Mika a Japanese English language student sat down to watch Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and this is her conception of it all.

I can’t imagine how difficult it is to understand the Star Wars Saga coming from another language. It’s one hell of a story that I don’t even understand at times.

Mika sure doesn’t do a bad job!

Source: Kotaku; Kirai

I’ve previously introduced you to Furigana Injector, a nifty little plugin available for Firefox and Chrome users that lets you add furigana to content on the web with just one click.

Now I realize some people don’t use any of these browsers (don’t ask me why because I don’t get it either), and if you happen to be one of them, below are a couple of links that will help you add furigana to texts and websites without them.

Hiragana Megane
This website lets you add furigana to any web page simply by putting in a URL to an input field. The good thing about Hiragana Megane is that it seems to get everything right, some other furigana generators I’ve tried (although none in this post) have had big problems with names. It also gives you a proper link that you can send to your friends.

Furigana Generator
This tool is slightly different, instead of adding a URL you actually copy and paste some Japanese text into a big text field and clicking “Add Furigana”. This might come in handy if you’re trying to add furigana to a website that has a complicated stylesheet.

Furiganizer
Works just like Furigana Generator, just use the one you happen to like the most.

I hope that helps with your studies or simply your daily use of Japanese websites! Have fun!

Well well, look at what we’ve got here! Could this be the original iKnow! mousepad everyone’s been talking about? Why yes it is.

I happen to be one of the lucky winners of the iKnow! Autumn Study Campaign raffle drawing!

For those who don’t know, iKnow! became a premium only language learning tool not too long ago. For a while, the iKnow! tool was used on a community called “smart.fm”, but that is now gone and iKnow! is back to being the tool it’s ought to be. Since the move, they’ve made a lot of changes to the interface and added a few new features that in my opinion make the site a lot easier to use. For example, the new achievements feature is a great way to keep you going, but perhaps most importantly, the iPhone and Android apps work really well.

But forget all about the cool features, this mousepad might be exactly what I need. My biggest enemy is my own memory, it’s not about procrastination because I really enjoy studying, and although I do get study reminders via e-mail every now and then, it’s easy to just go “well, I’m busy at the moment so I’ll do that later”. Then of course you forget all about it when you finally have the time. With this mousepad, there’s no point in coming up with excuses, I’ll be reminded constantly!

There’s just a tiny little issue… I use a trackpad.

That looks like a nice little podium for the lovely Magic Trackpad, but for now, I think I’ll just use it as something for my iPhone to rest on(^_^)

In case you haven’t heard, Apple released its latest iPhone last Friday. The iPhone 4S isn’t much of an upgrade but that hasn’t stopped Apple fans from getting it. One of the biggest new features is “Siri”, a personal assistant that can send text and set up appointments for you just by using your voice.

Although “Siri” currently only supports English, French and German. Japanese Apple fans have been testing out the software. “Siri” doesn’t respond too well to different accents to say the least.

Here’s hoping “Siri” which is still in beta will add Japanese voice recognition software sometime in the near future. On the flip side, this guy shows us it can be done.

Have you been using “Siri”? How have you found using the voice recognition with your accent?

A Bento or lunch box as we know it in the west are home-packed meals, typical filled with rice, fish, meat or cooked vegetables. Leave it to the Japanese to make them cute and fun with “Kyaraben” or “Character Bentos”.

Over the past few years the “Kyaraben” craze has brought about contest such as Sanrio’s Annual Kyaraben Contest and turned what children have for lunch into a hobby and form of art.

After a little bit of searching, I came across some excellent looking ones. Here are my top 10. Enjoy!

10.

9.

8.

7.

6.

5.

4.

3.

2.

1.

The alternative is a very simple solution and all you have to do is change a few settings, because if you’re on a Mac, you already have what you need. Basically what you can do is activate a Japanese-English dictionary in the Dictionary app, which unsurprisingly allows you to look up Japanese words.

What you might not know about this, is that the Dictionary app has a built-in feature called floating dictionary. The floating dictionary is activated by hovering over a word and pressing the key combination cmd+ctrl+d.

And if the selection fails by just hovering, you can highlight whatever it is you want to look up, and press cmd+ctrl+d just like you would when hovering.

There are a few of pros and cons about this alternative that you need to know about however.

