Thought I'd add Rich F's recommendation from another thread to this resources thread.

It's a Firefox add-on called Mycroft which allows you to add search engines to your browser. You can add, for example, Japanese dictionaries such as ALC, Yahoo, Excite.

Yahoo!きっずニュース (Yahoo! Kids' News http://news.kids.yahoo.co.jp/ ) has articles about current events, which are introduced with simple summaries. There's also a section with explanations of vocabulary words related to current events.

One neat thing about this site is that you can use a "yomigana seal" to adjust how much phonetic help you want. Click the orange button in the upper right corner and then pick 1-2 grader, 3-4 grader, 5-6 grader, junior high school, or no seal. The stories show up with furigana over the kanji that students from those grades wouldn't know.

Edit: I just realized that this is supposed to be about "essential resources" rather than just helpful things. I think the Kids' News thing is interesting and potentially useful, but the only thing I really use is an electronic dictionary with the Kojien and a kanji dictionary and E-J / J-E dictionaries.

just found this site:
http://www.viikii.net/

It allows to add caption & subtitles to videos hosted on other streaming sites.
It seems to be quite new so it doesn't have that much content until now, but there are already a few shows in Japanese! :D

Here's a few more links (some discussed elsewhere on the forums).

http://www.goo.ne.jp - super portal, with link to J-J online dictionary

http://www.yahoo.co.jp - Japanese version of yahoo with a popular online dictionary

http://language.tiu.ac.jp/index_e.html - Paste text in the box, and it'll parse the text with definitions (including J-J!) in the side bar.

http://www.iknow.co.jp - useful sight for learning vocabulary. Provides sentences, photos and professional native readings of the words and sentences. Game style SRS function.

http://www.lang-8.com - site for posting and correction of journals. People of both languages help each out with this.

Excellent web based Japanese input editor:

http://ajaxime.chasen.org/

http://works.bookstudio.com/
A site where people can publish their own novels for others to read.

jisho.org for on/kun yomi's, reference to lists of heisig frame numbers and other useful things, and example sentences.

http://otokorashii.blogspot.com/
http://thedailyyoji.blogspot.com/

http://www.lingoes.net/

This free translation Software is quite handy. It's a little bit like Rikaichan but not limited to Firefox.
You have to download dictionaries from their site to use it.

You can even use it with Anki: You have to activate the option that the context menu (with the translation) is shown when you highlight (or another option is when you copy) the text.

Japanese Dialects
http://hougen.u-biq.org/

Scanned and online books. Enormous resource.
http://www.scribd.com/

Just found a site where you can download or watch dorama online.

Unfortunately it has a limit for streaming of 72 minutes a day, and after that you have to wait 54 minutes to continue eatching -at least that's what it's telling me now, I found this site today-, but you can download raw, hardsub and softsub versions of several dorama.

http://nomanymore.blogspot.com/

Sebastian Wrote:Just found a site where you can download or watch dorama online.

Unfortunately it has a limit for streaming of 72 minutes a day, and after that you have to wait 54 minutes to continue eatching -at least that's what it's telling me now, I found this site today-, but you can download raw, hardsub and softsub versions of several dorama.

http://nomanymore.blogspot.com/

my mate came across a site with similiar limitations for streaming movies... he just unplugged his router and plugged it back in, waited for it to reconnected and started streaming straight away. Worked like a charm. Try it out, it might work for you too.

http://www.tokyotosho.info/?cat=7

Best raw anime resource.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/columns/0002/
Pera Pera Penguin
Japanese grammar lessons published every 8 weeks in ""The Daily Yomiuri" newspaper

These are the sources I use for the purpose of Japanese study the most. Most of which I learned about from others users on this forum. I will update them as I find more or read about them on other threads.

Dictionaries
Rikaichan マウスオーバー英和辞書 hiragana.jp
google translator Jim Breen tatoeba tangorin

News Clips with transcripts.
朝日 NHK TV東京 FNN FNN has an option to watch all videos in a stream. You can also watch in slow motion.

Anki
coscom.co.jp
FLICKR japanesepod101 kanji signs
opal.ecis.nagoya n-lab Practice tests
慣用句の参考書 Idiomatic phrases
LANG-8 language partners for journals.
英文法大全 For English teachers in Japan
mysoju Veoh fc2 Movies
japaneseverbconjugator unfortunately it is only in romaji
Erin Erin ga chosen! Nihongo dekimasu
Namiko Abe writes a periodic blog about Japanese culture.
Wikipedia Calendar Japanese
Nihongo JukuKanji and listening practice
speedanki Kanji study
wordreference essential resources
gaijinpot job search Kansai flea market jobs page
Remembering The Kanj PDF
Kyoto 10 day forecast
Podcasts via Nuriko's thread
My blog Collection of bilingual book and magazine articles

YOUTUBE channels
tokyomx It has a Japanese captions option
車窓 Experience riding on trains in Japan
1000 kanji video There are two videos in the series
サザエさん a very popular children's anime

