Now, if you run into a gnarly Kanji like the one below, you just have to turn on rikaichan and mouse over it.<\/p>\n
\u6182\u9b31<\/span><\/p>\n Incidentally, you can use rikaichan on all the vocabulary on this site. I never would have spent those countless hours adding the popups manually if rikaichan existed at the time.<\/p>\n If you want to learn more about the Kanji such as the stroke order (very important!), you can simply copy+paste the word into jisho.org<\/a>. You may also want to do this if rikaichan returns multiple readings and you are unsure which one to use. The dictionary labels more common readings as “Common word”.<\/p>\n Assuming you searched for a real word, you should see an “Kanji details” button that will automatically look up all the Kanji in the selected word.<\/p>\n Make sure to check the stroke order image. The red dot shows where each stroke starts.<\/p>\n If you need to look up a word that’s written on (god-forbid) paper<\/i> or some other non-electronic medium where you can’t copy+paste, you need to go through a couple more steps.<\/p>\n First of all, most of the newer electronic dictionary models from brands such as Casio, Sanyo, and Canon now have a stylus that allows you to write the Kanji directly. It may be a bit expensive especially outside of Japan, but I think it’s a worthy investment for the serious Japanese learner who doesn’t want to have to read books sitting next to a computer. However, if you’re already paying for an iPhone or other smart phone with internet access, that’s another option.<\/p>\n Or you can keep reading to see how you can do it for FREE!<\/p>\n If you happen to already know other words that use the same Kanji, all you need is a bit of creative mixing and matching. For example, if you don’t know \u300c\u6c7a\u5b9a\u300d but you know \u300c\u6c7a\u3081\u308b\u300d and \u300c\u5b9a\u671f\u300d, you can just type the words you do<\/i> know and delete the unwanted characters.\u3000This technique is particularly useful for those tricky readings like \u300c\u4ef2\u4eba\u300d. Just type \u300c\u4ef2\u9593\u300d\uff08\u306a\u304b\u307e\uff09 and \uff3b\u4eba\u300d\uff08\u3072\u3068\uff09, delete \u300c\u9593\u300d, and hit search.<\/p>\n Now if you’re trying to find a word with Kanji you’ve never seen before, you need to find each one and stitch the word together using copy+paste.<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.guidetojapanese.org\/images\/kanji_search3.png\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.guidetojapanese.org\/images\/kanji_search4.png\")
<\/p>\nLooking up printed words<\/h2>\n
New word, same Kanji<\/h3>\n
No freakin’ clue<\/h3>\n
![](\"http:\/\/www.guidetojapanese.org\/images\/kanji_search5.png\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.guidetojapanese.org\/images\/kanji_search6.png\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.guidetojapanese.org\/images\/kanji_search7.png\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.guidetojapanese.org\/images\/kanji_search8.png\")
<\/p>\n