Resources for learning Japanese

Question

Here at Japanese SE, we see many questions along the lines of "Do you know any books/programs/websites that would help me learn XYZ in Japanese?", even though we (and the stack exchange network in general), are specifically not set up to handle those questions well. Inspired by Chinese Language and Usage's method for handling resource information, we decided to try it here. The idea is to provide a go-to list for those interested in resources while the discussion about whether to allow resource questions is ongoing.

Please do not create resource questions on the main site asking for websites, books, courses, word-lists, or other "shopping recommendations", the question will be downvoted, closed and possibly deleted. Resource related questions are off-topic for Japanese SE.

If you are looking for a particular resource that you do not see on this list, the appropriate place to ask is almost certainly the Japanese SE Chatroom.

Feel free to ask in the chatroom if you have a resource you would like to add to the list, or if you have other questions. The small group that maintains this list overlaps quite a bit with those you will likely find in there.

Organization

• Each answer covers a particular category.
• Include a short summary with each link, describing how it is useful or who it is useful to
• Keep your entries as succinct as possible to maintain a easy-to-follow list format.
• Don't include links to any illegal/copyright violating content, or sites that host such content.
• If you are a developer/provider of the resource you are adding, follow our community rules on self-promotion by including text similar to "developed/maintained by your user account link" to the resource description.
• Comments here will be fairly aggressively moderated to preserve the presentation of the list. If you have a larger comment or complaint, either talk to a moderator in the chatroom or open a meta question.

Index

• Add-ons (browser)
• Audio pronunciation
• Audio resources (podcasts, audiobooks)
• Books
• Classical/Medieval Japanese
• Corpora
• Data and Japanese Analysis
• Dedicated JLPT preparation materials
• Dictionaries (online)
• Dictionaries (paper)
• Newspapers
• Online courses
• Pronunciation and pitch accent
• Software
• Tablet & mobile apps
• Television
• Textbooks
• Unreliable sites, apps, and tools
• Websites

Answer 1

Corpora

• Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese - A balanced corpus of contemporary (1971-2008) written Japanese with over 100 million words. A site called 少納言 allows you to query the data online for free, but only allows basic text matching. For more advanced work, you can subscribe to 中納言 or purchase an offline version on DVD. A page describing the corpus in English is also available.
  • NINJAL-LWP for BCCWJ (NLB) - A search interface for BCCWJ based on headwords. It provides collocation information grouped by part of speech or sorted by frequency, the word's relative frequency categorized by various written sources, and other information.
• Tsukuba Web Corpus (TWC) - A corpus based on Japanese language websites. NINJAL-LWP for TWC is a search interface based on headwords for the corpus. It provides collocation information grouped by part of speech or sorted by frequency, and the frequency of the various written form of the word.
• Kyoto/Melbourne N-gram Corpus - Looks up short Japanese terms in the Kyoto/Melbourne N-gram Corpus and returns the counts of their occurrences. The n-gram corpus has been built by Jim Breen from a set of 500 million Japanese sentences collected from WWW pages in 2004 by Daisuke Kawahara and Sadao Kurohashi at the Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University.
• Oxford Corpus of Old Japanese (OCOJ) - A long-term research project which aims to develop a comprehensive annotated digital corpus of all extant texts in Japanese from the Old Japanese period. Old Japanese is the earliest attested stage of the Japanese language, largely the Japanese language of the Asuka and Nara periods of Japanese history (7th and 8th century AD).
• CHILDES Database - Transcripts of children's speech. Files are also available for download to use in their original program, CLAN. XML download is also available. (License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA)
• Tanaka Corpus - Japanese example sentences. Please note that this corpus is now maintained by the Tatoeba project and it's generally recommended to use it over this file. (License: Public Domain)
• Tatoeba - Includes much of the original data in the Tanaka Corpus plus a bit more available for download. (License: Creative Commons BY)
• WikiCorpus - Provides some matching English translations from Japanese Wikipedia. (License: Creative Commons BY-SA)
• 日英対訳文対応付けデータ - Provides matching English/Japanese translation sentences from books from Project Gutenberg, 青空文庫, プロジェクト杉田玄白 etc. (License: Creative Commons BY-SA)

