Japanese Language Resources

Books

• A Kondansha Dictionary: The Handbook of Japanese Verbs -- by Taeko Kamiya; a much better guide to grammar than the Barron's book below; arranged by verb type and tense, with specific examples for each tense
• A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters -- by Kenneth G. Henshall; listing of all the common-usuage kanji and some other kanji; listing of all the kana; indexed by both stroke count and character readings; a few examples of combination words; generalized explanation of the origin and classification of kanji; proper stroke order for calligraphy
• Random House Japanese-English English-Japanese Dictionary -- by Seigo Nakao; kanji/kana characters and examples of usuage are given in definitions
• Barron's Japanese Grammar -- by Carol and Nobuo Akiyama; generally good, but over-simplified to the point it can lead to bad grammar mistakes; some example phrases are not given with the English meaning, but rather with the English cultural equivalent, which can lead to confusion if you're just looking for a word or phrase; great examples of counting, time, etc.;
• Shin Nihongo no Kiso: Japanese Kanji Workbook I & II -- by the 3A Corporation; kanji workbooks with stroke quides, pronunciation given in kana (you must know your kana), and sentence practice
• Shin Nihongo no Kiso I & II: Grammatical Notes in English -- by the Association for Overseas Technical Scholarship; made to accompany the I & II textbooks; used as a grammar guide along, they're kind of confusing, because the contents are just listed by the Japanese words used in the grammatical construction, rather than by a short description of the grammatical construction, but detailed examples are given
• Shin Nihongo no Kiso I -- by the Association for Overseas Technical Scholarship; Japanese language text; English translation and grammatical notes (above) also needed
• Shin Nihongo no Kiso II -- by the Association for Overseas Technical Scholarship; Japanese language text; English translation and grammatical notes (above) also needed

Online Tutorials

• Japanese for the Western Brain -- currently does not teach kanji or kana, uses only romaji (Roman letters)
• Japanese language lessons -- on Japanese-Online.com
• PolyKarbon's "Japanese Language Help" forum -- PolyKarbon is a bulletin board for anime and comic artists
• PolyKarbon's online Japanese tutorial
• How to Remember Japanese Characters -- visual aids for remembering the kana (Japanese characters that represent phonetic syllables); tips on Japanese; more resources
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• The Kanji Site -- information on kanji (Japanese characters derived from Chinese which represent specific concepts); online quizzes; visit the "How to use this site" page first!
• Japanese -- this is a publicly-edited resource to help others pass the "Japanese Language Proficiency Test"; I don't know how accurate it is and I have found errors in other information hosted by WikiPedia, so I would only use this if you can't find the information from a more reliable source

Online Translators and Dictionaries

• Nifty online translator -- the default setting is Japanese-to-English; to change, click the drop-down arrow; the 1st box is to enter a URL and translate an entire webpage; the 2nd box is to enter some text and have it translate the text you entered

Japanese/Chinese-language Software

• NJStar.com -- software including NJStar Japanese World Processor, NJStar Chinese Word Processor, NJStar Asian Explorer, NJStar Communicator, NJStar Chinese Calendar, NJStar Chinese Pen (allows you to write Chinese directly with your mouse or tablet) and NJWIN CJK Viewer