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What's New

What's New! - 6th of March 2023

  • Audio should now match the reading for all dictionary entries. If you notice any discrepencies, please let us know via the forum or the contact us page
  • Dictionary entries now show whether the Kanji or reading is irregular or outdated.

What's New! - 7th of January 2023

  • 明けましておめでとうございます! Happy New Year!
  • Added an option to allow users to upgrade their account
  • Ads will not be displayed for users who have upgraded their account
  • Users who have upgraded may also create their own sample sentences for use on the site

What's New! - 19th of May 2022

  • You can add sentences to your learning, mastered or other lists.
  • The sentence practice games have been moved to their own section, and you can select which sentences to use when practicing.

What's New! - 2nd of March 2022

  • Added a new (字) button for entering Japanese text when posting in the forum. Clicking on the (字) button will allow you to look up a definition in the dictionary, select or enter the furigana for the definition, and link the definition to the minidictionary.

What's New! - 26th of January 2022

  • Added new lessons and practice games for numbers/counters

What's New! - 16th of June 2021

  • Added new conjugation lessons and practice game

What's New! - 25th of May 2021

  • We've refreshed the content Japanese to English dictionary, with about an additional 50k entries added in, and many changes to the definitions of existing entries.
  • While we've taken a lot of care to minimise the impact to any lists that you may have created, you may notice some differences where definitions have been removed or changed.
  • If you notice any issues with the changes, please let us know via the forum, the contact us page, or you can pm me directly.

What's New! - 8th of April 2021

  • The root words for compound words and expressions are now showing in the entry details page of the dictionary.
  • Major improvements to how the Japanese sample sentences are split into words and matched to dictionary entries.
  • If you notice any problems, please let us know either via the forum, the contact us page, or you can pm me.

What's New! - 20th of March 2021

  • New Mahjong Game - Practice your Kanji, vocabulary and learn new words by completing fun mahjong puzzles!

What's New! - 20th of January 2021

  • When clicking on a user's name, a popup showing a 'meishi' for the user is shown rather than redirecting to the user's profile.
  • Upgraded the voice engine for the text to speech engine, the new voice should be a lot clearer and easier to understand.
  • The lessons have been upgraded to use the same codebase as the user lists. This will make it a lot easier to add new lessons in the future.

What's New! - 7th of January 2021

  • Lists can now be sorted, and filtered based on a search term.
  • Tags can now be added to lists

What's New! - 1st of January 2021

  • Added a new table view for vocabulary, you can use this view to quickly scan through a lot of entries to find the meaning you want.
  • Added a new grid view for Kanji.
  • Added pagination for vocabulary and kanji when viewing lists.

What's New! - 9th of December 2020

  • Added a new Reading Lessons section, this is a great way to improve your Japanese by reading fun novels in Japanese.
  • Lists can now be organised into collections. To do this, simply type in or select the new collection name when editing the details for a list.
  • Lists can now be commented on, comments will appear in the forum.
  • amazon.co.jp has been added as an affiliate for the site.  Please support this site by clicking on the links before buying products from amazon.co.jp.
  • Remove support for the Adobe Flash Player.
  • As always, if you notice any problems, feel free to us know either via the forum, the contact us page, or you can pm me.

What's New! - 15th of August 2019

  • New Crosswords Game - Practice your Japanese by completing crossword puzzles!
  • Autohide menu on mobile displays
  • If you notice any problems, please let us know either via the forum, the contact us page, or you can pm me.

What's New! - 9th of June 2019

  • You can now make friends and send private messages to other members of the Tanoshii Japanese community.
  • There are three different settings for private messages and friends, which you can configure in your profile:
    • Receive private messages from anyone
    • Receive private messages from friends only (default)
    • Block all private messages and friend requests
  • If you wish to make friends with anyone, you may send a friend request by viewing their profile page.
  • If you have any questions on this, or notice any problems, please let us know either via the forum, the contact us page, or you can pm me.

What's New! - 13th of April 2019

  • We've added a new "Mini Kanji Search" tool to help find Kanji when you don't know the reading for, or how to type it.  Just click on the 字 icon when searching the dictionary.
  • The tool allows you to search for Kanji based on the radicals / parts it is built from, as well as the position of the radical. You may also filter by the reading of the Kanji, vocabulary that the Kanji appears in, or the number of strokes.
  • As always, if you have any problems using this tool, or if you have any suggestions, please let us know in the forum.