Answer 2

Online Dictionaries

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Monolingual Dictionaries

• 三省堂 大辞林 第三版 Sanseidō Daijirin, 3rd ed. - kotobank.jp - weblio.jp
• 小学館 大辞泉 第二版 Shōgakukan Daijisen, 2nd ed. - goo.ne.jp - kotobank.jp
• 小学館 類語例解辞典 Shōgakukan Ruigo Reikai Jiten (thesaurus) - goo.ne.jp
• 学研 全訳古語辞典 Gakken Zen'yaku Kogo Jiten (Classical Japanese) - weblio.jp
• ものの数え方 Mono no Kazoekata (counters) - benricho.org
• 数え方単位辞典 Kazoekata Tan'i Jiten (counters) - sanabo.com
• ニコニコ大百科 Nico Nico Pedia (slang) - nicovideo.jp
• はてなキーワード Hatena Keyword (encyclopedia) - hatena.ne.jp
• 日本辞典 Japan Dictionary (various) - nihonjiten.com
• 日本語俗語辞書 Nihongo Zokugo Jisho (colloquialisms) - zokugo-dict.com
• 故事ことわざ辞典 Koji Kotowaza Jiten (sayings) - kotowaza-allguide.com
• 平明四字熟語辞典 Heimei Yoji-jukugo Jiten (four-character idioms) - yojijyukugo.com
• 語源由来辞典 Gogen Yurai Jiten (etymology) - gogen-allguide.com
• 地名由来辞典 Chimei Yurai Jiten (place name origins) - chimei-allguide.com
• 類語同義語辞典 Ruigo Dōgigo Jiten (thesaurus) - ruigo-tamatebako.jp
• 違いがわかる事典 Chigai ga Wakaru Jiten (differences) - chigai-allguide.com

Bilingual Dictionaries

• 研究社 新和英中辞典 第４版 Kenkyūsha's New College Japanese-English Dictionary, 4th Ed. - excite.co.jp - weblio.jp
• 研究社 新英和中辞典 第6版 Kenkyūsha's New College English-Japanese Dictionary, 6th Ed. - excite.co.jp - weblio.jp
• 小学館 プログレッシブ和英中辞典 第三版 Shōgakukan Progressive J-E Dictionary, 3rd ed. - goo.ne.jp - kotobank
• 小学館 プログレッシブ英和中辞典 第四版 Shōgakukan Progressive E-J Dictionary, 4th ed. - goo.ne.jp - kotobank
• Jim Breen's EDICT Project - wwwjdic - jisho.org
• 三省堂 デイリーコンサイス和英辞典 Sanseidō Daily Concise J-E Dictionary - sanseido.net (expired)
• 三省堂 デイリーコンサイス英和辞典 Sanseidō Daily Concise E-J Dictionary - sanseido.net (expired)

Bilingual Example Dictionaries

• 英辞郎（アルク） Eijirō at Space ALC - alc.co.jp
• Weblio英語例文 Weblio Example Sentences - weblio.jp
• 翻訳訳語辞典 Hon'yaku Yakugo Jiten - dictjuggler.net
• Tatoeba Project - tatoeba.org - tangorin.com

Accent Dictionaries

• Online Japanese Accent Dictionary (OJAD) - Japanese - English
• Japanese Accent Study Website - Japanese - English

Other Dictionaries and Tools

• Wiktionary - Japanese - English
• Kanjigen Character Etymology Tool - namakajiri.net

Answer 3

Websites

(see also the "Online Courses" section)

English

• About.com Japanese - Japanese learning resource, including lessons for writing Hiragana and writing Katakana etc.
• Charles Kelly's Online Japanese Study Materials - a variety of online quizzes, and other resources such as photos of Japanese signs for reading practice.
• Elon.io - [Paid Service] an online language learning platform.
• Guide to Japanese - Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese. A tutorial for Japanese grammars. From A to Z style. There are translated versions in many other languages. It can also be used as a handy reference. Apps for Android and Apple available.
• Imabi - A collection of lessons covering many aspects of the Japanese language, including a section on classical Japanese. More rigorous and accurate than similar resources like Tae Kim's guide and NihongoResources.
• Japanese Ammo With Misa - A great set of Youtube videos for beginners, where Misa sensei tackles some knotty issues like how to use と, たら, なら and ば correctly, amongst many other things. She seems to put an emphasis on how to speak natural Japanese rather than textbook Japanese.
• Organic Japanese with Cure Dolly - This is an excellent set of videos on the structure of Japanese sentences. It teaches grammar in a logically self-consistent way that is rather different from most text books. The presentation format is rather weird, but you'll get used to it and it becomes cute after a while.
• KanjiBox - Online drill/quiz-based application using SRS to train on kana, kanji, vocab and reading. Keeps detailed stats by JLPT level and allow sharing of scores using Facebook. Kanji and Vocab drills partially available in non-English languages (French, German, Russian, Spanish, Italian, Turkish...). Created and operated by one of our users
• The Monash University Manga Studies website has a Japanese SFX (onomatopoeia and mimesis) translation research project.
• News in Slow Japanese - Has many articles that are narrated by a native speaker. You may choose between slow or fast narration, and the text is available in standard Japanese text, romaji, or Japanese text with mouse-over annotations.
  • Note: Despite the word "news" in the title, these articles are not news articles per se, but more about interesting things in Japan and around the world.
• Nihongoresources - An excellent introduction to the language. The author also wrote a freely available textbook. The site is currently undergoing a long-term redesign.
• POPjisyo - Allows adding popup definitions on Japanese text or websites.
• Real Kana - A clean and simple site dedicated to hiragana/katakana practice using flashcards.
• Reddit's LearnJapanese sub - A reddit community dedicated to learning Japanese. Somewhat less structured than here.
• Remembering the Kanji - An online flashcard system for users following the "Remembering the Kanji" book.
• Renshuu - Has study material for grammar, kanji and vocabulary. You can do quizzes and track your progress.
• Rikai - A similar tool to POPjisyo.
• sci.lang.japan FAQ - An older site, but it's still a wealth of information. Has some excellent information on counters/numbers/dates, grammar and slang etc (be aware the slang section has some offensive content.) Also includes a Handwritten Kanji Search, allowing you to look up kanji by drawing them.
• Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese - Includes both a grammar guide (completed) and a complete guide to Japanese (still a work in progress).
• University of Virginia Library - Japanese Text Initiative - A collection of online texts in Japanese.
• Wikibooks Japanese - A collaborative project to create an online textbook for Japanese.
• Word of The Hour - A website that features one basic vocabulary word (or phrase) every hour with crowd-sourced translations by community on Reddit.
• Zanzou - Flashcard type kana learning website that prioritizes specific flashcards based on success and groups similar kana symbols to decrease logical elimination of wrong answers. Created by one of our users

