| A screenshot of PocketKanji |
I started this project in 2000. Unfortunately, I no longer have time to maintain it anymore. Lars Grunewaldt has taken over with his fantastic program PAdict. He has included PocketKanji within his program. It is now possible to search for translations by writing down characters; and, it is briliant!
It's not easy learning to read Japanese. First, you have to look up a single character out of thousands of possibilites. Once you've found the character it will have at least two different pronunciations; each pronunciations will lead to a different meaning. Using the selected phonetics of the character, you then look it up in an English/Japanese dictionary . Because of the multiple phonetic choices, it is very time consuming and tedious.
With PocketKanji you simply draw the Japanese character and then look up the definition. It is much, much faster.
PocketKanji is a nifty little tool that helped me study Japanese with my Palm Pilot.
For the curious: