Expresso Ristretto, AKA The Kanji Cross-Reference Tool, provides a convenient way to study kanji using multiple texts at the same time. By being able to quickly cross-reference characters across texts on-the-fly, the student can effortlessly pool together information on stroke order diagrams, kanji etymology, and see example vocabulary words from a number of sources. For example, if you were studying the kanji by reading The Kanji Way to Japanese Language Power, you could practice speaking the words in Crowley's book, look up the meaning behind the shape in Ken Henshall's A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters, look up the stroke order diagram to practice your calligraphy of the character in Jack Halpern's Kanji Learner's Dictionary, and look up more example words to study the contribution of the kanji to various words in The Kanji Dictionary.

Begin by selecting the text you are using, and then the 1st Kanji you plan to study. Hit the display button, and a list of the next characters in the book will show, along with their index number in several other books. Use the other books that you own to continue studying the kanji from multiple perspectives simultaneously. The text imaging proxy can be used if your browser is having trouble processing Japanese. You can also control the number of kanji shown at one time, and their font size. The Next and Back buttons make it simple to cruise forward and backward through the primary book to see more cross-references.

Resume Expresso Ristretto.

Improvements of Version IIIa from Version III:

• Now contains the 1,023 indices from Japanese Kanji Flashcards Volume 1 & 2 for JLPT.

• HTTP header now tells the browser tha the output is EUC-JP encoded Japanese when not run through the proxy. (Wasn't able to trust the browser's auto-detect.)
• Now contains the indices of Jack Halpern's Kanji Learner's Dictionary. This book has complete stroke order diagrams for 2,230 kanji.
• Decided to make the very large kanji dictionaries sequentially searchable. There is a big problem with this. Most Japanese capable computers can display the 6,355 JIS X 0208-1990 kanji, and some browsers such as Firefox and Netscape can also do a less than perfect rendition of the 5,801 JIS X 0212-1990 kanji. But Nelson's Modern Reader's Japanese-English Character Dictionary, Haig's The New Nelson Japanese-English Character Dictionary, Halpern's NTC's New Japanese-English Character Dictionary, and Spahn & Hadamitzky's The Kanji Dictionary are all large tomes which have kanji outside of both sets. Thus the indices are searchable, but not 100%.
• 297 additional JIS X 0212-1990 kanji were added "under the hood" as supplement to the JIS X 0208-1990 set.
• The Japanese text imaging proxy server was extended to include the above 297 JIS X 0212-1990 characters.
• A method was developed to order the non-integer indices of The Kanji Dictionary in (what is hopefully) their correct sequence as in the Dictionary.

• Now contains the indices of P.G. O'Neill's Essential Kanji.

Note: Improvements of Version II from the original version:

• The student may now use any of 7 texts as their main reference instead of just 3.
• Now contains the indices of the A Guide to Reading & Writing Japanese, 3rd Edition.
• Now contains the indices of the Tuttle Kanji Cards.
• The student can change the font size of the kanji.
• The student can use the same proxy server technology used by Ice Mocha to image Japanese if their browser cannot support Japanese text.
• The Kanji Cross-Reference Tool, Version II uses less RAM than its predecessor and is faster.