Vacation is over and kanji learners at schools around the planet are once again cracking the books. Increasingly, they and their teachers -- as well as self-directed English-speaking kanji learners of all ages -- are supplementing paper-based publications with online learning resources. Today, Kanji Clinic invites you to join its Third Annual Cyberspace Treasure Hunt, a quest for kanji-learning gems on the Web.
Many of you who have gone hunting with us in the past may now be regular visitors to the "old favorite" sites we dug up then. Two of these help foster a passionate habit that is shared by most successful kanji learners: daily reading of their target language. At Rikai (www.rikai.com) you enter the URL for any Japanese-language Web site and zap! -- the pronunciations and meanings for every kanji in the text pop up on your screen. Goo (sp.cis.iwate-u.ac.jp/sp/lesson/j/doc/furigana.html) returns your desired Japanese URL with furigana (miniature hiragana written above the kanji to indicate pronunciation). Talk about convenient. The tedious process of looking up kanji in paper dictionaries while reading is becoming a thing of the past.
Daily reading of Japanese online is an ideal way to help prepare for the upper levels of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), to be held this year on Dec. 7. (Test takers in Japan have until tomorrow, Sept. 19, to postmark their application. Deadlines for overseas locations are also fast approaching. For details see www.aiej.or.jp.