Difficulty reading Japanese?

Learning Kanji, is one of the most time consuming activity. It takes long time and a lot of effort for students non coming from a country where Kanji are used. For Chinese or Korean Students that have a knowledge of Kanji (yes! Koreans use sometimes Kanji, too!), is still difficult sometimes to remember how to read them.

Sometimes, when you surf the internet, you would like to be able to read the kanjis or quickly have the meaning translated, but you don't want each time to look in your dictionary or go to google translator.

Fortunately, there is a tool out there that can help! Is called "Rikaichan" and is produced by Polarcloud.

This software instantly translates the kanji when you move your mouse over them, like in the following screenshot:

What do you need to use it?

1) You need to install Firefox as an Internet Browser (www.mozilla.org). It's available for Windows and Apple Mac, so you can install it on any Computer.

2) Once you installed firefox, open it and go to (www.polarcloud.com) and Install Rikaichan. Rikaichan is composed by the following modules:

- The Main Extension: The main program, you need to install this first
- The Dictionary: Install this, to have the Japanese dictionary installed
- The Name Dictionary: Install this to have a dictionary of all Japanese Family Names

Once you have installed the above, you can Open Firefox and and on any webpage, with the right-click on the page, you can enable Rikaichan.

From now on, whenever you move your mouse on a Kanji, a box will appear to show you how to read and the meaning!