Sooner or later, anyone learning Japanese must wrestle with its awe-inspiring written characters. Kanji is easily one of the most complex writing systems on the planet. To read even the simplest Japanese newspaper, you need to know thousands of characters.
You can carry around a big stack of dictionaries, or better, get a Canon Wordtank, which packs plenty of kanji into a wonder toy the size of a supermarket romance novel. Wordtank holds more than 6,350 incredibly subtle ideo-graphs, 35,875 compounds, 650,000 dictionary entries, and 9,800 sample sentences.
At first, the Japanese interface might scare you off; fortunately there's an English mode for beginners like me. The quiz function is great for both learning new words and memorizing kanji. I take Wordtank everywhere - I even whip it out on the subway.
Reports on sci.lang.japan say Wordtank can be had for up to US$100 less in the streets of Japan - if you use the right words.
Canon Wordtank Super IDX-9500: US$449. US distributor: GITCO (800) 527 2607, +1 (510) 704 9129.
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