First of all I don't expect to win any awards for this page, after all it's only a freebie homepage with limited disk space. As for me I've got a limited amount of time and a lot to learn before I can improve the presentation of my pages using the services available...but I'm working on it.

Anyway, my main aim in designing this homepage was to share with people in my position (or the position I was in three years ago when I started my degree) some of the best sources of on-line and other forms of information on Japan that I've learnt of during that time. I know that there are hundreds of Japan related web pages out there (some of which are excellent) so I'm not trying anything too ambitious. If you find just one useful piece of information which you didn't know about before, I'll be happy. Being from Britain, there is a UK bias in the lists of links which I hope everyone finds useful.

The ENGLISH LANGUAGE NEWS FROM JAPAN links should be useful for anyone studying about Japan - before I started using the internet I had few sources of up-to-date information on Japan. The rankings should help you isolate the best of them, although they are all worth looking at (and bookmarking). The newest feature is a facility to search these sites individually or all together.

The GENERAL INTEREST JAPAN LINKS are exactly that, a mixture of the best general interest pages I've come across. I've tried to include organisations whose homepages you should know about but never thought to look for (e.g. MITI). Some of the pages included here are excellent and will lead you to hundreds of new links, and hopefully pages more tailored to your own interests. I've only included English language pages as not everyone has a computer capable of reading Japanese.

SPECIAL INTEREST JAPAN LINKS is a section I'm currently working on to cover things such as Japanese films, Japanese sport, J-pop, manga, anime and other more specialist topics related to Japan.

The BOOKS ON JAPAN AND JAPANESE section provides a selection of the books I've come across which I consider to be some of the best of the many available on Japan. It's impossible to be exhaustive and completely up-to-date without making it a full time job, but hopefully this will point you in the right direction. Most of these books are now linked directly to their page at Amazon.com for more information and comments provided there by other people.

Finally, the OTHER USEFUL LINKS section lists some links not directly related to Japan, but they are sights I've found very useful which you might not know about (depending on how much you've used the web), and some can be used to help research on Japan.

If anyone has any comments or any suggestions for anything you think is worthwhile including, please let me know, either directly by mail or by signing my GUESTBOOK.

Good luck with your study of Japan, and most importantly...enjoy it!