Hi!
I just came across this thing:

http://kanjireader.net/articles/info/ind...=1&lang=en

It looks really, really nice. But I'm a bit skeptical to how well it actually performs.
Have any of you guys tried this thing?
It will probably fail at manga / weird fonts, but if it works well with normal 文庫本, then I might as well get it.
I'm heading for Namba tomorrow - I just gotta try this thing

Well IceCream, it doesn't look like the same device there, so maybe this is better.

I'd love to hear someone's opinion who owns it. If it's really that good I might get it just to save myself some time... well, depending on the price. I don't really use a dictionary much anymore.

Well... the video and the site haven't been updated since 2008, but it looks like you can get the Genius or Sanseido dictionaries for 31,000 yen or so. Kinda pricey if you ask me, and it looks bulky. And you'd have to carry it around with you.
http://shop.japan21.co.jp/shopbrand/005/X/

Don't get so excited over the IRIS pen, either. You need to chain it to a computer to make it work, and it only does OCR, and even then it's kind of wonky. After using it for a few years, I'll take a good flatbed scanner with good OCR software any day. The only "wow" application for the IRIS pen is when you're traveling and can't take your flatbed with you.

The biggest flaw in any Pen-Based application is the human-pen interaction. They're all wobbly. Hands wobble, pens wobble, and both make scans come out wonky with tiny little kanji, so the software misreads a *lot*, especially with books which have curved pages.

It's *really* not optimal.

I'm a bigger fan of using a plain old 電子辞書 for unknown kanji. Find a bunch to look at here:
http://kakaku.com/kaden/ic-dictionary/?l...category_1

Getting one in Japan is easy. Getting one from outside of Japan... not so easy.

Smartphones have a lot of options, too, and the software is cheaper than buying dedicated hardware and lugging it around. iPhones are okay, so are Android phones... although Android still doesn't seem to have a "draw the kanji" input mode yet, and the one the iPhone uses is kinda craptacular. (IMO, of course.)

Aedict has Kanji search by "drawing recognition" (Nexus One with Android 2.21). I have only used it a few times, but it has worked well for me. I should say that I have never used the iPhone app, so I have no idea how it might compare.

Oh sweet, thanks.

The recognition I used on the iPhone was the old Traditional Chinese "draw kanji with your finger" version. Since it was Traditional Chinese, and not Japanese, you didn't always get the right characters. It was about 95% accurate, but still a pain to use, and slow. This was version 3.12. No idea what it's like now. I got sick of it.

/hijack

Now back to Quicktionary discussion.

¥29,800? Really?

I have an iPod Touch 4 (which is basically an iPhone 4 without the phone), in which I've installed EBPocket Pro and Skybook. I've got all the major EPWING dictionaries.

My point is this: once you get used to it, EBPocket is actually really fast and easy to use, and you'll love your iPod/iPhone even more for it. Also, Skybook can immediately refer to unknown words/kanji while you're reading it (just highlight the word, and you can select "EBPocket") and this is a huge timesaver, especially when you're reading old stuff. And if you're reading 文庫文, you can load all those novels into SkyBook (or iBunko, whichever reader you prefer) and do the same efficient dictionary lookups.

Most importantly, in the long run this method might not be as expensive as the Quicktionary.

Hi!
Thank you for the tip, ryuukohito.
I own Skybook, but I haven't tried uploading stuff on it.
Will it handle Japanese e-book formats (Ehm.. XMDF? Was it?), or just .txt (maybe pdf?)
I'll read up on it myself.
The problem with ebooks is availability really... I just can't find the books I want, even by famous writes like 村上春樹. I own them all in paper-format, so I gave it a go on torrent sites etc as well, but no go.
So if I could just get my hands on modern, Japanese literature in ebook format (that actually allows copy/pasting), then I'd be all over it.
And even though there's a lot of old literature (青空 archives etc), it's just not my bag... I tried reading こころ... Man, that was boring.