What's New! - 29th of December 2018

  • The practice games have been optimised for mobile devices, which means the complete site should now work on mobile devices.  There has also been numerous improvements to the desktop version as well.
  • As always, if you notice any problems or questions, please let us know in the forum, or via the contact us form.

What's New! - 1st of December 2018

  • The forum, and all profile pages have now been optimised for mobile devices.

What's New! - 5th of November 2018

What's New! - 15th of October 2018

  • The Japanese to English Dictionary, and the Multi Word Search has now been optimised for display on mobile devices.  We've also improved the display for the desktop experience and included a couple of enhancements along with this change.
  • You may now select to display dictionary listings using the default full view, or a smaller compact view.
  • The Mult Word Search results can be displayed using the Mini Dictionary, which we believe provides a great reading experience for Japanese learners.
  • As always, let us know what you think of the changes in the forum.

What's New! - 1st of October 2018

What's New! - 16th of September 2018

  • The Multi Word Search engine for the dictionary has been completely rewritten.  It is now faster and should be more accurate than the previous engine.  If you notice any inaccuracies, or any other problems, please post a message in the forum, or use the Contact Us page.

What's New! - 10th of September 2018

  • We are currently running a Kickstarter campaign to help with the development a new mobile friendly version of our website.  Anyone who would like to contribute to the success of this project, you may visit the Kickstarter campaign here.
  • As a bonus, we are also offering users the ability to freely turn off the display of ads in the website during the period of the Kickstarter campaign.  Please visit the support page to find out how.

What's New! - 5th of July 2018

  • Major update to the Kanji Dictionary, new information includes:
  • Estimated JLPT Level based on past exam papers
  • Whether the Kanji is a Jouyou Kanji or not
  • The grade in which the Kanji is studied in Japanese schools
  • The meaning for the Kanji in Japanese
  • Any associated Dictionary entries for the Kanji
  • The radicals and parts that the Kanji is comprised of
  • Any variations of the Kanji, and a description of the origin and construction of the Kanji (in Japanese)
  • Related Kanji by concept, for example kanji for numbers or kanji for directions
  • Related Kanji containing the same radical / parts
  • The meaning of the Kanji in other languages (French, Portuguese and Spanish)
  • New page for browsing Kanji by JLPT Level, Japanese Education Level, Jouyou Kanji, or by Concept
  • When searching for Kanji, the results now include any Kanji which contain the radical that was searched for
  • The mini dictionary now shows the details for a kanji if a single Kanji character is highlighted
  • As always, if you notice any issues, bugs or problems, please post a message in the forum, or use the Contact Us page
  • Lastly, please Enjoy!

What's New! - 15th of June 2018

  • Added Video Lessons, courtesy of Easy Peasy Japanesey.  Learn Japanese by analysing famous quotes from anime, games and 5channel. This is a great channel for both beginners and advanced learners.

What's New! - 27th of March 2018

  • Added new resource, Find a Tutor, which will help you to find a qualified Japanese tutor to help you with your studies.  The tutors listed come with the highest recommendation from Tanoshii Japanese, so give them a try!

What's New! - 1st of October 2017

  • New kanji practice game, Select Kanji!  Choose the correct kanji from a list of similar kanji to form a Japanese word.  This is a great new game for anyone studying for the JLPT.

What's New! - 3rd of March 2017

  • Fixed issue with colour on bar charts appearing incorrectly.
  • Fixed issue with time taken in practice results showing incorrectly.
  • Fixed issue with elongated voice on long sentences.

What's New! - 25th of February 2017

  • Due to the increased traffic we've had recently, we've moved to a new and more powerful server and upgraded to new versions of all sofware. If you notice any problems please send details via the contact us form, or post in the forum, thanks!

What's New! - 22nd of January 2017

  • Matched conjugations now show on the details page after searching.
  • Clicking on a link for the synonyms will open the definition in the mini-dictionary.

What's New! - 6th of November 2016

  • Writing practice games should now work on Android systems
  • Matched conjugations now show on the search results page
  • Recently changed lists now show in the sidebar when viewing your lists from your profile
  • Recent searches now show in the sidebar when adding vocabulary or kanji to a list

What's New! - 3rd of April 2016

  • Suffixes are now returned when searching the dictionary.  ie, searching for tabenagara will return entries for both taberu and nagara.

