The Japanese WebLab by Francis Britto

**Select an Option**
Conversation	Dictionaries	Grammar	Kana And Kanji
Listening	Pronunciation	Quizzes	Reading
Various Skills	Vocabulary	Writing	Resources

dormant: Several conversational exchanges, written in romaji. Greetings, Travel, etc. There are also "one point" business dialogues in 14 parts. A short non-interactive quiz section with 7 questions. Also, five interactive quizzes of Antonyms, each with 10 kanji, to which you are supposed to enter the opposite. (identified as "autonim") Erickson's page, in frames, also has other useful sections like "資料室 (shiryoushitsu)""図書館 (toshokan)"and "掲示板 (keijiban)".
Japan Information Network KidsWeb: Simple, basic conversational exercises. Can listen to any sentence just by placing the cursor over it. Seven such lessons. Also kana charts, and other items related to culture, games, etc.
Takaaki Sonobe's Easy Web Japanese: The same content is available in Englishhere:. Has seven small lessons entitled Greetings, Introductions, Numbers, Time, Days & Months, How much? and My Phone. More of a phrase book with explanatory comments than a page of genuine conversations.

Jouji Miwa Japanese Language Education System for Speech on an On-demand Network (LESSON/J): Award-winning Java-powered exercises, with numerous audio segments. The Dictation Quizzes are superb--though lacking in adequate help messages. You can listen to each Japanese syllable, and answer a dictation test by pressing the syllable button! There are exercises for six levels, dealing with minimal pairs, words, sentences, word accents, etc.
Inactive as of 2008/09/17 00:57:47: A small collection of real-life spoken Japanese in Real Audio format. After listening to songs or commercials, you'll have to answer comprehension questions, which may be submitted for evaluation (No evaluation took place when I submitted it on 2000/10/22). Still under construction. Rather advanced.

Hajime Nakamura (Grammar Notes and FAQ) 日本語教育に関するFAQ: Explains several Japanese grammar points, e.g., the use of "wa" and "ga", in Japanese.
Koji Hamamoto Bridge Between Japan and Nations: Japanese Tutorial.: Thirteen lesons, 11 on Japanese grammar, one on pronunciation, and one on Kanji. Has Real Audio files, romaji transcription, and structured examples and clear explanations. Very good for beginners.
John Chew's Particles: A short introduction to the three particles "mo," "no, " and "wo." He also has such one-page introductions to verbs "This, that and the other thing."

Kana and Kanji: There don't seem to be sites specifically dedicated to "writing", but there are several that teach you how to write Kana and Kanji. So for now, you'll have to be satisfied with the Kana And Kanji section.
Blake Edward Sterzinger's Japanese Writing Tutor Mirror Sites: "This page is meant to help students of Japanese practice their writing skills. By following along with the motion of several animated GIF files, you can hone your writing skills, making your katakana, hiragana, and kanji more legible. As of now, it does not deal with transliteration, dipthongs, why the characters are organized the way they are, or any other writing conventions; it is only meant to help learn individual characters. "

Hiragana (ひらがな): A set of exercises and lessons related to hiragana. Contains: "Stroke-Order Movie, Male & Female native speakers, Images showing each stroke, Memory picture, Origin of character, Romaji spelling, and Prounciation of each character."
Katakana Steps: Animated gifs show you how to write Katakana. Explanation as well as pronunciation hints are given. Audio files help you hear the sound, and a table of all katakanas appears.
Hiragana Steps: Animated gifs show you how to write Hiragana. Explanation as well as pronunciation hints are given. Audio files help you hear the sound, and a table of all hiraganas appears.
(Kanji Practice) 漢字の練習: Short quizzes to which you respond by clicking on a given option. Errors are flagged, but no explanatory comment or meaning is given. There are four collections of quizzes: Introductory, Basic, Intermediate, Advanced, and Special (入門、初級、中球、上級、特級）．Can be good for reviewing Kanji.
(List of Joyou Kanjis) 常用漢字の一覧表示(G1): A list of Kanjis is shown. When you select a Kanji, its Kun and On readings as well as examples and a Quicktime clip are shown. "This new WWKanji page supports 2056 kanji data including all the Joyo Kanji. Each kanji page gives how to draw kanji using the QuickTime movie, practice writing filed, 'on' and 'kun' readings, stroke number, and jukugo (compound words) information.)" There is also a "Search Page" and a Kanji practice page.
Ste-chan's Kanji of the Day: A very simple and easy-to-use page. Several sets of Kanji, grouped into "easier" and "harder" types may be selected. When you click on any Kanji, its On and Kun readings appear, together with examples. Unfortunately, Ste-Chan hasn't updated it since January 1998. There are, however, already several hundred Kanjis to study.
Aki Nakaya's The short story of Kanji-picture collection: A few hundred Kanjis with short sketches on how they developed from original figures that represented objects. Quite interesting and educational to non-Japanese. With some imagination, you may come to see the original figures behind the Kanjis you encounter every day! (Caveat: If you find cute "Janglish" errors offensive or hard to take, better skip this site.)
Blake Edward Sterzinger The Japanese Writing Tutor: Methodically organized writing tutor. Teaches Kana and Kanji, with all explanations in English.
Japan Window Project: Let's learn Katakana: Colorful and easy lessons for learning Katakana. Teaches you how to pronounce (with a sound clip) and how to write. Has sample words as well. Excellent for beginners and kids.