Pros

• It’s built-in to the system, no need for a 3rd party plugin.
• You don’t have to turn it off when you don’t need it. Rikaichan’s popups are pretty annoying when you don’t want them.
• You get things like example sentences with translations which is perfect when you’re having a hard time understanding the word in context.
• Floating dictionary is not a browser plugin, it works with any selectable text in almost any application, for example Twitter, Mail and Adium. It does not work in Adobe Air applications like TweetDeck.

On the NihongoUp Blog, I’ve posted an article on how to use discover, organize, and listen to podcasts on Windows Phone 7 devices. This, the sister article to that post, will focus on selecting the best content to put on your mobile device. Of course, these podcasts aren’t limited to just WP7 devices, and you can also subscribe to them with Miro, iTunes, or download directly on their websites.

OneMinute Japanese

Although the whole ‘product’ feels quite polished, this podcast leaves a lot to be desired. Why did I use the word product? The lessons are stilted and the non-native’s accent is frankly terrible. The language that you learn in this podcasts is unnatural to say the least, there are only ten episodes, and Radio Lingua Network tries to sell a premium edition of the very same ten lessons with bonus content like lesson guides and quizzes for whopping £10. My advice is to save the money for a month of premium NihongoUp or Japancast and probably avoid this altogether.

Japancast

Although a relative newcomer, this series already reached the number one position among Japanese video podcasts on iTunes, and for a reason. It is very well presented, the hosts are great, fun and personal, and the lessons are getting better and better with every episode. Each video starts with interesting news from Japan, and then moves onto truly interesting, natural, and useful Japanese phrases and vocabulary. If you can afford it, certainly consider making a donation to get access to some additional lesson content…

JapanesePod101

You’ve probably heard about JapanesePod101 already, but if you haven’t, here’s the lowdown. This is quite possibly the most popular Japanese podcast, and it certainly has a lot of value. There are literally thousands of audio and video lessons with many different professional-grade hosts and well researched content. I often find them too commercial in nature, and somewhat impersonal, but definitely do check them out to form your own opinion – and probably skip the tedious intro every time!

Japanese with Beb and Alex

If you’re not a fan of video, this mostly audio-only podcast is something you should definitely check out. Lots of language lessons, cultural episodes, interviews, and all kinds of other Japanese and Japan-related content. The lessons aren’t really oriented at beginner learners, and so it’s probably better to wait until you learn at least some basic Japanese, but they become a really useful asset at the time when you decide to dive into some more advanced, uncommon, and colloquial Japanese.

Osaka dialect

This is one of the best podcasts for intermedia-advanced Japanese learners. All episodes are presented by a native Japanese Osaka-ben speaker, at natural speed, using natural colloquial Japanese. Also, unlike any of the other podcasts discussed in this post, the transcripts of all episodes are freely available on the website, with expressions unique to Osaka-ben clearly indicated and given standard Japanese alternatives in parenthesis.

I hope you liked my post, and found some new interesting podcasts to help you spice-up your spoken Japanese and bolster your aural comprehension. If you know any other cool Japanese podcasts you’d like to share, or if you’d like to read any more guest posts of mine here, please let me know in the comments.

Furigana Injector was made by Akira Kurogane and it’s available for both Firefox and Google Chrome. This plugin lets you add Furigana (phonetic readings, hiragana) above or beside Kanji. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, just take a look at the example below.

So I’m on asahi.com trying to catch up on the latest entertainment news, and I find this article about Kimura Kaela and Eita, but there’s a lot of Kanji I don’t know (I actually know 90% of them but it’s an example, haha). Well, with Rikaichan you’d have to hover over words over and over and over and over again, ending up spending way too much time on it, or most likely you stop reading it halfway through.

So to keep that from happening, you add furigana, like in the screenshot below.

How awesome is that?

Now, the plugin as I said earlier, is available both for Firefox and Chrome. But there’s one major difference between the two. Both do what they’re supposed to do, but the plugin for Chrome also comes with a dictionary, so much like Rikaichan, you can hover over words and also get the meaning of them. So if you’re a Chrome user, you could actually get rid of Rikaikun (Rikaichan for Chrome). If you’re a Firefox user, like me, it’s best to use a combination of the two plugins.

Furigana Injector does allows you to customize it with font size and line height, and you can also exclude all the kanji you know by adding them to a list. Another good thing about Furigana Injector is that it automatically tries to add furigana for names, although it’s not very good at guessing.

This is one of my favorite plugins, and together with Rikaichan you pretty much have the best reading assistance you can get. So do give it a try if you haven’t already.

Install Furigana Injector for Firefox

If you use Firefox you also need to install HTML Ruby.