What's New! - 18th of March 2016

  • New Vocabulary Practice Game, Arrange Sentences!  Listen to sentences and arrange the words in the correct order.
  • You can skip questions now in the Fill in the Blanks game (helpful for the really long sentences).

What's New! - 27th of February 2016

  • Fixed an issue where the voice was slowing down for long sentences.
  • The audio should work now for both iOS and Android systems.

What's New! - 6th of February 2016

  • Change the text to audio system to use open jtalk.
  • Text to audio now only works if you are logged in.
  • Remove the Hiragana and Katakana audio games as the sound isn't clear enough.
  • Add audio to the sample sentences.

What's New! - 8th of January 2016

  • Advanced searching of sample sentences, see the Search Sample Sentences page for more details.
  • Improvements to how sentences are split into words (there still is some issues though).
  • Bug fixes to the Fill in the Gaps game.

What's New! - 20th of November 2015

  • The Matching Furigana and Matching Kanji games now show the English meaning after the correct answer is selected
  • The Matching English Meaning game now hides the furigana for kanji that you know when the question is asked, and then reveals it after the correct answer is selected
  • The Fill in the Gaps game will now use the vocabulary filter that you selected
  • Improvements to the practice results screen when playing multi-games

What's New! - 11th of October 2015

  • Rename the Word Recognition kanji game to Kanji Readings.
  • Added a Multi-Game option, with this option you can thoroughly test yourself for each question across multiple games.
  • Added an Advanced Filter option for vocabulary games so that you can challenge yourself playing with only verbs, adjectives, onomatopoeia etc.
  • Redesigned the Game results screen for the Single game option so you can quickly switch between games.
  • Many other minor improvements to the game options screens.
  • If you notice any bugs, or errors showing, please post here and I'll fix them.  Thanks!

What's New! - 20th of September 2015

  • Improvements to the kanji writing games (better performance and improved character recognition).

What's New! - 30th of August 2015

  • Practice games now show the sentences that you were asked in the results.
  • Improvements to how the sample sentence details page is displayed.
  • Improvements to how the sample sentences have been split into words.

What's New! - 8th of May 2015

What's New! - 11th of April 2015

  • Fixed issue with Fill in the Blanks game not showing all results on the results page.

What's New! - 6th of April 2015

  • Word Recognition practice game now shows the english meaning of the word after the correct answer is entered.
  • Matching Japanese practice game now shows the furigana for kanji that is not in your learning list.
  • Practice results page shows more details in the results.

What's New! - 12th of October 2014

  • Add most of the remaining conjugations for verbs.
  • Sample sentences are now being shown for dictionary entries.
  • New practice game, Fill in the Blanks.  This new practice game shows a sample sentence with the words you are studying removed.  A great new game which will help both expand your vocabulary and give valuable grammar practice.

What's New! - 6th of October 2014

  • Improvement to how words which are written usually in kana are displayed.

What's New! - 6th of September 2014

  • Added new practice game, Kanji Recognition!

What's New! - 30th of August 2014

  • You may now play a different practice game with the same set of questions.
  • Writing practice games now give feedback on whether you have drawn the character in the correct stroke order.
  • Dictionary entries are now grouped into categories.

What's New! - 21st of April 2014

  • Synonyms now show for entries which contain a Japanese definition..

What's New! - 18th of April 2014

  • Japanese definitions (with English translations) are now available for most of the dictionary entries.

What's New! - 5th of March 2014

  • You may now quickly find kanji that is used in the vocabulary of your list by selecting "Kanji from Vocabulary" on the Add Kanji screen.

What's New! - 8th of February 2014

  • Improvements to the way questions are selected when you play a practice game.

What's New! - 2nd of February 2014

  • Highlight any Japanese word in the site and it will automatically lookup the meaning in the dictionary for you.  Give it a try!

What's New! - 16th of January 2014

  • The details page for a dictionary entry now include the meaning for each individual kanji used in the word.
  • The details page for a kanji now include the radicals used in the kanji.

