
Test yourself on Kanji. Great place for those of you who are studying for the JLPT.

Kanji Gold
This has got to be my favorite program to study Kanji. There is just soooo many different things you can get this program to do to help in your daily study. For those of you who don't like to go and experiement with new programs at least give it a try. I plan to write a little thing to help explain how to use the program to get all you can get out of it.

Kanji stroke order
Here you can find out how to write a kanji. The links on the left, one is pink that is for you to search out your desired kanji. The blue one is for you to search via a search box.

Kanji Step
Found another great page

JLPT Practice Tests
(Same site)you can take practice JLPT tests as well!

Kanji site for Japanese by Japanese
a kanji site, aimed at Japanese people. You can learn all types of things at that site so give it a try. As far as studying Kanji goes for a site, it's the best I've found yet!
Since it's all in Japanese, not for the complete beginner, but you can sure learn a lot so don't be overwhelmed and try it out! (I'm actually working getting him to get a grammar version (like his kanji game) up. So that you can move grammar around and get it correct. Hopefully he'll be willing to go into advanced grammar....

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Grammar[/center]

Jgram
This is a great site for those of you who are studying for the JLPT. With nearly all the stuff that will be on the JLPT covered with examples as well as definitions you'll be set to pass the test in no time . Only downside to this site is that the examples are freely added by anyone... and thus can be wrong. But it's growing steadily and I'm sure more natives will be willing to help it as it grows. So keep an eye out on it and learn as much as you can. I know I have .

MLC Japanese
Another GREAT site. They have collected all the information of the past JLPT tests for a few years and piled them up into PDFs for your downloading pleasure. Not only that, they also have various activities to do to check your Japanese level as well. A must have/needed site for those that want to know what's going to be on the test but no means other than the net to see it. (But yes, if you can afford, getting professional material for studying is MUCH better... just fyi . )

So for those of you that are studying for the JLPT, consider your extreme worries to either fade away... or start, after seeing what will be on your new and up coming test.

And the last link is a site that has QUITE a few links as well~ it's the
Monash nihongo ftp
TONS of stuff for you to learn with~ check it out.

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Online tutor / Lessons[/center]
If all that didn't help you enough and you need more of a teacher figure to help you out. I run a site where I tutor people in Japanese.... If that interests you you can check out my site here -Udanstraight.com-.


Pera Pera Penguin
An interesting site, you can learn Japanese taught by a Native. Quite a lot of work has been put into these, and there are a bunch there so be sure to check them out. Since they are VERY well done.

*phew* with that all said, I'll leave the rest of this thread open for more links to sites that could perhaps be better than the ones stated here. Thanks for taking the time to read it .

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Sites recommended by YOU![/center]

By alex_2096

Writing tutorNEW
Kana stroke order site

By Apollo

Another Dictionary (edict) NEW

By DonnaP

Web-Japan/kidsweb
It's a website for kids, so it's a bit elementary and the graphics are cutesy, but the following website does have some good lessons, along with audio that helps with both pronunciation and inflection.

By skrhgh3b

ALC website
search a huge database of example sentences in english and japanese. i don't know how my japanese pen pal and i would have communited without it.

Guide to Japanese-Grammar
the best grammar tutorial i've found on the internet.

Yahoo learn J group
not a terribly active group these days, but it has a handful of very friendly and helpful native speakers who will help answer your more advanced questions.

Mangarama
mangarama. some of these comic strips are actually pretty funny.

Firefox plugin
have the firefox browser? (i don't use it much on my mac, but if you're running windows, you should.) then you can run the rikaixul plug-in and get kanji readings and definitions for any japanese webpage. never fear the japanese web again!

By Daichi

Joewright.org
It's written by Qbe, a JapanesePage member, and is incredibly helpful and insightful.

Usagi-Chan's Genki Resources NEW
As the title suggests it's designed for users of the Genki books, but I'd recommend to others too. It's a good resource for kana/kanji in particular. It has guides to stroke order, printable flashcards - I particularly liked the kana drag 'n' drop exercises.

By kinch

Useful links
Simular thread, posted first, and thus deserves mentioning . Check it out~

By mandolin

[URL=
http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/japanese/cover.html]Takasugi Shinji[/url]
This was the first site I ever visited to start learning japanese. I don't know if it's the greatest resource out there, but I will say it was the first site that really made me feel as though japanese was an attainable goal. He focuses on grammar on his site, even though he says that vocab is more important.

[URL=
http://www.japaneselearning.com/index.p ... 15&catid=6]Printable Kana flash cards![/url]
I found this. It's a link to a post on another forum because I don't wanna take credit for this guy's work. It's for PRINTABLE KANA FLASHCARDS. Free!

By kanadajin

[URL=
http://www.learn-japanese.info/ ]Learn-Japanese[/url]
it has ALOT of vocabulary grammer and very good lessons has alot of romaji which i find usefull for beginners.

By Kurisuchan

Flash Card ExchangeNEW
Has lots of flash cards on Japanese.

By Luthien Rogue

3 Yen.comNEW
By Tae Kim--who wrote the "Guide to Japanese"--this site teaches colloquial speech, and is updated about once every 1-2 weeks.

[yankumi]

It's a website for kids, so it's a bit elementary and the graphics are cutesy, but the following website does have some good lessons, along with audio that helps with both pronunciation and inflection.

http://web-japan.org/kidsweb/say.html

[skrhgh3b]

woah! great post. here are my additions:


http://www.alc.co.jp/ <-- search a huge database of example sentences in english and japanese. i don't know how my japanese pen pal and i would have communited without it.

