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Kage

This is a program to memorize kanji. When running, it shows you semi-transparent kanji you can see through and click through and type through, while working with some other programs. Like watermarks. Like this:

The idea is that if you see a symbol many-many times, you will remember it even without paying any special attention.

Download (668 KB).

Unzip it somewhere, then run Kage.exe. Use the right mouse button on a 蔭 icon in the tray notification area to control it.

There is a line in a file settings.ini, which looks like this:

file = kanji.txt

Change kanji.txt to your own file with kanji.

A file with kanji is a text file in Unicode, you can create it with Windows Notepad (choose "Unicode" in "Save as..." dialog) or other plain text editor (save it as UCS-2 Little Endian, then). The format is as follows:

line1
line2
...
//begin//
line10
line11
line12
...
//end//
line30
line31
line32
...

Only lines inside the //begin// - //end// section will be used when you run the program, so you can make a big file and memorize it piece by piece. The line format is either

私  わたし  I, myself

(two spaces are used as the separator),
or

私	【わたし】	I, myself

(which is more convenient to use with lines taken from the JWPce dictionary).
Look at the kanji.txt and words.txt for some examples.

Suggested usage

Read a piece of text. Put kanji (or words) you don't know into a text file of the format described earlier. Let's say you named it my_kanji.txt. Then change the appropriate line of settings.ini to look like

file = my_kanji.txt

Save it and start (re-start) the program. Keep it running for some time, while doing something else with your computer. Then read the text again and see if it helped you to remember.

Try this if there is a trouble.

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