What's New! - 15th of January 2014

  • When searching in the dictionary, if you enter a * it will match any number of characters.
  • If you enter a . it will match exactly one character

What's New! - 12th of January 2014

  • You can now watch threads and topics in the forum and receive email notifications when someone posts in a thread or topic you are watching.
  • You can customise the frequency of emails that you receive in the "Your Notifications" section under Profile.
  • New messages since your last visit are highlighted with a "New" icon in the forum.
  • The forum topics have been reorganised to promote more discussion.
  • Many other minor enhancements and bug fixes.

What's New! - 2nd of December 2013

  • Fixed issue with 'Stay logged in' function not working after server move (unfortunately you will need to relogin and select this option).
  • Fixed issue with jpg avatars not uploading after server move.

What's New! - 1st of December 2013

  • We've moved to a new server and upgraded to new versions of all sofware. This should be more a more powerful and stable environment, but if you notice any problems please send details via the contact us form, or post in the forum, thanks!

What's New! - 2nd of November 2013

  • New Feature, Your Lists!
  • Added a new feature that allows users to create their own lists of vocabulary and kanji which can be used in the practice games. Lists may be set to be public so that you may share your lists with other users, or follow lists that other users have created
  • Minor changes include:
  • Visual improvements to how many of the pages are displayed, in particular to the lesson pages and your learning and mastered lists
  • Added the ability to add forum comments to entries in the Kanji Dictionary
  • Added next and previous buttons to the multi-word search results page for easier navigation
  • The display of romaji will now be sticky between sessions
  • Fixed a bug on the browse dictionary pages which was preventing all words from showing
  • And many other minor bug fixes and cleanup of code

What's New! - 22nd of September 2013

  • Added the ability to search the kanji dictionary directly.

What's New! - 18th of August 2013

  • Added Vocabulary Lessons 7 to 10 for GENKI I: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese.

What's New! - 9th of July 2013

  • Added "See all recent posts".
  • Renamed Products section to Resources.

What's New! - 1st of May 2013

  • Added Kanji Lesson 2 and Vocabulary Lesson 2 for Intermediate Kanji Book, Vol. 1.

What's New! - 27th of April 2013

  • Added Vocabulary Lessons 4 to 6 for GENKI I: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese.

What's New! - 21st of April 2013

  • Added Vocabulary Lesson 3 for GENKI I: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese.
  • Improvement to how words which are written usually in kana are displayed.

What's New! - 14th of April 2013

  • Added the shiritori forum game to the practice menu.

What's New! - 13th of March 2013

  • Improved question selection algorithm to give more weighting to questions that have not been asked in a long time.

What's New! - 10th of March 2013

  • Added Kanji Lesson 1 and Vocabulary Lesson 1 for Intermediate Kanji Book, Vol. 1.
  • Added Vocabulary Lesson 1 for GENKI I: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese

What's New! - 4th of March 2013

  • Improved the interface for all dictionary pages.
  • Added comments section for dictionary entries.
  • Improved the interface for the What's New page.

What's New! - 26th of February 2013

  • Improved caching for iOS devices.

What's New! - 23rd of February 2013

  • Add administration pages for affiliates and promotions.

What's New! - 12th of February 2013

  • Changed What's New so it is replicated in the Site Announcements Section of the forum.

What's New! - 7th of February 2013

  • Added a minimum age of 14 years restriction to users that can post in the forum.

What's New! - 2nd of February 2013

  • Created the forum!

What's New! - 8th of December 2012

  • Moved What's New into Home section

What's New! - 5th of December 2012

  • Added change in score for practice games
  • Fixed button styles for iOS Safari

What's New! - 25th of November 2012

  • Added conjugations for the potential form of verbs

What's New! - 18th of November 2012

  • Redesigned the practice options page to be more user friendly

What's New! - 3rd of November 2012

  • Added the Hiragana Times to the products page
  • Added rankings page for practice games
  • Formatting of practice results
  • Added practice game summary page in profile section
  • Added detailed question results for each practice game type in profile section

What's New! - 6th of October 2012

  • Added GENKI I & II textbooks to the products page
  • Added new writing practice game for kanji

What's New! - 5th of October 2012

  • Added verb stem and tai forms to dictionary entries

What's New! - 1st of October 2012

  • Add kanji details page
  • Add your overall results to practice results page for logged in users
  • Allow list of all Kana/Kanji/Vocabulary you are learning/have mastered from the report card
  • Various minor bug fixes

What's New! - 25th of August 2012

  • Allow addition of all Kana/Kanji/Vocabulary you are learning/have mastered from the lessons pages

What's New! - 23rd of August 2012

  • Site can now be added as a web application on the iPad/iPhone (choose add to home screen from safari)
  • Text to Audio now works on iPad/iPhone.