Install Furigana Injector for Chrome

Since the last review of Particles, Harvey has introduced another quiz mode to both applications, namely the “Fill In The Blank” mode. This way you actually get to type your answer in yourself. So now you have both Multiple Choice and Fill In The Blank. The difficulty between the two is definitely noticeable, Fill In The Blank being the difficult one of course.

Just like the particles app, Numbers was not really aimed at advanced users when it was released. But Harvey as been, and is, working hard on releasing new and more advanced content to both apps. There are currently 6 levels, ranging from 1 to 10 thousands and millions. And more numbers are being added on a regular basis. There’s no 100 000 range in the app yet, and that is because millions were requested by another Numbers user, namely Amanda, yumyumsesame on Twitter. So if you have any requests or questions about Harvey’s applications, he’s very open to listening and changing his apps accordingly!

Numbers was recently updated to version 2.4, adding more numbers and some minor design updates.

• 25 new numbers between 24,000 and 30,000.
• Added fancy images to item select rows.
• Reorganized category grouping and made names more clear.

Removing the ugly blue color was my request from the previous review of Particles. And rest assured, the 100 000 range will be added in the near future.

Either way, in my opinion the 1 to 20 000 range is the most important, as when you go to Japan, most (if not all) of your purchases will be in this range.

So if you’re interested in improving your knowledge in Japanese numbers, the application can be purchased for just $2.99 by clicking the image below!

Particles is a very simple app, and as you might have realized, it lets you study and test your knowledge of the Japanese particles (e.g. で, は, に). Particles is probably something most students of Japanese make a lot of mistakes with, and you need a lot of practice to get them right. And for those who own an iPhone or an iPod Touch, that just got a little easier.

If you are studying Japanese in school, you’re probably getting tired of the bazillions of “fill in the blanks quizzes”, but fact is that they work, and with Particles this is basically what you do. However, this app offers more than that. Take a look at the screenshots below.

What you see above is the Study Mode where you can see all the particles you need to know for JLPT level 4 and 3. When you’ve selected the level you want to study you’re immediately greeted with a Japanese sentence with a gap for you to fill in with the appropriate particle. This sentence will also be read out loud by a native Japanese and you can repeat it how many times you want by clicking the icon in the lower right corner.

To check if your answer was right, you just tap on the sentence. You’ll also get to see the sentence in romaji and a translation of it. If you would like to know more about the particle itself, you can click the Notes button in the lower left corner. And to move on to the next sentence you use the arrows at the top right corner.

When you think you’ve got what it takes to clear a level, you go into the Quiz Mode, select it, and click on start. If you want to, you can select multiple levels and whether you want 2 or 4 possible answers.

In Quiz Mode you’ll not only have to show your knowledge in the particles themselves, you’ll also practice your listening comprehension since this time you’ll not be able to see the sentence. The sentence will be read out for you with a gap somewhere, and then you pick the particle you think fits in. Repeat the sentence how many times you want. If you selected the right particle the Japanese girl will say something like “Correct!” or “Well done!” and move on to the next question. If you select the wrong particle she’ll say something like “So close!” or “You gotta be kidding!” and the sentence will show up at the end of the test for you to study again.

And that’s basically all there is to this app, it’s very simple, but very useful for beginners. And while I do think that this app’s content is, to quote Harvey himself, “top notch”, there are a couple of (small) things that could use an update. First off, I’m not happy with the fact that romaji is used in the app, that should definitely be turned into kana since if you’re aiming for any JLPT test, you gotta know your kana. The second thing is the design of the app, this app could be really attractive if it got a design update. I especially think something should be done to the teal-colored header at the index page of the two different modes.

So to sum Particles up in a list of positives and negatives…

Positive ✓

• Includes native Japanese audio.
• Simple, straightforward, does what it’s supposed to do well.
• Better than normal paper tests.
• It’s fun!

Negative ✗

• Romaji.
• Design.

And finally, we have the price of the app of course, which is $5.99. Some might consider that expensive, personally I think that’s a fair price for an app like this that takes a lot of effort to make. And after all, $5.99 is probably less than what you spent on that Japanese pocket dictionary that probably just ended up somewhere in your drawer collecting dust. If you’re a beginner and especially if you’re self-studying, I think you’ll definitely find this app useful!

But of course, being the cool guy that I am, I managed to get a deal just for you guys. So this weekend (Friday to Sunday, Beijing time), the app will be $3.99 instead of $5.99! Click the icon below to see the app in the AppStore.