KAWAMURA Yoshiko, KITAMURA Tatsuya, HOBARA rei Reading Tutor: Has bilingual dictionary; vocabulary and Kanji level checkers. Furigana is accessible. Excellent super duper site. Just copy and paste any Japanese text you like to read in the box provided. Then you can access all these features: dictionary, furigana reading for each Kanji, etc. Just click on the button marked "dictionary" and you'll get all the words with English meaning and furigana! The appeal of this site is that you can cut and paste any text unknown to the program! So it's open-ended. Also has Reading Quizzes with interactive feedback.
Kawamura, Kitamura & Hobara チュウ太の読解教材バンク Chuta Reading Bank: The main reading resources are at: http://contest.thinkquest.gr.jp/tqj1999/20190/textbank.html Levels of difficulty are shown by increasing number of asterisks. Quite a large collection of reading matter. Each reading appears in a three-frame window. The top left window shows the main text, with key words shown as hyperlinks. When you click on these keywords, the top right frame displays its different meanings in English. At the end of the reading, there are a few noninteractive comprehension questions. A record is kept of all the words you looked up, and this record can be seen by pressing a button marked "List." There is also a vocabulary checker and Japanese writings by foreigners. The third frame at the bottom is merely for navigating back to the index page. Excellent!
(News for Middle Schoolers) 中学生ニュース: Asahi Shogakusei Shinbun, Asahi Chuugakusei Weekly. Ideal for learners familiar with only a few Kanjis. This newspaper is intended for Japanese middle-school students.
(Gakushuu Anime no Kan) 学習アニメの館: Highly interesting way of learning basic Kanji. If you click on 王 for example you'll see an animated gif, drawing the strokes and commenting on the meaning. There are Kanji for the first, second, and third graders. The Hiragana and Katakana section too have wonderful animation graphics conveying how these characters developed from Kanji. Each character also is shown with a sample word in which it's used. The 地図記号の成り立ち too is quite interesting as it explains by animation how certain symbols like the post office "〒" came about.
Tim Duncan's Nihon-no Kotowaza: Compiled from the sci.lang.japan newsgroup articles, this under-construction page contains 33 proverbs, in Japanese, with Romaji transcription, literal and interpreted meanings (in English) and some notes in English.

Shinji Takasugi Teach Yourself Japanese: Super resource containing many lessons and pieces of information on Japanese. Has nine major sections, entitled Introduction, Standard Hiragana, Double Hiragana, Other Kana information, Numbers, Greetings, Basic Grammar, Vocabulary, and Dilagoues. Each section has about seven chapters. Almost all the files, including audio files, may be downloaded in zipped format.
David Reed's The Japanese Tutor: Outstanding, colorful, animated, and useful resource for learning Japanese. Has lessons for learning grammar, Kanji, Kana, etc., etc. Reed says this is "the first and largest site" to use animation to teach Kanji strokes. Latest browser and a fast PC are recommended since this is quite heavy with scripts and figures.
Basic Japanese for Beginners: Has short sections named: Spoken Japanese, Written Japanese, Grammar, Hiragana, Katakana, and Basic Phrases--all on a single page. Meant for persons who know nothing about the Japanese language.
YSDrunka Nihongo Paku Paku: Shockwave-enhanced pages teach you basic Hiragana, Katakana, and simple phrases related to greetings, body parts, etc. When I checked on 2000/07/06 20:23:27, some chapters didn't function properly, but some did. Each page has several cartoons with English phrases ("Good morning," "How are you?" etc.), and clicking on each you can see the Japanese equivalent, both in romaji and kanji/kana, and hear the Japanese (e.g., Ohayo gozaimasu, Gokigen ikaga desuka?) pronounced. Overall, an excellent introduction to beginners.