What's New! - 18th of August 2012

  • Improved question selection for practice games for logged in users
  • Detailed results for your favourite practice games on the profile page of logged in users

What's New! - 17th of August 2012

  • Change facebook code to run asynchronously to improve page load times
  • Allow addition of Kana/Kanji/Vocabulary you are learning/have mastered from the dictionary search results and entries
  • Minor compatability fixes for the practice games on the iPad
  • Added vocabulary lessons and kanji lessons from chapters 39 and 40 of the Basic Kanji Book, Vol. 2.

What's New! - 5th of August 2012

  • Doubled the size of the drawing canvas for writing practice games
  • Strokes are shown with a red spot to indicate the start of a stroke for writing practice games
  • Added an "undo" for each stroke in the writing practice games
  • Added ipad compatibility for the writing practice games
  • Added acknowledgements page

What's New! - 21st of July 2012

  • Added ability for users to register and login to tanoshiijapanese
  • Users can add hiragana, katakana, kanji and vocabulary to their learning and mastered lists

What's New! - 17th of July 2012

  • Added transitive / intransitive pairs to the dictionary

What's New! - 10th of July 2012

  • Added vocabulary lessons from chuukyuu he ikou textbook

What's New! - 2nd of July 2012

  • Added Like button for Facebook

What's New! - 12th of May 2012

  • Added entry details page for dictionary entries
  • Added conjugation details to the entry details page
  • Merged stroke order details into the entry details page

What's New! - 28th of April 2012

  • Added vocabulary lessons and kanji lessons from chapters 23 to chapter 33 of the Basic Kanji Book, Vol. 2.
  • Fixed various grammatical errors (big thanks to Laird for proofreading the site content)

What's New! - 21st of April 2012

What's New! - 14th of April 2012

  • Added word recognition, matching furigana and matching kanji practice types for kanji practice
  • Added furigana for 97.07% of the kanji elements (176,868 Records)

What's New! - 7th of April 2012

  • Added related vocabulary to Kanji Lessons

What's New! - 31st of March 2012

  • Added practice section
  • Added affiliate links for CDJapan and Amazon UK
  • Added Show Romaji flag for dictionary
  • Added multi word search of dictionary

What's New! - 24th of March 2012

  • Added ability to browse the dictionary
  • Improvements to the dictionary search engine and display

What's New! - 17th of March 2012

  • Side menu now shows relevant content
  • Added recent dictionary searches to the side menu
  • Added the products section
  • Added the Kanji Lessons
  • Added Conjugation rules (te, plain/polite, past/present, negative forms) for godan verbs (114,912 Records)

What's New! - 10th of March 2012

  • Added Katakana Lessons
  • Added a drawing canvas for English Flashcards
  • Added stroke order diagrams for dictionary entries

What's New! - 3rd of March 2012

  • Added What's New Section
  • Added stroke order diagrams for Hiragana - sourced from KanjiVG
  • Update to layout of Hiragana Lessons
  • Added Affiliate Link for yesasia
  • Added Practice Lessons for Hiragana

What's New! - 25th of February 2012

  • Miscellaneous Layout changes
  • Layout automatically resizes on first load
  • Added Affiliate Links for Play-Asia and Amazon
  • Added new Tab for Lessons
  • Added Hiragana Lessons

What's New! - 18th of February 2012

  • Site Launched!
  • Home page added
  • Dictionary added - sourced from The EDICT Dictionary File
  • No of Dictionary Entries is 150,523
  • No of Kanji Elements is 139,542
  • No of Reading Elements is 162,477
  • Added Furigana for 66.98% of the Kanji Elements (93,470 Records)
  • Added Romaji for 99.85% of the Reading Elements (162,232 Records)
  • Added Conjugation rules (te, plain/polite, past/present, negative forms) for ichidan verbs (57,150 Records)
  • Smart Indexes for fast searching of Dictionary
  • Added Simple Search engine for Dictionary