- Audio Lessons
- Video Lessons
- Reference Materials
- My Tools
- Community
- Help Center
Welcome to the Help Center
Get Started with JapanesePod101First Steps with the System
My Account
How to Download
Basic and Premium iTunes Feed Setup
Innovative Language on your Gadget
Billing and SubscriptionsSubscriptions
Billing
Subscription Info and Pricing
FAQ, Tech Support and MoreMost Frequently Asked Questions
Tech Support
Text User Guide
Video User Guides
More about Innovative Language
The JapanesePod101 SystemLessons and Methodology

5 Most Recent Forum Posts
Sentance construction series
1:42 pm by
drennic6111
Favorite anime?
8:50 pm by
miljana3686
simple question about this greeting
4:04 pm by
sheffieldmuse12145
Missing Newbie Lessons
6:47 am by
mmmason8967
Audio lessons
6:35 am by
mmmason8967
Learn Japanese with JapanesePod101.com! Today is the first episode in a short series aimed at optimizing the Firefox browser to assist you in your Japanese studies. In order to optimize the Firefox browser, first you have to get it. The Firefox browser can be found here. While Rikaichan, the topic of today’s lesson, can be found here.
Rikaichan is an essential tool for any student of the Japanese language!
About our Printer-friendly lesson notes
Follow along to our award winning lessons with detailed PDF Lesson Notes! These easy to print notes take a closer look at the grammar point and vocabulary words presented in the audio lesson. Plus, read more about language101 cultural topics related to the lesson.
Re-activate or upgrade your account to access the PDF Lesson Notes today!
Kanji Close-Up
Take a closer look at the kanji characters used in the lesson Dialogue with the Kanji Close Up Practice Sheets! You'll learn the meaning, readings, and stroke order of each character. Plus, improve your writing with kanji stroke order practice sheets!
Re-activate or upgrade your account to access the Kanji Close Up Practice Sheets today!
About our Review Audio Tracks
Listen and repeat with the Review Track. Hear the lesson vocabulary and main phrases and repeat after the native speaker - it's the best way to perfect your pronunciation!
Upgrade your account to access The Review Track and start perfecting your pronunciation today!
About our Lesson Audio
Our team of Japanese language specialists have been releasing new audio and video lessons weekly since 2005. That's a lot of Japanese language learning! All lessons are free for the first 2 weeks before going into our Basic and Premium Archive.
Re-activate or upgrade your account to access every single lesson we've ever created today!
About our Dialog Audio Tracks
The audio lesson is a comprehensive, easy to use lessons that makes learning Japanese fun for anyone. Each audio lesson contains can be downloaded in seconds to your computer, iPod, phone, or mp3 player so that you can learn quickly and be speaking Japanese in no time at all. The audio lesson is your ticket to learning to speak Japanese with confidence and accuracy, and from your very first lesson!
About our Dialog Audio Tracks
Don't have enough time for an entire lesson today? Listen to the Dialogue Only Track to hear the native Dialogue. Listening to a little bit of Japanese everyday, no matter how much, will greatly improve your listening comprehension. Guaranteed!
Upgrade your account to access the Dialogue Only Track and other Premium Tools today!
About our Grammar Audio Tracks
Tackle grammar head on with the lesson Grammar List. We break down the grammar piece by piece so you fully master the structure and formation.
Upgrade your account to access the Grammar List and other Premium lesson tools today!
About our Videocasts
Our team of Japanese language specialists have been releasing new audio and video lessons weekly since 2005. That's a lot of Japanese language learning! All lessons are free for the first 2 weeks before going into our Basic and Premium Archive.
Re-activate or upgrade your account to access every single lesson we've ever created today!
About our Learning Center
Listen and read the line-by-line breakdown of the lesson conversation with this Premium Tool. Listen to each line as many times as you need until you fully understand the conversation and pronunciation. Line-By-Line Audio Transcripts are the perfect way to improve your comprehension - fast!
Upgrade your account to access Line-By-Line Audio Transcript and other Premium lesson tools today!
About our Videocasts
Our team of Japanese language specialists have been releasing new audio and video lessons weekly since 2005. That's a lot of Japanese language learning! All lessons are free for the first 2 weeks before going into our Basic and Premium Archive.
Re-activate or upgrade your account to access every single lesson we've ever created today!










