Kanji Conversion

[la-li-lu-le-lo]

I recently saw a website that will convert any Japanese site into romaji, and I was wondering if there is anything similar to this that will convert it to kana instead. Not that this really makes much of a difference, but romaji can be a bit inaccurate sometimes.

[ave]

Wadoku.de
Its a german page, but it'll tell you the kana for any kanji-word and for seperate kanji.

[GaijinPunch]

They are most likely using the perl mod of Kakasi. AFAIK it's Kanji to Kana, but you could easily romajify the kana.

[cez]

http://www.hiragana.jp/en/ works pretty well for the purpose.

If you want to read Japanese sites regularly I recommend the rikaichan plugin for Firefox which will display readings and translations according to the installed dictionaries on-the-fly. It's a lot better than the online service Rikai that it's based on.

[GaijinPunch]

I would highly recommend none of the above if you're serious about learning the language. :)

[cez]

They are good tools. Just use them wisely.

It's nice to be able to read newspaper articles and understand 100% of the words. While it might not be recommended if you want to improve your reading it's a good way to expand your vocabulary.

[GaijinPunch]

I've found through countless hours of both methods, the easier it is too look up a word, the easier it is to forget. Having them spoon fed to me pretty much insures I will be looking it up again.

[ave]

JWpce is also pretty good IMO.

http://www.csulb.edu/~mdouglas/jwpce.htm

It'll show up meaning, on & kun-readings of almost any kanji out there. Although there are some problems with rather uncommon Kanjis such as for DoDonPachi (i was never able to find those in that program).

[extrarice]

I've found through countless hours of both methods, the easier it is too look up a word, the easier it is to forget. Having them spoon fed to me pretty much insures I will be looking it up again.

Agreed.

However, Furigana.jp will take pasted text blocks or re-draw websites with hiragana in parenthesis after each kanji or kanji group to help you learn the pronunciation.

[pDroid]

Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten for the DS :)

of course it wont convert a website but its still cool

[cez]

Yes, but whenever I turn the DS on to look up a Kanji or practice writing I end up playing Manhole... Argh!