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdic.html <-- everyone here is probably aware of jim breen's wwwjdic, but if you're still not in the know, you can thank me now.

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/ <-- the best grammar tutorial i've found on the internet.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/learnjapanese/ <-- not a terribly active group these days, but it has a handful of very friendly and helpful native speakers who will help answer your more advanced questions.

http://www.ak.cradle.titech.ac.jp/Rise/top.htm <-- mangarama. some of these comic strips are actually pretty funny.

http://rikaixul.mozdev.org/ <-- have the firefox browser? (i don't use it much on my mac, but if you're running windows, you should.) then you can run the rikaixul plug-in and get kanji readings and definitions for any japanese webpage. never fear the japanese web again!


http://www.kiyoshiro.co.jp/ <-- eheh. i'll be a geek and post my favorite japanese rock star

[Daichi]

If you're just starting out I whole-heartedly recommend visiting the following page:

http://www.joewright.org/writings/learnj.html

It's written by Qbe, a JapanesePage member, and is incredibly helpful and insightful.

[Spaztick]

Awesome! If this wans't the one, the only, "Hey that's a useful link" thread, I'd post this in my FAW.

[njt]

Spaztick wrote:
Awesome! If this wans't the one, the only, "Hey that's a useful link" thread, I'd post this in my FAW.

haha, feel free to spread the knowledge I'm not picky .(just be sure to comment back here if you find any more "better/cool" sites . )
As for the other links, thanks a bunch VERY interesting~

[Daisuke]

I stickied this topic, since it seems very helpful.

[kinch]

A few months ago, when I joined this site, I posted something similar called "Various Online Resources" (you can find the post at http://www.thejapanesepage.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=230#1934). I got absolutely ZERO replies. It wasn't even made sticky! And now someone posts the same thing (admittedly, with more resources - I have about 20 or 30 webpages in my bookmarks file, but I posted only the ones I felt were most helpful to people) and he gets a) helpful replies, and b) sticky'd. WTF is going on here?!

I know I'm whining, but to be honest, I'm getting pretty tired of this. I've posted articles asking for people to contribute more, and I get hardly any responses. I've posted on the forums asking for people to contribute, and I get no responses. And then a post that's similar to mine comes up, and all of a sudden it gets all the praise of fellow members and even the mods! </end whine>

[mandolin]

No love for Takasugi Shinji...

http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/japanese/cover.html

This was the first site I ever visited to start learning japanese. I don't know if it's the greatest resource out there, but I will say it was the first site that really made me feel as though japanese was an attainable goal. He focuses on grammar on his site, even though he says that vocab is more important.

I still use the site for reference frequently, and occasionally when I am bored I still play the java game for hiragana/katakana matching just to keep me up to par...

[njt]

kinch wrote:
A few months ago, when I joined this site, I posted something similar called "Various Online Resources" (you can find the post at http://www.thejapanesepage.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=230#1934). I got absolutely ZERO replies. It wasn't even made sticky! And now someone posts the same thing (admittedly, with more resources - I have about 20 or 30 webpages in my bookmarks file, but I posted only the ones I felt were most helpful to people) and he gets a) helpful replies, and b) sticky'd. WTF is going on here?!

I know I'm whining, but to be honest, I'm getting pretty tired of this. I've posted articles asking for people to contribute more, and I get hardly any responses. I've posted on the forums asking for people to contribute, and I get no responses. And then a post that's similar to mine comes up, and all of a sudden it gets all the praise of fellow members and even the mods! </end whine>

Ah hey, sorry about that. Before posting this thread I did a search for links and only found a few threads but none like mine, so that's why I created it. I didn't search for resources and thus why yours didn't come up.

If you would like to, you could add your links to this thread, so that people can still see it and thus making it not a complete waste...?

mandolin wrote:
No love for Takasugi Shinji...

http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/japanese/cover.html

This was the first site I ever visited to start learning japanese. I don't know if it's the greatest resource out there, but I will say it was the first site that really made me feel as though japanese was an attainable goal. He focuses on grammar on his site, even though he says that vocab is more important.

I still use the site for reference frequently, and occasionally when I am bored I still play the java game for hiragana/katakana matching just to keep me up to par...

I actually did see this site before. But it was after I had already learned the basics, so didn't book mark it, and then totally forgot about it. Thanks for showing me the site again .

[sakura_joshin]

Also look at yesjapan.com. It costs money but the lessons are well planned and some of the weekly shows (such as George and Kikeo) are very good.

[njt]

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/columns/0002/

New site added It'll have the new by it .

[njt]

All off topic posts have been deleted, if you want to discuss something other than links, please use another thread/pm.
Thanks .

[mandolin]

You should add sites to your original post so they're all together! That'd be a pretty comprehensive list, plus your formatting is way pretty and easy to read, and i can't be buggered to try to be so nice 'n net. Not to mention.. I have no idea how to make something a link without the url tag, which doesn't let me make my own text (Like "Click HERE for blah blah" and make "HERE" a link on this page. I tried html and the forum didn't like that very much.

ANYWAY, I found this. It's a link to a post on another forum because I don't wanna take credit for this guy's work. It's for PRINTABLE KANA FLASHCARDS. Free!

http://www.japaneselearning.com/index.php?option=com_simpleboard&Itemid=63&func=view&id=615&catid=6

[njt]

Found another great page
Kanji Step

you can take practice JLPT tests as well!

JLPT Practice Tests

As for updating the page like Mandolin said, sure, will do!
Just been really busy lately, studying has taken much of my time, and I believed I studied too much yesterday, that I caught a cold as well... so I'll try to update the links here soon .

P.s. to find out how I am making the links look fancy, just quote my text and you'll see how it's done .