Japanese Calculators / Converters

[GHP]

1. 皇紀 Imperial Years. Just type in the year, e.g.: 260, and click the button [result = 1942]

2. Western years to Japanese. Select the Western year in the drop-down menu and hit the "convert" button.

3. http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2272.html You can type in the Western year and convert; or, select the Japanese era ["Taisho"] and year [5] then convert [1916].

4. Western names or romaji [Japanese in Western alphabet] katakana. If you really know katakana, you'll sometimes have to manipulate the romaji/Western alphabet.

5. Japanese Name Lookup. You can use kanji, romaji, or kana. If you know only one part of a name, you can use * as a wild card and then scroll through the MANY results. Example: You see a name with three kanji, but can only identify one: 根. Search "* and about #200 result will be:

中曽根(なかそね)Nakasone[place, surname]

But you need to have some familiarity with kanji recognition.
And -- if you click on any of the kanji, a new page will also show the etymology/morphology of the kanji. Using our example above for Nakasone, click on the 根 "ne" kanji and you'll get this:

Kanji information for 根 : 10 strokes, indexed by 木 – jouyou level: grade 3 – skip code: 1-4-6, nelson number: 2261
<table style="border: none; margin-left:1em; margin-top:0.5em;"><tbody><tr><td>Chinese readings (音読み):</td><td>　</td><td>コン</td></tr><tr><td>Native readings (訓読み):</td><td>　</td><td>ね, -ね</td></tr><tr><td>Meanings:</td><td>　</td><td>root, radical, head (pimple)</td></tr></tbody></table>
Search the J↔E dictionary:

• words that start with this kanji,
• words that end in this kanji,
• words that use this kanji as a substring, or
• the list of full words this kanji is on its own.

Search the names dictionary:

• names that start with this kanji,
• names that end in this kanji,
• names that use this kanji as a substring, or
• the list of names written using only this kanji.

6. Provinces of Ancient Japan

7. http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/c...cgi?1C]WWWJDIC. Jim Breen's online dictionary. Be sure to click the "romaji" button. I really like this "translator" because I can also search by radical or stroke ... kind of "building my own kanji". See the top margin, 4th button from the left, Multi-Radical Kanji.

More about radicals (bushu). You NEED to know how to find these in order to figure out the rest of the Kanji.

8. If you have the time and resources, I highly recommend The New Nelson Japanese-English Character Dictionary (revised 1997).



This is a GREAT resource. Not only does it have the Radical Chart in the front, you can now research other kanji that might have a different radical. For instance the kanji 道 Road/Way/Path: Dou/Michi. You might not know the right side 首 (#185) is a radical [kubi/neck], and you might not be able to find the actual radical [img][/img] (#162) ... But you can find a part of the kanji: 目 (#109; eye). So, you can go to the back of the dictionary (starting at p. 1372) and find the Residual Stroke Counts for radical #109 (p. 1541). Now, count all the other strokes comprising 道minus the 目. That would be about 6 residual strokes. VOILA! After scanning down the page we find that Kanji #6091 is what we're looking for. That number is the Nelson's Kanji number -- we merely go to kanji 6091 and find not only the definition, but 64 compound words using the 道 kanji.

Cheers!
--Guy

[GHP]

It looks like I dropped a "2" -- but you probably caught that. Imperial year should be 2602 which equals 1942.

1. 皇紀 Imperial Years. Just type in the year, e.g.: 260, and click the button [result = 1942]

Hey .... I just tried the link on my Dell at home and could not get the calculator to work. Did anyone else have a problem? Honest! ... it worked at the office and I tested it about 6 different times.


--Guy