This entry was posted on Friday, May 4th, 2007 at 6:30 pm and is filed under News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
54 Responses to “News #45 - Understanding Rikaichan!”
Friday at 6:30 pm
Mina-san, was this tutorial helpful?
Saturday at 3:04 am
Sugoi!!! Something I heard this before, but I never tried….
Very very nice!
Saturday at 3:17 am
if you haven’t tried yet, the video really shows you how to do it!
Saturday at 3:19 am
I was already using it and I think it’s a MUST for whoever is learning japanese!
There’s a tool in google that let you translate pages
http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en
and even www.excite.jp lets you translate pages, there’s a firefox plugin for this too.
Saturday at 3:43 am
I have been using Rikai-chan for a while now (probably 6 months), after hearing about it on jpod101, and I agree it really has changed the way I study Japanese.
I really can’t recomend it enough.
Also, I am another of those people who never knew about the built in kanji dictionary. Thanks guys!
Saturday at 5:10 am
I’ve also been using this plug-in for a while.. I actually feel guilty when I turn it on, like I’m taking the easy way out instead of learning to read the Kanji.
Hopefully, I’ll be fixing the latter soon - I’ll be in Osaka in 2 weeks and will do my best to track down a copy of Kanji Sonomama for the Nintendo DS. I could easily buy it here, but I figure, as long as I’m going…
Saturday at 6:32 am
I have been using the plug-in for a while and i had no idea there was a kanji dictionary.
Yea! for new discoveries.
Saturday at 6:50 am
Rikaichan should’ve come with a warning. I have not been able to stop visiting and reading all sorta Japanese sites since installing it. My productivity have dropped to zero. lol.
But thanks for introducing it. It is truly handy.
Saturday at 7:14 am
Nice! I had heard about this on the forum but hadn’t gotten around to installing it until just right now. Even after using for just a few seconds I can tell that its going to help me a lot!
Saturday at 7:16 am
Another hint for using rikaichan, If you have a word document or any other kind of file on your computer, copy and paste the word into the google search bar (or any other input box in firefox) and you can use rikaichan to find the meaning. I always do this with song names from itunes.
Saturday at 7:27 am
Rikaichanは本当にすごいですね!Yahoo Japanを読んでみてけど、出来ませんでした。難しいすぎって、かんじがあまり知らないですから。もう一度がんばって!
字引は、さよんあら。。。(多分。。。)
-Hugo
Saturday at 10:39 am
Another cool thing about Rikaichan is that it is available for use with Thunderbird (the email client from Mozilla, the makers of Firefox).
Saturday at 12:10 pm
If you install the names dictionary, you can over over the first character of person/place name and hit shift twice to switch to the names dictionary. This is useful because the main dictionary doesn’t always pick them up.
Saturday at 12:10 pm
That should be, “you can hover over”
Saturday at 1:27 pm
知らなかった!My mouth is on the floor!
I always had my yahoo.jp dictionary on hand to translate words I didn’t know…. wow. I’m speechless.
Saturday at 4:24 pm
Here’s a tip for reading email if you don’t have Thunderbird:
1) Copy the text of the email.
2) Paste it into Text Edit or some other word processing program that can save as html
3) Save as .html
4) Use Firefox to say, “File, Open File”
5) Voila! (Use rikaichan to help you read the email text.)
It seems like a lot of steps, but it goes fast!
Mina-san, Thanks for all the rikaichan tips!!!
Saturday at 4:45 pm
it’s me again
In the Forum here someone suggested “Perapera-kun” as an alternative to rikaichan. So I installed it. It works exactly the same as rikaichan and I don’t see the advantage.
After I installed Perapera-kun Rikaichan is not listed under Tools.
How can I get it back?
Saturday at 4:59 pm
Never mind
I disabled peraperakun and rikaichan came back.
How do I use the Names Dictionary?
Caution to new users: rikaichan will not work with “images of characters”, only with straight text.
Saturday at 5:54 pm
This is fantastic!
The most handy tool to look up japanese I’ve ever seen!!!!
