I’ve been having a marvelous time reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in Japanese (ハリー・ポッターと秘密の部屋). I’m more than halfway through it, and have found it most enjoyable (and useful in improving and refreshing my Japanese skills). In anticipation of finishing it soon, I just purchased a number of books in Japanese via eBay.
If you don’t live in a big city outside of Japan, you, too, probably have a hard time finding books in Japanese. There is an alternative I have recently found. Check out http://www.rikai.com/perl/Home.pl.
At the above link you can put in any Japanese webpage and actually read it in Japanese even if you don’t know all of the kanji readings or meanings. As you mouse over any unknown characters you will get the reading (sort of like furigana on the fly) and the meaning. So it is even better than furigana (since furigana doesn’t provide any meaning for unknown words).
If you are just beginning your Japanese studies the rikai site won’t be of much use, but those at the upper beginner, intermediate, or advanced levels of Japanese language ability should find it very helpful.
If you want to link to a page in Japanese and give it this mouse-over ability it isn’t difficult to do so. For instance, if you want to link to an online Japanese novel like this one: http://www.h5.dion.ne.jp/~pt_kloss/yamanoha/yamanoha.htm the “special” link is http://www.rikai.com/perl/LangMediator.En.pl?mediate_uri=http://www.h5.dion.ne.jp/~pt_kloss/yamanoha/yamanoha.htm.
Posted on September 15th, 2008 under Japan. Tags: japanese language, Japanese Language Study Methods, japanese links. Comments: 1
