Hi everyone!

I just recently started reading Japanese novels. It's hard, but it's really, really fun.
That being said, using normal books becomes a huge pain when it comes to looking up words.
I've been looking at different e-book readers lately, and it looks like the iPad and the Kindle are popular choices.
What I need in a e-book reader is:

- A library full of Japanese books
- Copy/paste function
- Dictionary look-up and/or fast transfer of words between the reader and my computer.
- A great screen

In other words, I want to read Japanese novels, being able to copy/paste words quickly into another document/whatever, so that I can add them to Anki asap.
The faster the better. I want it to be so fast that it doesn't interrupt my reading much - pretty much like highlighting words when you read normal books.

Any recommendations?
I'm open for anything, as long as it's fun and fast! =)

Thanks!

Well, I only have an iPad, so that's all I can comment on, but I think it works pretty great as a book reader. The screen is a nice size for reading, and I've never had a problem with eye strain from LCDs, so I like it better than e-ink. The whole "just like real paper" thing isn't really a draw for me, though, at least not until they've got it working with color and a screen refresh rate that doesn't make my eyes scream. So if you don't care about that but want a screen that simulates paper, you can probably disregard my opinions there.

As far as the book library goes, the iPad has iBunko, which is basically just your standard PDF/text reader, except that it supports Aozora formatting. So, aside from having access to all the musty old classic literature in the Aozora archives, there's also a certain thread floating around these very forums filled to the brim with places to find more modern literature that may or may not be in Aozora format that may or may not look phenomenal on the iPad. (Are we still being coy about all that? I've lost track.)

The only problem is that, while iBunko has popup dictionaries for fairly easy word lookup, and the iPad (technically) has copy-paste functions, I don't think there's really a fast, easy, or unobtrusive way to get words from an iPad reader to computer Anki.

Plus, you know, even the cheap model is pretty expensive for just-a-book-reader.

I think we are a bit far off for an easy reading -> SRS flash card making solution that is on a portable device away from your computer. Your not likely to find an all in one program that does this on the iPad. Multitasking in iOS on the iPad isn't perfect but it certainly could work. Kindle you can take notes on but I have no idea how well you can make flash cards with it. Kindle does have a programming SDK, so maybe an easy solution isn't that far a stretch. Of course, as with the Kindle, an all in one solution could be made for the iPad.

But hell yeah, if someone makes an E-Reading software (iPad/Kindle/whatever) that reads books, has internal bi-lingual & monolingual dictionary and can export to my online Anki deck, sign me up.

Thanks!

Well, I know there will be several steps involved getting words from the iPad to my computer, but as long as I can copy them fast into a notebook-app or something, then it's good enough for me.
I don't want to look them up / learn them right away, I just want to store the words, so that I can look them up and add them to Anki during study-sessions. All this fast enough so that it won't ruin the reading-flow that much. Is this doable with the iPad? Or am I asking to much?
It just takes SO long looking up words from paper-format books. (Well, compared to copy/pasting from articles etc.)

This post by Splog in this thread.

Quote:For the past month or so I have been using a fantastic application for the iPad, called
iAnnotate

It lets you highlight and annotate pdf documents very easily, and I have found it
really helps me to work with texts that are not quite comprehensible.

Here is the procedure I follow:

As I read through a text, I highlight the words I don't know (this is done with a sweep
of the finger and is about as simple as using a highlighter pen). Then I take a second
pass through the text, and look up the highlighted words in a dictionary, then annotate
the word with its definition.

Importantly, the annotations can be hidden and revealed at will. So, I tend to hide the
annotations, as I read the text a third time. When I see a highlighted word, I try to
recollect its meaning, and if I cannot recall it I just touch it with my finger and the
annotation (i.e. definition) pops up. Of course, once you know a word well, you can
delete a highlight and an annotation with a couple of touches.

Once you have finished annotating a document you can create a summary - of the
highlighted words and their definitions. I use this as a word list for additional
study.

It reminds me a little of the way LingQ works, except that I do not have to be online,
and I can add content very easily. The only downside, compared to LingQ, is that the
annotations are not shared across multiple documents - so that I may end up redefining
the same forgotten word in several places (still, I suppose the repetition is helpful
in drilling the word).

Overall, this has proven to be a fantastic tool for working with authentic texts (so
long as I have them in pdf of course) and particularly for managing unknown words quite
painlessly. I recommend it.

Hello,

I have the perfect App for you on the iPad.
It's called Wakaru.
It can read ebooks from Azora Bunko and has a built-in Japanese-English dictionary.
I have found a demo here :

http://www.youtube.com/user/WakaruApp

Cheers,

Maki

I've a jailbroken iPad with enabled multitasking and use a combo of iBunko+Kotoba+Scraps. Basically, I look up a word in Kotoba, append it to the clipboard (there´s such a function), then download it to the Scraps list. When I'm done reading, I email the wordlist via Scraps to my inbox. It's not a perfect solution as you have to manually save each word entry to Scraps, but if there were a clipboard app that would save all clippings without me doing it manually, it'd be great.

[ファブリス]

Note that Amazon has a Kindle app for iPad. Confusing, eh?

MakiSushi Wrote:Hello,

I have the perfect App for you on the iPad.
It's called Wakaru.
It can read ebooks from Azora Bunko and has a built-in Japanese-English dictionary.
I have found a demo here :

http://www.youtube.com/user/WakaruApp

Cheers,

Maki

This is PERFECT!!

It has a browser and ebook reader, it has a popup EDICT dictionary (like rikaichan) which you can use on both book and websites, and it saves a list of your looked-up words to import to Anki later.

Game, set, match.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wakaru/id351047145?mt=8

oh yeah, and I have a Kindle 3. It sucks more than I was expecting. It's really good for reading well-formatted books in English, in fact I prefer it to reading a real book, and for this it's much better than an iPad (got one of those too). However, the processor is painfully slow and looking up a word or opening a menu takes a painfully long time. There is a built-in dictionary (in English), and I'm looking into getting a Japanese dict installed. You can also annotate your books, but later exporting the annotations is not easy. If all these problems can be overcome it will be great - mine has a battery life of over a month with daily use (!!!) and the screen is really a pleasure to read on.

I reckon wakaru (app above) on the iPad/iPhone is the answer we've all been looking for.

That looks very, very promising. I've been planning to procure a good aozora app for some time; this seems to fit the bill. Any idea of whether it supports vertical writing? I'd love to get some more exposure to that; I need to up my reading speed.

I can't find an option to display text vertically, perhaps the devs are listening and will add it in the future?

There are lots of rumors about new Sony Reader being announced/available this month, maybe this will be the answer?

From what I've gathered Reader has a working dictionary for Japanese (still looking for a video showing this feature), current version also has the perfect screen size in my opinion so the only thing to worry is the price and apparently horrible PC application.