Sorry for the long, long delay. However, I’ve been busy with many things… boring stuff, so I wouldn’t going into too much detail of that. But hey, that’s the life of the Editorial Director.

Putting all that aside, I’m now back with another update to this column, in which I refuse to drop and stop writing. Just like how I refuse to stop trying to get my hands on imports, of all type of things, from DVD to games to Mangas… What can I say? I love ‘em. However, one question I’m always asked from day to day, when I continue to blow my life savings on these is, “Why do you buy these if you don’t know Japanese?” And I say to them “It's all part of the learning experience.”

Of course, just reading and listening to Japanese alone wont teach one this interesting language. As such, I’ve resorted to several great and quick links on the internet that will help me in my quest… with out having to pay wads of cash to learn it. Ultimately, to fully understand Japanese one would have to pay and take some courses… But that doesn’t mean you cannot learn a bit of the language. Below are some helpful links that I’m sure you’ll find useful if you’re like me, and need to know the odd words here and there to read those import mangas and whatnot.

Japanese<->English Dictionary

http://linear.mv.com/cgi-bin/j-e/dict

Possibly one of the best online Japanese to English Dictionaries there is. You can input any text from Japanese or English, and have the server find it's translation. You can even input stuff written in Kanji or Hiragana and get the translation. The only issue is, the server is really slow… thankfully, they are mirror sites available.

Learn Japanese

http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~ft5k-ymd/learn.html

That’s pretty much the description of this site. If you have more or less no idea about the Japanese alphabet, you can view pages that teaches you the pronunciation of some of the letters, as well as view pages with Basic Kanji and learn basic sentences in Japanese. They also have PDF downloads; so you can view them quickly from your computer or print them out! Really great site!

Strip Lessons? You better believe it!

http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~ah3q/project/japanese/

This is a really cute site. They have several different lessons that teaches you the Japanese alphabet as a game! The game? Strip Japanese lessons and no, it is not hentai or anything close to it. This site is quite addicting to be honest, and… it really works…. I wonder why?

Translation Program

http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~grosenth/jwpce.html

This site, is a bit confusing, but is interesting. It’s basically a program that lets you translate and learn Kanji words. It takes awhile to understand the program tough. (And the site, which is a bit confusing at times.) Other than that, it’s pretty good. Many thanks to Kathryn Williams for pointing this one out.

Your Name in Japanese

http://www.geocities.com/tokyo/ginza/3379/japname.html

Okay, this really has no major relevance to this. But a favorite site of mine. It can translate anyone’s name from English to Japanese, you just input it in, hit the button and there you go.

That’s about it for today folks, this Editor has lots of work (And sleeping) to do.

-- Eddie Hicks, Otaku Aniverse