Plus I’m using firefox already! vv
One more interesting thing about rikaichan is it gives out the Pinyin of the kanji, which is the pronunciation of the kanji in Chinese! ( but not the meaning of the kanji but just the same Chinese charactor)
Oh did I mention I am Chinese? lol
Very clear tutorial, どうもありがとう~
Saturday at 8:31 pm
[…] * What if you can’t read Japanese? If you use Firefox and/or Thunderbird then I highly recommend Rikaichan, an indispensable tool for reading Japanese and for checking your own. I was just considering writing up how to install/use it when I noticed that Japanesepod101 have just posted a complete lesson on the subject! […]
Saturday at 8:32 pm
びっくりした!
I was just about to write about Rikaichan today. I’ve been using it for ~6 months and recently recommended it to a friend who’s also starting to learn Japanese and thought that I’d write up how to install it.
As another poster noted you can install the extension in Thunderbird also which makes reading and writing Japanese mail much easier.
While I find it indispensable, it is true that it could make you lazy (at least temporarily or until you visit Japan).
Saturday at 9:00 pm
Thanks Jason, another useful tip! I had the names dictionary installed, but never really figured out how to use it.
Also, another tip for using Rikai-chan to read your emails. Just use gmail! Then you can read and write emails from within Firefox. Actually it is useful sometimes when you are writing an email, if you are unsure about a kanji you have used, you can enable rikaichan and hover over the word to check you used the correct kanji.
Saturday at 9:24 pm
Rikaichan has become a crutch to me. I use it even for kanji I already know. It’s just too easy to use.
Saturday at 11:00 pm
Hello,
I had RikaiChan for quite sometime now but i didn’t know the need to install the name dictionary. The ’shift’ hotkey was new information too.
Thanks alot!! This is great!
Sunday at 2:40 am
すごいね!
I have installed the “Rikaichan” months ago but never know the usage of “shift key” This help me to speed up of learning Japanese Kanji !!!
本当に ありがとうございます!
Sunday at 3:55 am
JP101 crew and listeners!
Great video and tutorials for all listeners!
I already have that on my computer a long time ago.
WOW! lets start learning computer classes so we don’t be so innocent.
S_R_C
but what I’m surprise is that at this point there was still listeners that didn’t knew about Rikaichan and firefox!
Sunday at 4:01 am
Haha, I didn’t even think of using rikaichan with thunderbird. Sugoi na!
Sunday at 6:26 pm
Thanks a lot JP101 team! I didn’t know Rikaichan at all, and it’s amazing.
And for me it’s also so cool that there is a french-japanese dictionnary (and not only english-japanese)…
Monday at 3:43 am
are we writing our kanji too?
every monday night with no computer/cellphone i practice writing. 難しいけど頑張るぞ!
Monday at 8:09 am
Great video! I heard that it was possible to make rikaichan display romaji too…
Any idea how to do that ?
Monday at 8:18 am
Rikaichan also comes with a couple of buttons you can place on your toolbar if you don’t want to right click to enable/disable it. In the menu, go to View/Toolbars/Customize… and drag red Rikaichan icon to where you want it. There’s a green Lookup icon, but I’ve never actually used it before.
Monday at 9:12 am
Wow! Thank you sooo much! I had installed Rikaichan but somehow missed the step about toggling it on and so I couldn’t get it to work. I thought maybe it was a Windows only thing. Grrr. Now I’ve got it working and it looks great.
Monday at 12:48 pm
Thank you so much! It’s very nice!
Monday at 8:26 pm
I have successfully installed the FireFox according to Peter’s audio instruction. However for installation of rikaichan, I clicked on the topic of the lesson can be found here at News #45. When I click on the World Dictionary, under Japanese - English, I click on Edit , but there is NO…”Allow from Polar Cloud” as instructed by Peter.
I just click on INSTALL under Japanese-English, WORLD DICTIONARY, and save in Desktop. When I try to open the Rikaichan_en_1_04, Windows IE shows cannot recognise.
Can someone teach me step by step how to install Rikaichan, cos I am computer NUTS.
Thanks in advance.
Monday at 8:42 pm
If you can, you should watch the video version to see exactly what to do to install it.
Monday at 8:47 pm
To all the Rikaichan users
I have failed to install rikaichan in my computer
Can someone help, pleeassssssssee, I am the computer nuts again.
Monday at 9:18 pm
Thanks Jason
I did try to click on the VIDEO besides the blue icon, but nothing happen,
it just flip back to the same old page News#45 - Understanding Rikaichan.
I am getting sooo pisssss offf……
Monday at 10:43 pm
To all the kind soul, Rikaichan user
Pls help!
