Herro Flom Japan

Finally a new "game" has come out for the Nintendo DS that will make me start using it again. Last night I was surfing the Nintendo channel of our Wii while putting off going to bed and came across an advertisement for 美文字トレーニング, a program that helps you improve your handwriting in Japanese. I downloaded [...]

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There are a number of official lists of kanji. I'm not an expert by any means, I'm just going by information gleamed off the net. 教育漢字(kyouiku kanji): The 1oo6 characters students must learn by grade 6. Essentially, knowing these characters is a good start, but you're far from finished. 当用漢字(touyou kanji): A list of 1850 [...]

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If you're a Facebook user and are learning Japanese, give the Kanji Box app a whirl. And no cheating by using Perapera-kun or Rikai-chan at the same time.

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I just came across a blog called "Hanzi Smatter," which chronicles the butchering of Chinese and Japanese writing in the west. Oh. My. God. I can't stop repeating that over and over as I see some of the tattoos people have gotten. They're so horrible they're not funny. Let's use this one for an example. [...]

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In Japanese Windows 2000 or XP there's a utility to lookup kanji characters by drawing them with your mouse, but if you can't draw them well enough you're screwed. This site will let you lookup characters by choosing radicals. I just found it and it saved me the embarrassment of having to ask a coworker [...]

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