xxxxxThis site first came on-line in a very basic form (html/css)in early 2004 covering topics about life in Japan and pages for
Japanese students of English. Later that year, a bbs was set up with forums on most major languages. That has been re-established as the Language Learner bbs.
Gradually the focus moved from exclusively Japanese
& English, to cover a
wider range of languages, particularly those included in the bbs.
The main feature of the site is the Language Learner Links database, a project which provides an inter-active database of language-related sites of interest
which I coded myself - this is a fairly unique project on the web and will get better and better the more people use and contribute to it. You can get an overview of the contents of the database at the stats page. You do not need to sign up or register to access, submit to, edit the database nor to use any of the other functions available on it.
xxxxxAnother focal point of this site,
apart from the bbs and linguist links, is the
JLPT page where you will find tests and lessons covering kanji, hiragana, katakana and vocabulary as well as some
useful grammar lessons; I made this part of the site while I was studying for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test and so it may be useful for others who are preparing for that test. This page is fairly old now and has not been updated, so best to check if the test has changed much since 2005 before relying on it. Having said that, the kanji lists themselves will not have changed and so the tests may be of use to students. More useful perhaps for the beginner seeking an introduction to practical, spoken Japanese is my new Learn Japanese page, featuring male and female audio clips of all expressions and words.
xxxxxAdded in October 2007 is the Sushi page, a searchable database of fish and sushi pictures, which will be useful for non-Japanese who have an interest in this traditional japanese cuisine - please take a look, I think it's quite funny myself.
xxxxxThose interested in goings-on in the Far East may be interested in Japanese Current Affairs, a translation blog covering some issues in the Japanese media.