@nifty now provides a free computer translation service between Japanese and English for web sites. The translations are full of mistakes, some of them rather funny. For example "Kumamoto-shi" becomes "Bear Book City" if spaces have been placed between each of the characters in a heading. Still I think there are situations where the service is certainly "better than nothing" for folks who cannot read Japanese. Actually, the system seems to be set up for Japanese people who want to read English pages (there isn't an English menue for those who don't understand Japanese). Accordingly, I have set this page up to make the Nifty service accessible to people who do not understand Japanese at all. Links 3 and 4 are for the Kumamoto area but link 2 can be used to translate most (not all) Japanese sites into English (or what appears to be English).
By the way, sometimes the translation site is busy. If this doesn't work right away, try again some other time.
I've set the original Japanese site to translate itself into English to make it accessible to English speakers.
This seems to me to be an example of a situation where the translations are moderately intelligible an useful -- that is, if you want to see a movie in Kumamoto. To view another site with local movie information click here (this site is provided by the Kumanichi).
Translations of material here are much more garbled and confusing but perhaps better than nothing in a pinch. Note that the Japanese graphics are not translated -- only Japanese text.
In formation on rather expensive but high quality musical events.
These Japanese news articles are from the Kumanichi paper and have been translated using the Nifty Global Gate Translation Site
This shedule is from Kumamoto City's "Shiseidayori" (Oct. 2001) and has been translated using the Nifty Global Gate Translation Site
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