First of all, thanks to Jason.
I have managed to open the Video and followed the instructions and seems to manage to have installed the 3 dictionaries and get to Yahoo Japan & the wonders of RIKAICHAN.
After that when I closed it, I could find any Rikaichan’s icon on my desk top except MOZILLA FIREFOX & FOXIT READER appear on my desktop.
When I go to Mozilla Firefox, called out Yahoo Japan, and point to the Kanjis, but NO TRANSLATION OR so call the MEANINGS appear. I tried to R/Click, but could’nt fing TOOGLE RIKAICHAN. Why is it so??
Please help me again.
Thanks a million.
Tuesday at 5:23 am
Hello,
I found most interesting the podcast about rikaichan.
I did not know about pressing Shift once or twice, really useful!!!
I actually learned about this Firefox add-in the first time from an earlier Japanesepod101 podcast.
Along with moji, I use it a lot when reading Japanese Newspaper sites or the NHK site or others.
Alongside rikaichan/moji, there is a lot of helpful stuff for Japanese learners that I found on the Internet
or that Japanese-learning friends told me about:
1. Firefox extension for displaying furigana: rubysupport_en.xpi
2. Browser (based on IE) for reading Asahi shinbun including furigana: WebUDSetup (unfortunately needs computer setup as Japanese)
3. Editors for writing Japanese (including dictionary): jwpce (from http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~grosenth/jwpce.html) and wakan (from wakan.manga.cz)
4. Places for listening to Japanese news: http://podcast.yomiuri.co.jp/ and rtsp://stream.nhk.or.jp/rj/on_demand/rm/japanese.rm (downloadable using FlashGet)
Best wishes from Germany
Wednesday at 9:24 pm
Thanks for Japanesepod101.
Rikaichan is so wonderful, it really helps a lot!!!!!!
Tuesday at 5:09 pm
i used to rikai-chan but wakan is much better it can grab japanese from anywhere in the windows OS… that means if your working in japan with a j-windows install u can used wakan to translate the menus of programs like execl and word
anyway… just though it would help
Ash
Saturday at 10:20 am
Saturday at 10:27 am
Yes, it’s off by default. You toggle it off and on by right clicking inside Firefox and choosing “Toggle Rikaichan.”
Wednesday at 12:09 am
日本語を勉強するために、努力や忍耐、好奇心などが必要ですが、ソフトを通して知らない言語に身につけることは一つの挑戦ですが、何よりも極めて楽しいことです。このソフトを利用しながら、是非、自分の想像力を引き出し、日本語を身につけてください。しかし、無視しない一つのことを言っておきます。すべてはまず自らの努力です。ソフトはどうしても、ただの補足道具です。
Friday at 5:21 am
annoying how they say just click this click here
almost done do this
im gonna try it thou
Tuesday at 2:13 pm
thank you Peter and Sakura !
this tool is amazing, really helps my study !
Wednesday at 5:39 am
Does anyone know what the abbreviations in the name dictionary stand for?
After a name there’s (f), (m), (p), (s), or (u) listed. I’m guessing f = female name. M = male name. But I’m not sure and I’d like to find out what the others mean.
Tuesday at 7:12 am
The person in charge of the dictionary behind rikaichan (Jim Breen) explains the abbrevations here:
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdicinf.html
section “Names Dictionary Codes”
Tuesday at 10:25 am
Thanks Frank!
Saturday at 1:20 am
Yowzers! WowE!
Wednesday at 3:48 am
Om g! It works! I always wanted to read japanese yahoo! Arigato gosimasu! Its a dream come true!! Please tell me how to get off japanesepod101. I love you guys and you helped me alot. I’ll be back don’t worry. I am forced to get off. Please give me a line. I hope to hear from you guys soon! How do you say its a dream come true?
Wednesday at 3:49 am
Thank you so much an its been fun! But i’ll be back! omg My eyes got bigger!! That shift thing works!!!
Wednesday at 10:26 am
Ivonne C. Goodman-san
>>Please tell me how to get off japanesepod101.
I believe Jessi has already answered your question in the other comment section and e-mail has been sent to you.
>>How do you say its a dream come true?
We say ゆめがかなう(yume ga kanau)for “dream comes true”
Sunday at 3:01 pm
Fivezone…
Wonderful blog post, saw on…
Leave a Reply