Documentaries
The Way of the Samurai The Will of the Shogun
The Return of the Barbarians Japan’s Secret Watergarden
How to Live to 101 Japan's Mysterious Pyramids
Godzilla and Postwar Japan Japanese Calligraphy
Mizu Hyakkei - Eastern Japan Land of rising suicide
Sakura Nostalgia Japanese Mandalas
Customs and Manners Japan Behind The Mask
Yakuza Japan's Dirty Secret An Age Old Problem School Bullies
Sumo Confidential Harsh Justice Boot the Bases Bend it like Jong
Children Full of Life 2 3 4 5

Cosmos (English with Japanese subs):1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

English Learning Websites

マルチメディア対訳版で読む世界の名作
http://www.bauddha.net/index.html

Here you can read some classic novels such as O. Henry or Conan Doyle both in English and Japanese.

Plus you can find Japanese constitution, Martin Luther King's speech and other speeches in English and Japanese, too.

Other than this site these are the indispensable online tools I use while learning Japanese?

Japandict.com
Provides simple succinct definitions, radicals and verb conjugations.

Flashcardexchange.com
When I get sick of shuffling through my hundreds of flashcards, I use digital ones.

Furiganizer.com
Cut and paste any thing Japanese and magically get furigana. It is a great reading aid.

Smart.fm
It is intended to be a learning site, however, I use the lessons to do mass reviews. It is a powerful learning tool, however it requires a bit of tailoring.

Tofugu.com
When ever I start feeling that learning Japanese is an insurmountable task that I will never accomplish, I surf this blog for laughs, encouragement, useful tips and links and whatever else.

For Fun:

Hulu.com - Tons of free and legal anime. (Sadly for US users only)
Animecrazy.net - Tons of free but illegal anime.
Dramacrazy.net - J Dramas
Mysoju.com - J Dramas
Viikii.net - J Dramas (However, this site does require that you install their player)

By the way, if anyone knows of a site where you can legally watch J Dramas, please email me. I have searched and searched and with the exception of a few shows from the 70's on Dramafever.com, I've found nothing.

I can't believe I didn't see this thread before...
There some I've seen before but a lot I haven't. Thanks for the great thread.

Yookosoo for the kanji learners.

Pro:
Showing animated stroke order
Provides some readings
Let's you choose in which order the Kanji are displayed:
By Grades 1 - 6
JLPT 1 - 4
Any Joyo
...

You can download or view the list as pdf.
You can right-click save the Stroke order diagram of the kanji in .gif format.

Not sure if anyone has this problem, but I often find that digitally printed Kanji or those on signage look a great deal different from those written by hand using a pen rather than a brush. I want to practice writing accurately and I have found that certain stroke details that would be apparent when writing with a brush are either accentuated or ignored for the purpose of clarity in penned messages. Is anyone aware of a resource with images of handwritten kanji? Thanks!

Free Online Manga:
http://mangaonweb.com/

Thanks! That's helpful. I'm not a big manga guy so I didn't even think of it as a resource. It's a good place to start. What I was hoping to find would be something more like a tool designed expressly for learning that has stroke diagrams or animations written with a simple pen instead of in the sort of fancy brush style that is more common.

At the moment I am trying to do the RTK 3k in one month to 40 days so after that I can certainly use manga for sentence mining to get an eyeful of handwritten characters.

Some information on handwritten kanji:

This thread has links to a couple books and a site. There were other threads discussing ペン字 and books. iirc, rich_f was knowledgeable.

Yamasa Online Kanji dictionary has stroke animation and examples of typed, brush and written fonts. I think the middle one with a pen would look fine, but I don't know much about it.

Y.Oz font is a handwritten font. I also like the Kyoukasho font (not handwritten, but not Mincho either). Search the forums for threads on fonts.

Edit: This site has several, including the 教科書体、Y.OzFont (and other pen fonts) and some that Kanjidevourer mentioned.

Also, Katsuo recommended an NHK special on handwriting: books and DVD are available.

mkgelgota Wrote:Not sure if anyone has this problem, but I often find that digitally printed Kanji or those on signage look a great deal different from those written by hand using a pen rather than a brush. I want to practice writing accurately and I have found that certain stroke details that would be apparent when writing with a brush are either accentuated or ignored for the purpose of clarity in penned messages. Is anyone aware of a resource with images of handwritten kanji? Thanks!

I don't know if I have what you want exactly (a font written with pen), but here's a sample of some fonts I use:



From top left to lower left, clockwise: KanjiStrokeOrders font (stroke orders), EPSON 正楷書体Ｍ (kaisho, this is used to teach writing according to http://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/shotai-handwritten.html), EPSON 太明朝体Ｂ (serif mincho), Arial Unicode MS (regular sans serif gothic), EPSON 行書体Ｍ (gyousho: running script/semi-cursive), KouzanBrushFontSousyo (sousyo: cursive).