A new tool to learn Japanese

So you have decided to learn Japanese? Perhaps you have even signed up for this year’s JLPT and parted with their robber baron’s fees in some foolish hope that it will motivate you for the month-and-a-half revision time that is left until then (oh wait, that’s me. never mind).

Now, there are many ways you could go about harvesting the Web’s boundless resources to help you in that quest.

You could for example do aerobics while watching awkward multicultural multilingual 80’s lesbian action:

Or you could sign into your Facebook account and add my latest online realization.

Kanji Box will fulfill your most secret kanji fantasies: it does absolutely everything, short of showing up for the test for you (gory details here). To top it all, it will let you compete against your friends: nothing like a bit of competition to get you worked up on the kanji skills (cue uplifting karate training montage).

[for all Facebook-haters out there: I feel you. I am not myself overly smitten with the concept. But I must admit Facebook sucks marginally less than its competitors, and its 3rd party API took most of the drag out of developing Kanji Box’ multi-user features… so do not expect a standalone version too soon, sorry]

Filed under: Geek, 日本語

4 comments

  1. am loving kanji box! (although it is TOTALLY reaffirming how many kanji i don’t know – and why i will NEVER EVER take 1-kyu – or even stand a hope in hell of passing it…)

    and the pseudo-erotic english exercise programme?
    Funnily enough, they’re showing re-runs of it on satellite tv at the moment.
    Was idly channel hopping a few weeks ago, and stumbled upon it. Thought i’d slipped into a parallel universe…really f-ing bizarre, but slightly addictive….

  2. MissSin:
    Thanks for the support! And don’t think you’ll stay atop that High Scores board for long. I am *totally* gonna work my way up. Ahem.

    And Zuiikin English is teh bomb. It’s just too awesome for words. That one skit above, I must say, really took the cake (and if you do a quick search on YouTube for Zuiikin, you’ll see they have a lot of weirdness to offer). I also seem to remember glancing at reruns once on TV (Fuji TV or so I thought, but satellite sounds more likely).

    Now everybody with me: “Are you serious about anyone?”

  3. I’m sorry but I hate Facebook to much. Now that video could help me out with a great opening line-you look sensational and close with the are you serious about anyone.

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