Japanese

• Amazon Japan - Will ship internationally (for a hefty fee)
• Kinokuniya - An online bookstore where you can find Japanese books that ship from America. The books are more expensive, but the shipping is less so.
• Japanese Wikipedia has a detailed table of differences in Japanese dialects.
• 青空文庫 (Aozora Bunko) - A large collection of public domain works, similar to Project Gutenberg. Notable collections include Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Masao Kusuyama, Kenji Miyazawa, Nankichi Niimi, Akutagawa Ryonosuke's 三つの宝 and Takehisa Yumeji's 春.
• 絶版マンガ図書館 (Zeppan) - Free online manga (legal, ad-supported). Used to be known as J-Comi or Jコミ.
• mixi - Japanese social networking site in the same vein as Facebook.
• 知{ち}恵{え}袋{ぶくろ} - A Japanese user-contributed Q&A site by Yahoo! Japan. You need to take the content with bit of a grain of salt, but it's an almost unparalleled wealth of information in terms of size on Japanese and other topics.
• 教えて！ by Goo and OKWave are some other popular Q&A sites.
• niwa saburoo の日本語文法概説 (archived old site) - Excellent grammar resource. (Old site uses EUC-JP encoding. You may need to adjust your browser settings)
• 人名漢字辞典 - 読み方検索 - You can look up the proper reading(s) for kanjis. It's especially useful for people's names. It will also show different kanji with the same reading (as what you searched).
• プロジェクト杉田玄白 (Project Genpaku) - Translation project for large public domain works

Conversation Exchange

• conversationexchange.com - Penpal matchmaker
• italki.com - Penpal matchmaker
• lang-8.com - Write blog-like posts, and native speakers correct you
• sharedtalk - Another penpal matchmaker (RosettaStone affiliated)
• language-exchanges.org - The Mixxer: Multi-language penpal matchmaker
• HiNative - Mostly designed around an app
• HelloTalk
• Tandem

Answer 4

Audio Resources

Audiobooks

• Breaking into Japanese Literature: Seven Modern Classics in Parallel Text - This book is geared towards English-speaking Japanese learners, at an upper-intermediate or advanced level. Includes several short stories written by Japanese writers for a Japanese audience, read by Japanese voice actors, with English parallel text and a custom dictionary on each page.

Podcasts

• Japanesepod101 - has Podcasts for Japanese learners of all levels. You can listen to a couple each day for free, or subscribe at various levels for access to more materials.

• Bilingual News - a pair of English-native and Japanese-native speakers discuss topics in the news in their respective languages. Each brief discussion is prefaced by a summary of the news topic in both languages.

Answer 5

Online Courses

• Anime-manga.jp - Multi-language manga-based grammar lessons
• Textfugu - [Paid Service] course for beginners with a casual tone and a somewhat non-traditional approach to teaching radicals
• Wanikani - Sister site to Textfugu, but focuses strictly on kanji and vocabulary. Assumes a firm knowledge of hiragana and katakana.
• Erin's Challenge - online course for beginners provided by the Japan Foundation (lessons in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese and Korean).
• GPB TV's Video Lessons - Georgia Public Broadcasting's video lesson series
• iKnow - [Paid service] Formerly known as smart.fm, an online SRS for learning vocabulary. Has iOS and Android apps.
• Japanese LinguaLift - [Paid service] An online Japanese textbook and a set of educational tools, games and other resources
• Keigo Course - in Japanese, from the Agency for Cultural Affairs.
• mykikitori - Set of listening skills samples, arranged into a series of beginner-level lessons.
• NHK's Japanese Lessons - includes text and audio (offers lessons in a wide range of languages)
• Online教材で学ぶ - supplementary materials from AJALT (publishers of Japanese for Busy People).
• TamaTamako's Nihongo Learning Animations - Series of video lessons.
• u-biq - Series of lessons, starting from hiragana up through basic keigo
• Visualizing Japanese Grammar - A series of flash animations covering introductory Japanese
• York university's Elementary Modern Standard Japanese Course - video recorded lectures, assignments, and quizzes

Answer 6

Textbooks

Unless otherwise listed, assume these textbooks include or offer CDs for listening practice.

