Popjisyo rediscovered

I always have to look up Japanese words and kanji, and it's not always convenient to use a book-type dictionary. Also, I want to see more examples of usage and have a quick reference online. Popjisyo has really helped me. I've mentioned this site before, but wow, I didn't realize all it could do until recently, when I've been using it a lot more often.

What you do is paste in Japanese words in a text box to look up both the meaning and the correct reading of the word, plus the correct reading of the individual kanji. For instance, if you see a word that contains two or more kanji (such as 国連）but don't know the correct reading, just type in the kanji, press "Word Lookup" and it will provide the meaning of the word. Plus, when you move the cursor over each kanji, it will give you all the readings and meanings of each one (like a dictionary).

But that's not all--you can also create your own study list. All you do is double click on the word, and it will add it to your list, and every time you go back to the site, your list is sitting there, waiting for you. And, if that's not impressive enough, you can email your study list to yourself! I have at least 50 words on my list, which is also sitting in my email inbox.

By the way, it's hard to describe a "word" in Japanese; if you've studied Japanese or Chinese, you know that one character can be a word or a word can include more than one character. But that's what's cool about the site: you can find out the meaning of any length word plus all of the individual characters. Your study of Japanese (or Chinese) can deepen.

I use the site for Japanese to English, but it can also be used for:
Korean to English
Chinese to English
English to Korean
English to Japanese
English to Spanish (I wish it was the other way around!)
Japanese to German

Wait a sec--I should've been taking advantage of Japanese to German to kill two birds with one stone, but I haven't used that feature yet. Maybe I will soon. At least in time for my German class on Monday.

There's another site called Rikai, which seems similar to Popjisyo, but I haven't used it as much. You can paste text or a web address into the box, and move the cursor over the words for the readings and meanings.