I was watching TV the other day (I forget which station). And I happened to catch the new VISA card TV ad. This ad has always featured long dead Japanese historical figures Natsume Soseki, Hideyo Noguchi and Fukuzawa Yukichi in modern day settings. This time however, they’re all with Matt himself doing “the Matt dance” all over the world. The ad finishes with Noguchi saying “By the way, who are you?” to Matt. As a foreigner aware of the dancing Matt thing I found this hilarious, but my guess is he’s not that famous in Japan – hell he isn’t really THAT famous outside of the Internet. Certainly Mayumi nor any of the guys at the office had a clue who he was.

Here’s the ad:

Seems a strange choice for the face of VISA if no one knows who he is or why he’s dancing like a fool. But there’s really no accounting for some of what happens on Japanese TV.

JBrute: A wonderful downloadable dictionary package, it’s by far the most versatile and useful program I’ve come across.

Pros:

• English and Japanese lookup
• Breaks down individual kanji to display their meanings and full array of readings
• thousands of example sentences.
• Operates offline

Cons:

• No word bank function
• Since 2.0 was released it costs $30USD to register (personally I paid it, I think it’s a decent investment)

Popjisyo: An online site translation and word lookup site with popup tool tips.

Pros:

• Word bank function
• English and Japanese lookup
• Tool tips display kanji meanings and readings
• Can act as a “browser” window to surf Japanese websites giving you the ability to hover over a word and have the tooltip pop up to translate it.

Cons:

• No example sentences

Rikaichan: A  J-E translation addon for firefox.

Pros:

• Tool tips display word readings and meanings on hover
• Can choose to display meanings and readings of individual kanji within a jukugo.
• Comes complete with lookup bar.

Cons:

• No English – Japanese translation
• No word bank (Although I here that the modified version peraperakun does include this function, I just seem to have trouble getting it work at the moment)

I have to say I am blown away by what the folks over at Smartfm are offering for completely free. It is a wonderful package complete with retention graphs and pre recorded audio example sentences. I haven’t fully exlpored the site yet but the Japanese study options are extensive to say the very least. Even the accomplished learner could benefit greatly from what they have to offer. Do yourselves and the good people at smartfm a favor and head on over and check it out.

I do wonder how long it will be be before they begin charging for their services. But that said, it may well be one of those rare applications that actually warrants the investment. I’ll write a more detailed report on it after I’ve given it a few weeks run through, but so far, I love what I see.

So, this is very much a work in progress, but as a student of Japanese that’s made some reasonable progress and wants to progress  more, I’m starting this blog in order to share the resources and experience I’ve sourced over the past 2-3 years of focused learning. My aim is for this to be a source of motivation for myself and and aid to other people who are learning or planning to acquire Japanese as a language. This will be kind of an ecclectic mish mash of hints, thoughts, explanations and quite possibly the occaisional tips.

The real aim of the game is to create or join a network of Japanese enthusiasts so that we can operate to mutual benefit, so with that in mind よろしくお願いします。

ではでは。。