• Genki - Arguably the most used Japanese textbook for classrooms. Textbooks have matching audio CDs with native speakers reading the vocabulary, dialogues, and some of the activities. There are also matching workbooks that focus mainly on practicing new grammar concepts from the chapters, but there are also listening pages and writing practice pages. Volumes 1 and 2 are for beginners; there is also an intermediate level text.
• Minna no Nihongo (3a Corporation) - The MnN series focuses on daily life conversations, avoiding overly focusing on both exchange students and business Japanese. The main text is translated into several languages, and there is a blizzard of supplementary texts available. At times, MnN can have a 'workbook' feel, and it lacks some features one might expect of a beginner text (like a dictionary of words in the text).
• Japanese From Zero - A complete course from YesJapan with good content and examples
• Japanese for Everyone (Gakken) - A short all-in-one course suitable for either a short course in Japanese or self study. Somewhat oriented towards a business traveler.
• Japanese: The Spoken Language - Often controversial for its use of non-Hepburn romaji, and for its kanji coverage being left entirely to the pseudo-companion textbook Reading Japanese by the same author. (Observe the review histogram at Amazon for these books and for Reading Japanese.) The positive points are an unusually deep coverage of major grammatical points and a strong focus on, as the title says, the spoken language (including extensive explanations of pitch accent). All three books in the series cover everything at least up to the JLPT N2 level (except kanji), and there are separate supplementary texts reproducing the books entirely in Japanese; as well as a companion CD (for book 1)/DVD (covering books 2 and 3).
• Situational Functional Japanese (Tsukuba) - Classroom oriented.
• Tobira - Intermediate textbook
• Japanese for Busy People 1, 2 and 3 - A concise course for 'busy' students who want to learn natural spoken Japanese as effectively as possible in a limited amount of time. Volume 1 is available in Kana and Romanized versions.
• Japanese the Manga Way - A more 'fun' approach to Japanese. Covers beginning to intermediate Japanese, with kana/kanji/romaji throughout. Unlike most textbooks, JTMW introduces both polite and plain form right from the beginning and focuses more on the spoken language.
• Bonjinsha's Basic Kanji 1 and 2, and Intermediate Kanji 1 and 2 - This series focuses exclusively on the kanji use and different methods of mentally organizing the kanji. Note that the intermediate books are written almost entirely in Japanese, and expect some familiarity with the language. (No Audio)

Answer 7

Books

(Not including dictionaries, textbooks or the books in JLPT prep materials)

• A Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate/Advanced Japanese Grammar - Very good coverage, does a good job filling in gaps left by most of the popular textbooks/classes.
• A Handbook of Japanese Grammar Patterns for Teachers and Learners - It contains all grammars explained in Basic/Intermediate/Advanced plus other grammars. Due to the compactness, the small enough font forces me to use a magnifying glass.
• A Dictionary of Japanese Particles - The title is self-explanatory. Goes in depth and provides examples for over 100 particles. Particularly useful for explaining different meanings/usages of the same particle.
• Kanji Look and Learn - An alternative to Remembering the Kanji, this book focuses more on illustrations with short mnemonics to help remember kanji instead of written stories. From the same people who made the Genki textbooks.
• Remembering the Kana - From the author of Remembering the Kanji, this book has mnemonic devices that it claims allow you to learn hiragana and katakana in three hours each. (free sample chapter)
• Remembering the Kanji - Always controversial. Presents a "story memorization"+"single keyword" technique to memorizing kanji meaning and writing/recognition, while ignoring readings/compounds. A free sample is available for the first ~250 characters. Volumes two and three add coverage for some pronunciation and "beyond Jouyou" characters, but are less popular than volume I.
• The Structure of the Japanese Language - Susumu Kuno presents very deep explanations of very tricky common issues (particularly particle confusion) facing mid-level Japanese learners (N2-N3) and above. This is a linguistics book, so non-linguists may need to consult wikipedia for some vocabulary.
• Words In Context: A Japanese Perspective on Language and Culture - Takao Suzuki investigates the differences between languages based on sociological and psychological differences of people from different cultures and gives sociolinguistic insights on why the Japanese language behaves a certain way. Investigates the logic behind uses of personal pronouns in the Japanese language.
• 2001.Kanji.Odyssey - Kanji learning books/e-books, with audio and some online material (some available free). Contextual (i.e. with compounds/sentences) method.

