Haikuplanet

The first offering from new Tokyo web startup jonkenpon is Haikuplanet, a gem of a site where users can create, vote on, save and send haiku! As explained by one half of the jonkenpon team, Jon Yongfook Cockle:

Using a rather nifty AJAX-ified panel to create your haiku in real-time, users can choose from a number of different themes and font-styles, with which to create a visual style that best represents the context of their haiku

The site requires a simple sign in and then presents you with an intuitive interface where you not only type in your haiku but also select themes and fonts, previewing in real time before  you publish them to the site.

Not only is it attractive, well designed and fun to use, but Haikuplanet is a wonderful way to practice your Japanese. To whit:

1. The site is monolingual Japanese so your reading skills get a workout just from navigating about.

2. Lots of amusing haiku to read. At 3 lines of 5-7-5 mora (Japanese syllables) even the laziest student of Japanese has no excuse.

3. Most of the contributors thus far have opted for the writing brush font which means the kanji look cooler but they can also be harder to read - but hey, if you can read brushstroke style kanji you will breeze through normal fonts.

4.  You now have an excellent excuse to write in Japanese, remembering that writing is the least developed skill for foreign learners of the language.

5. Writing haiku teaches you to count the mora (syllables) of the words you use - in other words it forces you to think about the readings of any kanji, and by default has you analyzing the sound structure of each of your creations  (no one wants the shame of screwing up the simple 5-7-5 scheme).

6. It is a lot of fun! (Check out the Wii haiku)

There is one last point for Japanese learners. Haikuplanet was put together by the two directors of jonkenpon, both of whom are twentysomething former JET Programme ALTs (Assistant Language Teachers), which just goes to show that if you put the effort in your language  studies one of your career options is that of a bilingual entrepreneurial web developer!

Comments

[Jon]

Thanks for the writeup! I'm really glad that you think this will be of interest to Japanese learners.

Due to demand we have just registered http://www.senryuplanet.jp and will be creating it as a sister-site to haikuplanet. After thinking about it, we feel it will be nice to have a place where people can be serious / artistic (haikuplanet) and a place where people can post up funny poems and just kind of play with language (senryuplanet). The two sites will of course interact with each other.

Stay tuned to the jonkenpon site for updates!