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My goal is for people to post websites realted to learning japanese that they have found useful, and those they think others should avoid at all costs (and of course those that are just okay) Please post your website links, tell us a little bit about the site, and who it's for (beginners, intermediates etc.)

A quick note that you all probably know: Though there are many tools on the web, there isn't a be-all, end-all learning Japanese website. You may be able to teach yourself some of the basics, but in the end to sucessfully learn Japanese well, you will need to take a class, have contact with people would can speak japanese well (native speaker or a non-native that's fluent), and aimed for going to Japan someday maybe on a study abroad program.

Recommended Websites
If you can't see Japanese Text . . .
Japanese Text Viewer Turns Japanese text into gif files for you, handy, but not perfect (recommended by entivore)

Online Dictionaries
Jim Breens WWWJDIC A very comprehensive online dictionary (recommended by Freakezette)
DION Jisho Another online dictionary, for more advanced students, comparable to an electronic dictionary. (recommended by iknownothing)

Kana Resources
Japanese Writing Animated diagrams of katakana, hiragana, and around 40 kanji (recommended by Freakezette)
Real Kana A flashcard-style way to study kana, you can select what group of kana to be tested on. (recommended by entivore)

Translators
http://www.excite.co.jp/world/
http://www.excite.co.jp/world/english/web/
http://world.altavista.com/
]http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en
Translators can be useful, but can also produce interesting results, try not to depend on these site too much. (recommened by entivore)
For some fun with what can get "lost in translation", check out the Retranslator

Tae Kim's Japanese Guide to Japanese Grammar A bulleted list of various grammar points ranging from beginner to intermediate. It may be intimindating for people just learning, though You can also visit Tae Kim's Blog (recommended by entivore)
The Japanese Page Contains any number of lessons and tips for Japanese students. Be warned: there is no dictionary and is updated infrequently(recommended by Kyaro)

My next recommended site is helpful for learning kana, Japanese Writing
arrow ideal for beginner students

I found this site after I had a little 3 week intro session to Japanese and was excited to learn more. It's good if you're looking to learn kana, or are already learning but find yourself confused about the stroke order, or just which one is which. There are animated diagrams of the 46 kana syllabaries, and you can set it up so you view romaji only, kana only, or romaji and kana together. There is also a kanji tutorial aimed at teaching about 40 kanji (mostly numbers and days).

The downside of this site is that doesn't go into the syllables made by combining the "i" column with the "y" row (so like kyo, or hya, or shu) nor does it offer words in kana using the kana you just learned. You may have to invest in some books for that.

I recommend: http://www.thejapanesepage.com
I believe this site is actually made by a japanese and holds lessons for beginners (hiragana, katakana), tougher expressions/kanji/cultural info for intermediate, tips for tourists, info on JLPT, etc. Very useful and fun! razz

this site does not contain a quick translation dictionary, updates very slowly, but the content is extremely detailed and easily understandable. =)

http://www.guidetojapanese.org/

This is Tae Kim's japanese tutorial. It's my personal favorite site, and a good choice for someone who's a beginner or intermediate, and really serious about learning japanese. However, if you are just sort of curious about the basics, it's probably the worst choice. This is because it gets into things like short form, and kanji right from the start, instead of putting it off. Definitely some delayed gratification in this style.

http://nihongo.3yen.com/

This is a related site. It's Tae Kim's blog. It has a lot of tidbits like slang that you don't normally find in a "learning japanese" site, and so can be useful to an intermediate or advanced student.

http://www.excite.co.jp/world/
http://www.excite.co.jp/world/english/web/
http://world.altavista.com/
http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en

These are translation sites for people who want to read or type japanese, but don't know it well enough. The excite one is in japanese, but it's easy to figure out, and is probably your best choice for japanese to english translation. It seems less literal and more "intelligent" at deciphering japanese into natural english. It's the one I normally use. However, it has a lot of trouble converting english to japanese at times, and misinterprets everything as a request. Always double check by converting back to see if the meaning was skewed.

Altavista's babelfish is my second choice. It uses the systran translation engine, so it'll give you the exact same results as any other systran site, like world lingo, and most of the other fly-by-nighters. It's fairly good at converting english to japanese, unlike the excite site, but not quite as good at japanese to english.

Finally, your third main option is google. The results seem similar, but not exactly the same as the systran sites. However, google has a fairly short "limit" on the amount of text it'll translate. After that, it just dumps the japanese back at you. So watch out for those large pages.

All of these have some limit on the size of the page they'll handle gracefully. If you are trying to view a very long document, cut and paste the text a few paragraphs at a time.

note: There is a limit to what and how well these sites can translate. Sentences that mean "I am going" can end up looking like "You are going" or even "it. . . going." You still need brains to figure out the meaning.

Also note: When writing japanese, it's better to translate small things and then use your knowledge of japanese to assemble them into a sentence, than to just plug a big long sentence in. For example, instead of plugging in "A big red car just passed by." Plug in "A big red car." and "a car just passed by" and then merge the sentences together at the kanji for car. The end result makes more sense this way.

http://www.mindspring.com/~kimall/Japanese/index.html

This is a nice site for beginners. It's called "Japanese for the Western Brain." It's a tutorial that gives you sort of an overview of what's out there to learn in japanese. Once you have an idea of what you want to learn however, there are probably better sites to do your studying from.

http://www.rikai.com/perl/Home.pl

Useful for advanced and intermediates. Rikai is all about the kanji, and can be used as a reading aid or kanji dictionary. There is even a plugin for mozilla you can download, allowing you to add mouse rollover popups for japanese pages. If you use mozilla, get this. It's absolutely awesome. blaugh

You can also signup for a once a day "kanji" that's emailed to you, but I didn't find it useful, since the words are usually not relevant to what I'm learning at the moment.

There seem to be some other study tools and things as well, but the interface needs some work, so I don't bother with them.

http://www.japanippon.com/japanese/classroom.htm

This is another site I like to print off sections of to study in my free time. The lessons are written in a way that's entertaining, so it doesn't really feel like "studying." If you don't have a strong attention span, then this is a good tutorial to read. They also have voice files (but you have to download a special program to listen to them.)

However, there are only 8 lessons. Beginner to intermediate.