IRIS GUIDES · READING JAPANESE
How to look up a kanji you don’t know
The fastest way depends on where the kanji is: on a screen you can copy from, in a picture, or in front of you on paper.
On a web page or in a PDF
Copy the word and paste it into an online dictionary such as Jisho. Copy the whole word rather than one kanji, because most kanji have several readings and the word decides which one is used. A hover dictionary is faster still: point at the word and its reading and meaning appear on the page, with no copying. Iris does this in Chrome, and it finds where each word starts and ends, so a compound or a conjugated verb is looked up as one word.
In an image or a screenshot
Text in a picture cannot be copied, so it has to be read with text recognition first. Google Lens reads text in photos and screenshots. In Chrome, Iris reads the Japanese in an image on your computer: right-click the image and choose “Read Japanese in this image with Iris”, then point at any word. Free reads 5 images a day.
On paper, a sign or a package
Draw it or photograph it. Jisho’s Draw search, Google Translate’s handwriting input and the IME Pad in the Windows Japanese keyboard all recognize handwritten kanji, and they work better when you draw the strokes in the usual order. Google Lens on your phone reads printed text from the camera.
When drawing does not work
Search by radicals, the parts a kanji is built from. In Jisho’s Radicals search, pick the most distinctive part you can see, then narrow the list by stroke count until your kanji appears. Choosing a less common part narrows the list fastest.
Once you have found it
Save the word with the sentence you found it in, and review it a few times over the next days, so the next time you meet it you can read it without looking it up. Iris keeps each saved word with its sentence and brings it back in a short daily review.
Iris is a free Japanese dictionary extension for desktop Chrome. It needs no account, and word lookups stay on your device.