Readers

(Books to improve Japanese reading skills)

• New Penguin Parallel text: Short stories in Japanese - Eight stories of varying length and difficulty, all by well known writers all born after WW2. Edited by Michael Emmerich

• Rapid Reading Japanese - Will re-introduce basic skills you already use unconsciously in your native language in enjoyable exercises. Second edition was recently published with significant revisions to bring it up to date.

  　

Answer 8

Learning Classical and Medieval Japanese

• Getting started with Edo literature
• 文語 Bungo
• Reading kuzushiji, kanbun, and other premodern Japanese
• Introduction to kuzushiji 崩し字
• くずし字学習支援アプリ KuLA (Kuzushiji Learning Application) for iPhone or Android
• 変体仮名あぷり/The Hentaigana App for iPhone or Android
• 木簡庫 Wooden Tablet Database
• 漢字字体規範史データセット
  • 漢字字体規範史データベース (offline)
• Weblio古語辞典

Answer 9

Add-ons (browser)

Chrome

• Rikaikun - When activated, just put your mouse over a Japanese word to see its phoenetic reading and a translation to English. Based on the rikaichan add-on for Firefox.
• Yomichan - "This extension was inspired in part by Rikaichan and Rikaikun, but it stands apart in its goal of being a all-encompassing learning tool as opposed to a mere browser-based dictionary, while adding advanced features such as EPWING support." It also features automatic flashcard creation for Anki.

Firefox

• Itadaki is a browser addon that simplifies adding furigana (ruby tags).
• Perapera Japanese - Put your mouse over any Japanese words on a webpage and it gives you the pronunciation and definition. Alternative to Rikaichan.
• Rikaichan - When activated, just put your mouse over a Japanese word to see its phoenetic reading and a translation to English (or German or French or Russian).
• Yomichan - Yomichan is available on Firefox too.

Opera

• Rikaikun - When activated, just put your mouse over a Japanese word to see its phoenetic reading and a translation to English. Based on the rikaikun add-on for Chrome. If you're running legacy Presto based Opera (up to version 12), you want Rikaisan.

Safari

• Safarikai - When activated, mouse over a Japanese word to see its reading in kana and translation to English.

Answer 10

Tablet & Mobile Apps

Note that several of the dictionaries are also available on these platforms. Many of the programs listed in software also have iOS or Android variants.

Android

• Aedict - Japanese <-> English EDICT-based dictionary with example sentences. A paid version, Aedict3 adds functionality and upgrades the interface.
• Google Japanese Input - Based on Google's IME for computers. A little more intuitive than Simeji, but still in beta so it might have more bugs too. Allows traditional 12-key tap, flick, tap+flick together, and QWERTY touchscreen input as well as hardware QWERTY input. Kaomoji is easier to access and better organized than Simeji's.
• Go Keyboard - along with the Japanese for GO Keyboard add-on, provides a Japanese input with flick, toggle and QWERTY support.
• JED - Japanese <-> English EDICT-based dictionary similar to Aedict.
• Obenkyo - Practice writing kana/kanji with proper stroke order or just do flashcard tests of kana, kanji, words, and particles. Also has a section for reading numbers in either kanji, hiragana, or romaji.
• Simeji - Japanese input method. Allows traditional 12-key tap, flick, bell, and QWERTY touchscreen input as well as hardware QWERTY input. If you have Android 1.5 or earlier, then you need to use Simeji Classic.
• A variety of other EDICT-based dictionaries are available: Midori, Makimono and Kabuto are three examples.

iPhone/iPad

• KanjiBox - iPhone/iPod/iPad app offering drill-type exercises and flashcards (both using SRS) for kana, kanji, vocabulary and reading. Extra modules use touchscreen to drill on kanji/kana drawing. Gives out detailed stats and global scores. Links with online version. Created by one of our users.

• Imiwa? - Free J<->E dictionary app, with example sentences, kanji stroke orders, conjugations and several kanji lookup methods. Uses the free EDICT dictionary and the Tanaka/Tatoeba corpuses. (This app replaces Kotoba! on the iTunes Store)

• ジーニアス和英・英和辞典 - The official app for the dictionaries. Included in many 電子辞書, this pair of dictionaries include example sentences and images, and are among the lowest-cost commercial dictionaries. Note that the dictionaries and app are aimed towards Japanese-speakers learning English, but are also suitable for intermediate-advanced students of Japanese.

• JSensei a series of lessons, gradually increasing in difficulty. Seems to be using the dictionaries/word-lists from smartfm (see the websites section)

• Midori - EDICT dictionary app

• Nihongo - Japanese-English dictionary and study tool. Includes example sentences, commonality rankings for words, SRS-based flashcards, and the ability to create flashcards from any piece of Japanese text.

Cross-Platform

• JiShop Kanji Dictionary - Features a simplified "by-radical" lookup that works extremely well and quickly. Dictionary is not "yet another kanjidic skin". Also available for iOS, Android and WindowsMobile.

