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

[mrosen]

I'd also like to suggest JBrute, a true J/E and J/E electronic dictionary for Windows. It requires no Internet connection and uses EDict content and the "Tanaka Corpus" examples -- which means there's about 160K entries and a comparable number of examples. It's designed to work like a very simple PDA-based dictionary. But for a $30 registration fee, it's cheaper than any dedicated device could ever hope to be.

http://www.jbrute.com

Disclaimer: I'm the author / publisher.

[Kailene]

擬音語/Onomatopoeia

http://www.kokken.go.jp/nknet/Onomatope/category.html

I found myself wondering the meaning of some ぎおんご and my teacher gave me this site. After clicking on the specific word, scroll to the bottom of the explanation page, and there's a short Japanese manga about the specific ぎおんご~

Fun and useful!

[Darkseed74]

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/fo ... PN=1&TPN=1

I would like to recommend this thread I found linked on Tae Kim's forum. It contains a collection of links to many Japanese stories along with the related audio files and English translations (if available). All works are in the public domain.

[Langanut]

Here is a shameless plug for my very own:

http://www.thejapanesetutor.com -- has flashcards, quizzes, and lists for hiragana, katakana, kanji, and vocabulary words! Some grammar and cultural articles as well.

[Sairana]

Here is a shameless plug for my very own:

http://www.thejapanesetutor.com -- has flashcards, quizzes, and lists for hiragana, katakana, kanji, and vocabulary words! Some grammar and cultural articles as well.

Most of it seems OK. I have some minor qualms with this page though. I don't think 'desu' is the copula after an i-adjective, is it?

[NocturnalOcean]

Yeah, when after i-adjectives, it is considered a politeness marker.
What generally works to determine whether the desu functions as a copula or not is to change it with "da", it that works, you can be fairly safe that it is functioning as a copula.

[Langanut]

Hrm... Seems like you're right! Thanks for the heads up, I'll fix it on the site.

-Tony

[Txkun]

Hi all,
how are you?

I found a week or so ago this website that looks promising.
It's to study kanji with little context and decks for JLPT.

Hope you'll enjoy it.

http://www.readthekanji.com/

[Endo]

I often visit this site to read about all kinds of things, it's almost like going to school again learning things science, biology, history etc.
http://kids.gakken.co.jp/index.html

[vodesny]

Well, I have some links myself - although I shall be repeating a few others, I just want to clarify that:
http://japanese.about.com/ - the best site I have ever learned from. Perhaps this is a little biased - it was also the FIRST I ever learned from, but hey, it's a really nice site, I reccomend you check it out
now what? ah, http://coscom.co.jp/ - has lots of practice things you can print off, and really clear instructions on typing in Japanese. Oh no! someone has also shown this...
http://www.learn-japanese.info/ - it would be a lie to say I often use this, but it has lots of vocab lists (although not always listing the kanji )
http://kanjisite.com/ - I simply LOVE this site. It doesn't teach kanji, it just lists and sorts them by JLPT levels, but this was a brilliant site I learnt my JLPT 4 from. It also has a cute mini test ^_^
http://www.ajalt.org/e/online/online.html - Look at the Japanese learning supplements on the first result. Although the graphics are childish and it is really primitive stuff, I think it's a great link if you ever want a chance to practise listening to a native's voice - and sometimes they speak FAST
http://www.timwerx.net/home/index.htm - and of course there are few Japanese online learners out there who HAVEN'T heard off this site. I think it's already be mentioned... yes it has. Oh well. Here we go again!
http://language.tiu.ac.jp/materials/ - a nice reading site...
http://life.ou.edu/stories/ - I stumbled over this by accident once. It's a little childish like because it seldom lists kanji, but I think it's nice to read for vocab's sake. And the original Japanese stories are lovely.

My dictionaries are mainly:
http://jisho.org/
http://tangorin.com/ is my second favourite. It's better for looking up single kanji.

Some Japanese Culture sites (well, not exactly Japanese LEARNING sites, but I would advise you to drop by them if you ever have the time, they're quite nice
http://www.hanamiweb.com/topstory11092009.html - this has some brilliant culture, history and geography of Japan. It's a fascinating site and has a few references to the language here and there. There are lots of interesting articles.
http://www.farsidemusic.com/ - it is a radio site, that shows lots of Asian songs, not just Japanese. I stumbled across this when searching for Rikki Nakano.
http://kotoworld.com/ - this is a site that sells their CDs, beautiful traditional Japanese music. If you want, there are a few test files you can listen to too.
http://rpgff.net/ - this is actually a site dedicated to games, but if you visit the song lyrics page listed further down, you get lots of files to lyrics and mp3s of songs (mainly in Japanese)from particular games. I haven't even played on half of them, but I still think that they are a great help for learning vocab (though not really grammar )

These are all my favourites I wanted to mention. I'm pretty sure I have a few more up my sleeve, but for now I've gone blank. If I think of more, I'll definitely post more. This thread is just GREAT!!!!

[Ben Bullock]

(Disclaimer: these are all my websites)

FAQ for sci.lang.japan - old Usenet newsgroup "Frequently Asked Questions". The newsgroup itself is now very low-traffic.
Kanji handwriting recognition - basically "kanjipad" online.
Multiradical lookup
Convert English words to katakana
Convert numbers to kanji numbers and Convert kanji numbers to English or numerals.

There are a few more odds and ends like date/unit converters or Japanese postcode lookups at the above.

I hope someone finds them useful.

[robby in Japan]

Great sites everbody!

So, I feel almost ashamed to add my own blog here...
http://allaboutnihongo.blogspot.com/

Lately I am mainly writing about Japanese expressions I encounter in my everyday life, and about how to study Kanji in an effective way.

Please have a look, I would be happy with any comments.

Best,

Rob

[Frumious Boojum]

http://www.kanjidream.com/

Been using this a lot lately... simple, well-designed app for just about every level. All 2000+ JLPT kanji, plus kana. Plus, one of the most customizable difficulty level customization systems I've seen. And it actually does help on the weak areas more than those that you've aced, so not just random kanji all the time.

One of the best paid apps for Japanese I've seen so far... Kotoba! ( http://kotoba.pierrephi.net/ ) would probably be the best in the free apps.

[luke2063]

Hey, I've started work on my own Japanese website - it's a kind of flashcard type interface, grouped by category. I'm updating it regularly, and would love any feedback on it! It's already proved useful to me, and people in my Japanese class, who tend to visit it most days. Anyway, it is http://www.romaji.co.uk

[sakaeyellow]

http://www.japanese-language.aiyori.org/
I hope you'll find it useful for your study.