What is this anyway?

This project grew out of the combination of intensive study of Japanese by the immersion method championed by Cure Dolly my android sensei and my continuing education as a web developer.

Training wheels for Japanese literacy

Part of the challenge I have faced in learning Japanese has been getting my brain to associate kana and kanji symbols with sounds rather than having to stop and think things through one symbol at a time. When one is truly literate in a language that should happen naturally. But getting to that level with a new language and especially one with a complex writing system like Japanese is a slow and difficult progress for adult learners. This site is a result of my efforts to make things easier by enabling me to read and listen to the text of a fun and popular anime series in manageable chunks. While one could just watch the show with Japanese subtitles and stop and rewind to repeat or look up words, that is far too slow and tedious a process for me. As an added bonus you can use a browser extension like Yomichan to look up the meaning of any Japanese word on each web page.

DIY

This all started as a personal project, but I thought I’d put it on the web for others to use as well. In addition if you’d like to do this sort of thing yourself for your favorite movies or TV or anime series check out the DIY page that goes into a fair amount of detail about how to do this for yourself.