• Bunpo - Covers the grammar from N5(easy) to N1(hard). (Assumes knowledge of kana and some kanji)

Answer 11

Unreliable sites, apps, and tools that you should stay away from:

• JLPT Sensei/JLPT先生 - A commercially motivated site fraught with mistakes, non-idiomatic and ungrammatical sentences. For some examples, see this comment and this comment. Making it more harmful to Japanese learning is the fact that it constantly ranks among Google's top search results, and as a result a lot of learners have used the site. It should be avoided like the plague.

• Avoid machine translators such as Google Translate, DeepL, and RomajiDesu when attempting to comprehend or create natural sentences. Although they have made great progress as a technology, they are incredibly poor at understanding context and word usage. They should never be used as a dictionary or as an example of natural Japanese.

The creation of this section has been inspired by a discussion under this question where the need to advise learners, especially elementary and intermediate level learners, against certain misleading or erroneous sources was made clear.

Answer 12

Data and Japanese Analysis

Character Information

• CJK Composition Data - Provides a graphical analysis of the approximately 75,000 Chinese/Japanese characters in Unicode. (License: Apache/LGPL/Creative Commons BY-SA tri-license)
• CHISE project - Provides a huge graph-based dataset from Unicode and dictionaries, including the IDS lookup service. Actively catches up with the latest Unicode version.
• Kanjidic2 and Kanjidic - Provides a large amount of Japanese character information including readings, meanings and indices for many textbooks etc. Kanjidic2 is the more extensive XML format and Kanjidic is an older format generated from Kanjidic2 for compatibility with older programs. (License: EDRDG)
• KanjiVG - Provides stroke data in SVG format. (License: Creative Commons BY-SA)
• RadKFile and KRadFile - Breaks up Kanji into multiple radicals to allow easier searching. (License: EDRDG)
• Tomoe - Includes stroke data for a few thousand Japanese characters which can be used for stroke recognition or animations. (License: LGPL)
• Unihan - The English definitions are usually for the Chinese language, and the Japanese readings are in Romaji, but it provides a much greater coverage than Kanjidic2. More detailed documentation is available here, and can be searched online here.

Dictionaries

• JMDict and Edict - A Japanese to English dictionary. JMDict is the more extensive XML format and Edict is for compatibility. (License: EDRDG)
• JMnedict and Enamdict - A Japanese name dictionary. JMnedict is the more extensive XML format and Enamdict is for compatibility. (License: EDRDG)
• WordNet Japanese - Includes Japanese/English example sentences, and categorizes words to also allow use as a thesaurus. Doesn't include readings for the Japanese. (License: English data under the WordNet license, Japanese data under a license similar to BSD)

Japanese Morphological Analyzers

• Kakasi - Converts Kanji characters to Hiragana, Katakana or Romaji. (License: GNU GPL)
• MeCab - A Japanese morphological analyzer. (License: New BSD/GPL/LGPL tri-license)
• KyTea - The Kyoto Text Analysis Toolkit, a general toolkit developed for analyzing text with a focus on Japanese, Chinese and other languages requiring word or morpheme segmentation.
• Kuromoji - Morphological analyzer written in Java. For very small bits of text, you can run kuromoji in your web browser at the link.
• ChaSen is a morphological parser developed at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology.

There's many more dictionaries, frequency data etc at Jim Breen's Monash Nihongo ftp Archive.

Answer 13

Television

• ChannelJ - Mostly official video releases from around Japan. (Also has an English interface)

Japan Only

*It's possible to get around the regional block through use of VPN, see section on VPN

• GyaO! - Free streaming service with dorama, anime, comedy, variety shows, sports, and Japanese movies. Foreign movies and shows with Japanese subtitles or Japanese dubbing (not all have these I think). Gyao!ストア offers other shows and movies which you have to pay for.
• Hulu Japan - 980 yen per month fee. Anime and dorama. Also has American, British, Chinese, and Korean shows with Japanese subtitles.
• ニコニコ動画【どうが】 - Has some anime which is available to stream for free, as well as foreign films and shows with Japanese subtitles which you can pay to either "rent" for 2 days or pay more to keep indefinitely. Also streams Japanese baseball.
• ShowTime - 294 yen per month fee. Some videos (especially first episodes) are free though. Dorama, anime, variety shows, sports, gravure, and Japanese movies (including 18+). Foreign movies and shows and with Japanese subtitles, Japanese dubbing, or an option of either one. Also has a separate site for kids' shows.

US Only

*It's possible to get around the regional block through use of VPN, see section on VPN

• Hulu - Free streaming service. Has both movies and anime. English subtitles are optionally provided.

Various Countries (but not worldwide)

• Crunchyroll - Free streaming service with a lot of anime and a few dorama and movies. English subtitles are provided and can be turned off.
• Niconico - Only anime. Free streaming service. English subtitles are provided but cannot be turned off. To disable the scrolling user comments, click the speech bubble near the bottom right of the video player.

VPN Information

If you wish to access Japan only, or US only content, you can bypass this block through the use of VPN. Here is a list of VPN providers you can use:

• http://strongvpn.com
• http://www.bestvpnservice.com/providers/30/purevpn.html
• http://www.bestvpnservice.com/providers/21/hide_my_ass!.html

Additionally, if you have ssh access to a server in Japan, or US, you can use ssh tunneling to bypass the regional block.

Answer 14

Software

Lesson Software

• Rosetta Stone - A popular learning program that focuses on recognition and situational associations.

Study Software

• Anki - A popular free spaced repetition flashcard program. Available on nearly every OS, including iPhone, android and maemo. Also has a web version. Very Japanese focused (has many pre-built decks & addons).
• Mnemosyne - Another spaced repetition flashcard program. Offers a slightly different spacing system as well as user interface from Anki.

Japanese IME's (Input Method Editors)

• Offline

  • Windows

    • Microsoft IME (Win7 instructions, tutorial, entering symbols, entering kaomoji)

    • Baidu IME

  • MacOS

    • How to setup built-in IME; Usage

  • *nix - A little confusing. You need an IME and then a "package" or "engine" for that IME.

    • IMEs - IBus, Fcitx, uim

    • Engines - Anthy

  • Android

    • Various Japanese keyboards

  • ChromeOS

    • How to add built-in Japanese keyboard

  • iOS

    • How to add built-in Japanese keyboard

  • Cross-/Multi- Platform

    • Google Japanese IME; Mozc

    • various SKK systems

    • ATOK

    • Simeji

• Online

  • Google Input Tools

  • Ajax

Fonts

• Kanji Stroke Order Font
• Free Japanese Font List
• IPAmjMincho - covers all Japanese gov't-use kanji variants (IVSes) and hentaigana.
• Unicode Hentaigana Font

Dictionaries

• Gjiten for Linux

_{Please do not ask questions related to using or setting up any of the software in this section on JLSE.}

Answer 15

Japanese resource lists

• Jim Breen's Japanese Page
• 100 best resources to learn Japanese (expired.)

Answer 16

Pronunciation and pitch accent

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Online resources

• Sanseidō Daijirin, 3rd edition - A monolingual dictionary that also lists pitch accent. Designed for native speakers. Lists pitch accent for a very large number of words. Uses numeric notation, with [0] for no accent, 1 for accent on the first mora, and so on. (Expired.)
• OJAD (Online Japanese Accent Dictionary) - Designed for learners to use. Includes audio. Lists 9000 nouns and 3500 inflecting words (verbs and adjectives). Particularly useful for the latter, as it shows how the pitch accent changes with inflections. Includes Prosody Tutor Suzuki-kun, a unique tool that shows pitch accent in the context of entire sentences.
• Japanese Accent Study Website - Designed for learners. Shows how pitch accent changes with inflection. Although it's not as comprehensive as OJAD, it contains some useful information such as pitch accent for numeral-counter combinations and Japanese names, which can be hard to find elsewhere.

Other resources

• NHK 日本語発音アクセント新辞典 - The latest edition of a pronunciation and pitch accent dictionary from the NHK (the national broadcaster). Largely revised and enlarged since the previous edition, with numerous up-to-date accentuations. iOS subscription with audio is available as a part of dictionary app suite.
• 新明解日本語アクセント辞典 - A competing pitch accent dictionary from Sanseidō. Mostly based on native Tokyo accent and particularly detailed in conjugational and periodizational information.
• Kenkyūsha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, 4th ed. - This was one of the few bilingual dictionaries that listed pitch accent. Unfortunately, pitch accent information was removed from the fifth edition.
• 集英社国語辞典 - A medium-sized monolingual dictionary with pitch accent information based on the NHK dictionary.
• Forvo - A crowd-sourced website with audio recordings of many Japanese words.
• Many of Casio's EX-WORD electronic dictionaries come with the NHK dictionary, along with audio pronunciation for a large number of words.

Answer 17

Audio pronunciation

Recorded by native speakers

• NHK日本語発音アクセント辞典 - NHK's pronunciation and pitch accent dictionary. Also available for iOS and Android.
• OJAD - OJAD is an online Japanese pitch accent database. The words in the dictionary encompass textbooks data and also shows the pitch contour for an excerpt of text.
• Japanese Pod 101 - uses EDICT and provides audio clips for many words. These audio clips can be accessed on WWWJDIC as well, by clicking on the little icon to the left (see below)
• Rikaisama - an add-on for Firefox adding a pop-up style dictionary. You can hear a word pronounced by pressing f. This uses the audio clips from JapanesePod101, see above.
• WaniKani - a kanji learning application by the people from Tofugu including pronunciation. The audio samples can be accessed on jisho.org as well.
• Nihon de Care-Navi - a multilingual (Japanese, English and Indonesian) vocabulary database of about 8000 words and 4000 sample sentences including audio clips. The Japan Foundation Japanese-Language Institute in Kansai created the site in order to support Japanese language learners working in the fields of nursing and care-work.
• Tatoeba - Community effort to collect sample sentences in many different languages. People can contribute sound clips they recorded as well. As of now, there are only 340 Japanese sentences with audio, apparently all contributed by a single speaker.
• About.com Japanese Language - provides some audio clips for basic vocabulary sorted by category, such as animals, body parts, or greetings.

