こんにちは！

Greetings!

I recently decided that while I was learning Japanese on my own, I would publish some notes on the language and learning resources that are available. Since I truly believe that one learns best when teaching a subject, I thought I would give it a shot.

Anyway, for my first post I thought I'd share a couple of resources that I love.

First of all, jisho.org. The usefulness of this site is not its dictionary entries, nor is it the kanji database. The best part of this site is the massive collection of sentences that can be searched by English words, Japanese words, kanji, or combinations thereof.

For example, let's say I want to know the word for jacket. After finding out that it's 上着（うわぎ, uwagi), I can then click the sentences option to obtain any sentences in the database which contain this word. The first, for example:
彼は上着を掛けた。 He hung up his coat.
Furthermore, each Japanese word is linked back to its dictionary entry (in case you don't know the reading or meaning). Also, there's an option to give you kanji details, if any in the sentence are unfamiliar.

One caveat about the site: for those who don't yet know how to read kana, it will prove much less useful for learning. My recommendation: put the time in and learn those kana as soon as possible!

Next, for those of you who use Firefox, I'd recommend downloading the add-on "Perapera-kun." (ペラペラ君). When enabled, it allows you to parse through any Japanese you encounter on the web, by giving the readings and definitions simply scrolling over words. (On a side note, there is also a version for those who are learning Mandarin Chinese.) As far as I am concerned, it is the best tool for reading Japanese webpages out there - no need to copy and paste words and bring them back to a dictionary website.

Finally for now, we need tools to get listening practice! For those who already know a fair amount of Japanese, I'd recommend the program KeyHole TV. This program streams live Japanese TV. Download it here: KeyHole TV.

There are a few good channels which are always present: TBS, TV東京 (TV Tokyo), 日本テレビ (Japan TV), 関西TV (Kansai TV - Kansai is the western region of Japan), テレビ朝日 (Asahi TV), and フジテレビ (Fuji TV). There are also a number of channels which appear and disappear every once in a while, including a few radio stations.

That's it for now. I hope these tools can help you along your journey to fluency!