@indutny one of more modern ways of looking up a Kanji in Japanese is, as you imagine, asking Google, especially when you can copy and paste it: https://www.google.com/search?q=%E5%BA%87+%E8%AA%AD%E3%81%BF%E6%96%B9 :) I loved paper dictionaries but I moved often enough to leave them behind, sadly.
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zunda (zundan@mastodon.zunda.ninja)'s status on Thursday, 14-May-2026 03:33:15 JST
zunda
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Fedor Indutny (indutny@mean.engineer)'s status on Thursday, 14-May-2026 03:33:17 JST
Fedor Indutny
I wonder if people in Japan use a dictionary like this often. It must be too burdensome in the age where you can snap a picture of the word, select and copy, and lookup the word online.
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Fedor Indutny (indutny@mean.engineer)'s status on Thursday, 14-May-2026 03:33:17 JST
Fedor Indutny
As a person learning the language and someone who tries to stare at the phone less throughout the day I won’t complain, though. This is exactly the experience I’ve been looking for!
(Someone please hide the phone away from me so that I stop posting here)
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Fedor Indutny (indutny@mean.engineer)'s status on Thursday, 14-May-2026 03:33:18 JST
Fedor Indutny
Seriously, check this out.
First you find a radical by the number of strokes (presumably you know how to write it), this gives you a page and column number.
You open that page, locate radical, and under it look for the kanji you need. This gives you an 音読み reading… which is not what you need in many cases! (Unless you look up compound word)
Then search through the book to find the kanji by 音読み reading to identify the 訓読み reading!
Finally you find the word you need and a definition!
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Fedor Indutny (indutny@mean.engineer)'s status on Thursday, 14-May-2026 03:33:18 JST
Fedor Indutny
I feel like a Turing machine doing all of that, but now I probably won’t forget that 庇 reads as ひさし😅🤣
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Fedor Indutny (indutny@mean.engineer)'s status on Thursday, 14-May-2026 03:33:19 JST
Fedor Indutny
Japanese to Japanese dictionary has a bit of Intel instruction set manual vibe.
There are multiple indices, several layers of indirection to get to the reading of the kanji you need.
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