TTS, text-to-speech, computer-generated, voice synthesis

• Open JTalk - open source voice synthesis software for Japanese based upon HMM. It allows you to change many paramets to product different sounding voices. There is an online demo here.
• Google Translate - other than machine translation it provides voice synthesis for Japanese as well. It can "speak" any sentences, but as it is computer-generated, it may not be accurate.
• Bing Translate - works much like Google Translate.
• Acapela Box, Imtranslator, Linguatec, NeoSpeech - professional TTS software with an online demo. Can be useful for hearing sentences pronounced.
• Talkify - Just enter a URL to a Japanese website and then listen and read along.

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location of the play sound button on WWWJDIC

Answer 18

Dedicated JLPT preparation materials

Note: Questions about the JLPT test format, times, statistics and difficulty level are explicitly OFF TOPIC on japanese.stackexchange.com and will be closed and deleted. Questions about the japanese language that is used on the test, or that involve the underlying language concepts that are tested on the test are on topic.

Books

• 完全マスター - A series of books that cover the grammar needed for each level
• 日本語総まとめ - A fairly complete lesson series with different books covering each needed learning component. (Kanji, Vocabulary, Reading, etc)

Websites

• J-CAT - An adaptive JLPT-like test site
• JGram - A Japanese Grammar Database. Has materials for all levels of the JLPT.
• JLPT Official Site - Includes scheduling and sample tests
• tanos.co.uk - provides resources for the JLPT N5-N1. It includes help for, reading, listening, grammar, kanji, vocabulary, and has past papers. It even has a skill checker that can mark how far you've come/need to go to pass.
• thbz.org - provides lists for JLPT vocabulary.
• 日本語の森 - Nihongo no Mori - a JLPT grammar point-focused Youtube channel

(Please note that the JLPT FAQ states that there will not be a list of vocabulary, kanji and grammar items released for the new levels, so many of these are based on the previous JLPT 1-4 lists before the new JLPT N1-N5 came out.)

Answer 19

News

• 朝{あさ}日{ひ}新{しん}聞{ぶん} - Asahi Shinbun
  • Asahi News Youtube Channel
  • Children's Asahi
• 読{よみ}売{うり}新聞 - Yomiuri Online
  • Children's Yomiuri; articles are available here
• 毎{まい}日{にち}新聞 - Mainichi Shinbun
  • Children's Mainichi
• 日{に}本{ほん}経{けい}済{ざい}新聞
• 産{さん}経{けい}新聞
• Fuji News Network - TV News Channel
• NHK
  • NHK News Web Easy - Simplified version of NHK articles with audio.
• BBC News Japan Youtube Channel - BBC News Channel, in Japanese
• Hiragana Times - News in Japanese, with a writing style geared towards intermediate-level Japanese students. Print and digital editions available worldwide, for a fee.

Here is a site with links to many Japanese newspapers: Japan Newspapers. This is useful for finding more specific or regional newspapers.

Answer 20

Paper Dictionaries

• Basic Japanese-English Dictionary (Oxford) - What it sounds like. A decent starter dictionary. Includes example sentences and kana/kanji, and romaji for each word.
• Furigana Japanese Dictionary (Kōdansha) - An easy-to-understand dictionary targeted towards English speakers learning Japanese. Good quality but limited in terms of number of entries.
• Kanji Learner's Dictionary (Kōdansha) - Good basic kanji dictionary.
• New Nelson Japanese-English Character Dictionary - Very large kanji dictionary. The new editions have reverted to the Chinese single-radical method, which has not been without controversy. The older edition remains in print, and uses Nelson's customized kanji lookup method with much better cross-referencing.
• NHK日本語発音アクセント辞典 - NHK's pronunciation and accent dictionary. Also available for iOS and android.
• 新【しん】和英【わえい】大【だい】辞典【じてん】　第【だい】5版【ばん】 (Kenkyūsha) - Generally considered the best J-E dictionary. Available in a wide variety of forms including as a CD, iOS app, in many stand-alone electronic dictionaries, and as a subscription service. It is sometimes referred to as the "Green Goddess".
• Grand Century/グランドセンチュリー和英辞典 第3版 (Sanseidō) - Sanseidō's competitive offering to the Kenkyūsha's book.
• Progressive J-E Dictionary/小学館プログレッシブ和英中辞典 (Shōgakkan) - Smaller, cheaper alternative to the Grand Century and Kenkyūsha's.