Want to “understand” what a song means? Don’t think you correctly heard what a vocalist said? Want to brush up on your karaoke skills? Finding and reading lyrics is required for all three. So, here’s a list of 5 of the best and most extensive lyrical resources for Japanese music.
It goes with out saying that the lyrics on these sites are in Japanese. So, if your Japanese reading skills are rusty or lacking, plugging the lyrics into a kanji-to-hiragana or romaji translator can help greatly. If you can’t read all the words in the lyrics, try figure things out by comparing what you hear in the song with the kanji on the page. It could be a long but rewarding task. You’ll figure somethig out. Good luck and happy singing along!!
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1. Uta-Net Retrieving Lyrics Service
 Uta-Net is a huge lyric mine for major releases of all shapes and sounds. The site offers daily, weekly, and montly song popularity rankings as well as features and more. Text-based display allows for easy copy/pasting so one can save or translate.
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2. Goo Music Lyrics
 Goo Music Lyrics Information (æŒè©žæƒ…å ±, Kashi Jouhou) is another great site for lyrics and other music info stuff. Since many lyrics come from Uta-Net, Goo Music displays them in text as well.
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3. Yahoo! Music Japan Lyrics
 Yahoo! Music Lyrics (Yahoo!ミュージックæŒè©ž) is an extended feature of the Yahoo! Music shop. Lyrics can be searched for or found in store tracklistlistings. By being displayed in a Flash embed, lyrics are protected from easy copying.
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4. Kashi Get Lyrics
 Kashi Get Lyrics (æŒè©žGET!!, kget) is another lyrics megasite. The site offers an extensive search feature which allows users to search for lyrics by artist, title, phrase, and even the show or anime a song was featured in. Like Yahoo! Music, lyrics are displayed in Flash.
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5. UtaMap
 UtaMap (ã†ãŸã¾ã£ã·.com) is a music website with some lyrical goodies. The site often has artist or album features and links to lyrics pages in an info sidebar. UtaMap also has a weekly rankings chart. It’s the third site where lyrics show up in Flash.
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BONUS: LyricZ.info Japanese hip-hop lyrics
 LyricZ.info is a source with a variety of lyrics for Japanese hip-hop songs. The site has a large selection of underground and mainstream rappers as well as other community features like a ‘Freestyle Board’ and a ‘Graffiti Square’.
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Know any other great Japanese music lyrics resources? Please share!
By Sanjo-chan on October 19, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Great list of sites! I’ve always known that one site called Anime Lyrics…but it’s in English and only has anime lyrics :P. And it’s probably out of date and with a lot of mistranslations, lol. This is also great when you want to brush up on your Japanese typing skills using IME. ;)
By Shay on October 20, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Thanks Sanjo-chan :) I hope these sites help. Yeah, there are some sites that offer romaji & English translations but the currentness can be a problem like you said. That’s the best thing about some of these sites, they’re extremely up-to-date ^^
By mangya1010 on November 26, 2008 at 2:59 pm
dude………..everything is in japanese……………..can’t u find a site that has english on it for japanese lyrics…………it’ll be VERY helpful……..really really helpful………….
By 2nihon on February 23, 2009 at 5:09 pm
VERY useful. Thank you.