The Kanji Site: JLPT Kanji Main Index: Nearly 1,000 Kanjis required for passing Japanese Language Proficiency Tests are dealt with. Besides teaching the Kanji itself, it also introuduces a large number of compound words in which the Kanjis are used. Very good and recommended for advanced learners. There's also a "Random Testing" section.
Nihongoshoho - Elementary Japanese Language: Although meant to be used with the textbook 日本語初歩, the large number of words listed here can be used for learning Japanese vocabulary, Kanji, and Kanji readings. Quite a large list of words, each with Kanji, its hiragana reading, and English meaning. There are 28 lists (and six more in preparation), as well as Word Index and Kanji Index. Thee's also an "Interactive Adaptive Vocabulary Test."
Masayshi Kanai's Gahoh: The penmanship of Japanese language movies: Five sets of QuickTime movie clips: Hiragana, Katakana, JoyouKanji, Request Kanji, and Jouyougai Kanji." Excellent for learning how to write Kanjis, as each movie draws a character before your eyes.
Etsuko Shioda's Onomatopoetic Words in Japan: A good collection of onomatopoeic words, e.g., "gaagaa, hihiin, meimei" and their meaning, together with examples of usage.
Etsuko Shioda's Simple Wordbook of Japanese: Various collections of phrases and words for the beginner: Greeting Words, Simple Phrases, Wasei Eigo, Colloquial, Annual Greetings . All Japanese words/phrases written in romaji.
Bernard McMahon's E<->J (Romanized) Language Learning Dictionary: Although the title suggests an impressive and voluminous "dictionary", at present it's merely a single page containing "Definitions and Usage of Common Words/ Specialized and Limited Elementary Vocabulary for Beginning English and Japanese Language Students, and Tourists." Since the whole page is only in Romaji, it's ideal for absolute beginners.
Natsumi's Common Japanese Words, Phrases, Expressions: A long list of basic Japanese phrases and words in Romaji together with their meaning. Very basic.
E<->J FlashCards: A large number of words shown on screen one after the other like flashcards. Once you guess the meaning of a card, you click on the "Answer" button to get a brief explanation (but no sample sentence). There are terms grouped under ten categories, such as Finance, Life Sciences, General, and Idioms. There is also an "Auto-Pilot" that automatically flashes a new card after a few seconds.

Jeffrey Fried's Japanese<-->English Dictionary Gateway: English as well as Japanese explanation available. Also available here
ALC Press Eijiro On the Web: English as well as Japanese words may be looked up. Said to contain 810,000 words, including slang, computerese, medical jargon, etc. Gives example phrases (e.g., if you look up "やばい" the meaning and examples like やばい金 are given with meaning.
Todd David Rudick's gnu JavaDict: Free software. Requires Java Virtual Machine software. May be run in Unix or Windows.
Pacific Software Publishing Bidirectional Online Dictionary: Based on Jim Breen's EDICT dictionary, this may be used to look up the meaning of an English or a Japanese word. Accepts only Kanji or Kana input for Japanese. .
Hideki Yamamoto's Counting Dictionary: Excellent dictionary for people who are unsure of which counter to use with which nouns (ippiki?, ikko?, ippon?) and how to count the counters (nihiki?, nibiki?). Excellent resource very useful to learners.

MIT's JP Net : Japanese Language and Culture Network
: "A clearling house for tools, services and information for Japanese Language and Culture educators and students world-wide." Learn Kanji, read Japanese, etc.There are English articles on "Japanese holidays and cultural events," "Kimono," "Japanese Language," etc. The link http://web.mit.edu/jpnet/mit/index.html contains "MIT Japanese Language Program Web-based Materials."
University of Sussex Japanese Links
: Lists several links of "Internet resources for teachers and learners of Japanese."
(Nihongo Ja-naru) 日本語ジャーナル
: General information for students learning Japanese. Information on Japanese Competence tests.
(Links to Language Webs in Japan) 国内言語学関連研究機関 WWWホームページリスト
: A large selection of links related to Japanese, focusing on Suggestopedia and linguistics, each with several lines of comments in Japanese.
Hajime Nakamura 日本語教育通信 Japanese Educationa
: A variety of information, including quizzes, notes, etc.
TokyoTokyoTokyo Learning Japanese Language Links
: A variety of links. Absolutely unnecessary MIDI music takes time to load and is annoying, but otherwise has many useful links.
Japanese language learning tools on Web
: Keiko Schneider's collection of links. No reviews, but many sites and pages are listed.
The Japan FAQ: Know before you go: This is not directly related to learning Japanese, but may be very helpful to overseas residents if they wish to come to Japan to study Japanese. Very practical hints about life in Japan.
Mother of All Japan Links: As the site owner acknowledges, this set of links is a copy of Larry Stockton's Japan links, a framed page. The links don't deal much with learning Japanese, but with learning about Japan--its politics, culture, regions, etc.
Paul D. Black's Japanese Language Resources: Short reviews of publications--not online resources--related to learning Japanese, e.g., Dictionaries, Grammar, Hiragana, Katakana, Styles, etc. If you're looking for a book, you may find this page quite useful.
Namiko Abe's Guide to "Japanese Language.": This "About.Com" page, heavy though with graphics, scripts, and ads, does contain links to several useful lessons: Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji, Vocabulary, Verbs,
StudyWeb Links: A collection of 56 links for Japanese learners compiled by Study Web. Many sites are briefly described, together with the level they may be appropriate for.
Teach Yourself Japanese: Basic introduction to Japanese (grammar, kana, conversation, etc.) with quizzes and detailed explanations. In nine Units and containing many pages.