I'm trying to tackle some material without furigana, and was thinking that some tools would make this easier.

I'm wondering if anyone can recommend software where you 'draw' with the mouse and it then shows you the kanji?

I'm planning on then pasting the result into a dictionary. I've been using Tagaini Jisho. But if there is a dictionary that has handwriting built-in I might switch.

Running windows by the way.

I know it's not windows, but the daijisen dictionary for iphone/ipad
has built-in Japanese handwriting recognition. It's the best of any
I've seen anywhere. The dictionary is japanese-to-japanese, but at
least it'll get you the proper pronunciation.

Apparently, Daijisen actually uses it's own custom-built kanji recognition.
Many iphone dictionaries simply use the chinese kanji recognition, which
doesn't necessarily have all of the japanese kanji.

http://kanji.sljfaq.org/kanji16/draw-canvas.html

iih-noec Wrote:http://kanji.sljfaq.org/kanji16/draw-canvas.html

Thank you so much for this link. I remember having seen this site long ago and never bookmarked it. Bookmarked now. Thank you!

The built-in (assuming you installed Japanese language support) Windows IME offers a handwriting input option.

Google's free Japanese IME has one too, I think, but it's grayed out on my computer for some reason...

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=4526

Thanks, the website is nice, I also goofed around with googles IME a bit, and I found something interesting.

Apparently there is a 'Tablet PC Input Panel' on vista, (right click on the task bar, and then choose toolbars) It has handwriting recognition, sort of cool.

I do also have microsoft and googles IME installed, pretty sure you would need one of those to use japanese input.