Japanese learning resources - Desktop

Educational tools

NihongoUp

$9.99

Available on Windows Available on Mac OS Available on Linux

A Japanese educational game and reviewing tool that will help you learn hiragana & katakana, improve your typing speed, review JLPT kanji, vocabulary & grammar in context. NihongoUp is a Serious Games Showcase & Challenge winner.

Anki

FREE

Available on Windows Available on Mac OS Available on Linux

A spaced repetition system (SRS). It helps you remember things by intelligently scheduling flashcards, so that you can learn a lot of information with a minimum amount of effort. There are many user created decks and new decks can be easilly created in the program. One can also create an online account and synchronize decks between different computers.

Mnemosyne

FREE

Available on Windows Available on Mac OS Available on Linux

A spaced repetition system (SRS) with three-sided cards support and a clean, yet highly customizable user interface.

A Japanese language learning software that starts at square one and presents the Japanese language in a warm, engaging tone. The program consists of a very well written basic Japanese textbook, 1800 audio recordings of vocabulary words and example sentences, and several interesting mini games and articles on Japanese culture. A boxed version for $24.95 + shipping is also available.

zkanji

FREE

Available on Windows Not available on Mac OS Not available on Linux

zkanji is a feature rich Japanese language study suite and dictionary for Windows. It has several kanji lookup methods, optional example sentences for many Japanese words, vocabulary printing and more.

iKana

$18.00

Not available on Windows Available on Mac OS Not available on Linux

If you are studying Japanese then you need iKanji - the most comprehensive kanji study tool available on the Mac, designed with all the care and attention you expect.

iKanji

$30.00

Not available on Windows Available on Mac OS Not available on Linux

Are you studying Japanese and looking to take the pain out of learning Hiragana and Katakana? iKana is the fun and easy way to learn these phonetic alphabets with tools to help you memorise, read and write both.

Reference

A free, open-source Japanese↔English dictionary and kanji lookup tool. It allows you to quickly search for entries and mark those that you wish to study, along with tags and personal notes. It also let you train entries you are studying and follows your progression in remembering them. JMDICT & KANJIDIC2 based (approximately 145,000 vocabulary and 13000 kanji entries).

JISHOP

$0–39.95

Available on Windows Not available on Mac OS Not available on Linux

A Japanese↔English dictionary multi-radical and stroke count search, phonetic dictionary, flashcards, and kanji study groups synchronizable with the Windows Mobile version of JISHOP. The UI looks outdated but it is very functional considering the amount of informations for each kanji and the number of search options. Jishop based (1006 kanji in the free Concise, 1945 kanji in the $19.95 Plus and 4500 kanji in the $39.95 Advanced version).

Babylon

$118.00

Available on Windows Not available on Mac OS Not available on Linux

Babylon is a multilingual dictionary and translation tool. A simple Japanese↔English dictionary is bundled with the program and many free user created Japanese dictionaries can be downloaded from the Babylon website. There are also two very good premium dictionaries described below.

A Japanese↔English premium dictionary for Babylon with extremely detailed translations, nuances between different options, example sentences and grammatical do's and dont's. Genius based (over 250,000 Genius Unabridged E→J, over 190,000 Genius Unabridged J→E and over 69,000 Genius J↔E entries).

A premium dictionary for Babylon with information regarding usage of honorific words, typical misusages, Kanji conjugations, nuances between the different words and expressions, new Katakana words and grammatical do's and don'ts.

Jisho

$17.00

Not available on Windows Available on Mac OS Not available on Linux

A Japanese↔English, German, French, Russian dictionary with Mac OS X integration, multilingual user interface, wildcard search and romaji support. JMDICT based (approximately 100,000 J↔E, 80,000 J↔G, 15,000 J↔F and 5,000 J↔R entries).

Feedback & Social

The new NihongoUp is live!

As you may’ve noticed, the NihongoUp site was going through some massive changes during the past two months. Well, I think that the site finally reached a state when it can be safely announced to the general public. I’ll leave the “beta” notice in the header for a little longer (primarily because [...]
4 days ago on NihongoUp Blog
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