If you've been reading this blog for a while, you probably know that I love Popjisyo. It's great to paste Japanese text there (it also translates Korean and Chinese, though I don't know those languages) and find out what the more difficult words mean.
But yesterday, a guy at Barnes & Noble who's majoring in Japanese told me about Rikaichan, which is a popup dictionary tool that shows what a Japanese word means. It's for Firefox and some other browsers I haven't heard of, but since I'm not crazy about Firefox, I added Rikaikun to Chrome.
It's great! All I do is turn it on, and when I'm at a Japanese website, I just hover my mouse over a word, and it shows me what it means! Actually, it doesn't always translate a word because it seems to not recognize some kanji or kana combinations, but it's still very handy.
It's so handy, that there's a risk of becoming lazy: if all it takes is just a hover to understand a word, then we're tempted to not try to memorize it.
But if I want a more fully functioning popup dictionary, then I still like Popjisyo. It seems more precise and extensive. But Rikaikun is better than nothing!
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