(Part 2) Best products from r/LearnJapanese

In my own opinion, grammar is the most important part of any textbook. How well a book explains a grammar point determines how well I like the book. There are 3 major areas of grammar that I look for: verb modification, particle usage, and how well the book explains 関係節 (using a verb/sentence to modify a noun: "The chair that he sat in")

I've looked at a few textbooks:

Yookoso (which has, apparently changed its cover...) is a sort of intense, high-density textbook that makes it a bit hard to look up grammar points. However, it is well written and has a lot of practice. It also only requires 2 books to "get the job done". The grammar explanations are short and don't really explain away the confusion, but it's FULL of practice. There isn't much translation in the book, so if you have a question... your screwed (unless you have a teacher with you). However, you probably won't have many questions while reading because the sentences kind of stay mundane.

This book gets a 4 out of 5 on the "Evan Grammar-Explanation Scale of Justice": It explains it, gives good examples and practice, but the explanations are lacking depth. Good for learning the basics, bad for learning the specifics.

Nakama isn't really anything special.

Adventures in Japanese is a series of books that I'm using on my website to teach Japanese a little bit. However, I only chose this textbook because it is the book being used by the local high school, so my students are using it. The book isn't bad, but it teaches a lot of things that really don't need to be taught. Also, some of their explanations/translations are... less than accurate? -- I find myself saying "yes, this is right, but... Really it's this" too much to recommend this book. There is also a stunning lack of practice/guidance. It's NOT a self-study book, you NEED a teacher for it. The workbook for this book is nice, however, and would probably be good practice. The grammar points taught in this book are easily-referenceable.

This book gets a 4 out of 5 on the "Evan Grammar-Explanation Scale of Justice": Similar to Yookoso, however the practice is lacking. It's a textbook and a workbook rolled into one.

Ima! is a book that I kind of detest. When using it to teach, I found myself having to make my own materials in order to get the point across. It's a thin book without hardly any grammar explanations.

This book gets a 1 out of 5 on the "Evan Grammar-Explanation Scale of Justice". I hated using this book. A lot. It was just a glorified workbook.

Genki seemed pretty decent as far as a textbook went. It had plenty of practice, the grammar points were short, concise, and easy-to-reference. I would use it as a textbook in the future.

This book gets a 4.5 out of 5 on the "Evan Grammar-Explanation Scale of Justice": Great explanations and easily referenceable. It seems like a pretty good buy.

Japanese the Spoken Language is my bible. The grammar points are in-depth, effective, and incredibly well thought-out. If you want to know exactly how to use a grammar point, this textbook is the one you want. It is JAM-PACKED with practice that can be done completely solo. It also comes with audio cds that are worth a damn. When I want to know the difference between ～て、～たら、～れば、and ～すると, you can expect a great amount of explanation. The practice sentences in this book aren't just mundane sentences, either: the authors intentionally use weird examples in order to show the student the true meaning of a grammar point. That is, it doesn't just use "one-sentence examples", it uses "entire conversation contexts, and then weird 'breaks the rules' verbs to highlight how the grammar works"

HOWEVER- the language is dated - this book was written in the 80s (earlier?) and has never been updated; it uses a weird romanization system (zi = じ, tu = つ, ti = ち); is intended to teach the SPOKEN language (get Japanese: the WRITTEN language to learn how to write); and the grammar explanations are almost TOO long and convoluted (long and convoluted, but extremely insightful and specific).

This book gets a 5 out of 5 on the "Evan Grammar-Explanation Scale of Justice". However, the grammar is SO well-explained that you might be a little confused trying to read it.

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To teach the language, I would use Genki or Yookoso to get people off the ground, then move into JSL. Then the student should be more than ready to self-study and translate native materials.

1. Invest in a fude pen. These are brush pens, and while they are far removed from true "calligraphy" tools, they are great for practicing and can give your writing a very dynamic and expressive feel. Practicing with a fude pen will help you to understand why kanji tends to look the way they look in print, and how the assorted variations on certain characters have manifested. I have this one and it's pretty good, but there are loads of different pens on the market.
   
   
2. Learn proper stroke order as much as possible. Start with radicals. You can start with Kangxi, they are fairly similar to the Japanese classification. Wikipedia has a pretty solid list of these radicals with fully animated demonstrations of the stroke order. People will argue over whether radicals are necessary, but learning how to correctly write these component characters will equip you with the capacity to accurately and elegantly write pretty much any kanji out there.
   
   
3. While correct stroke order is very important, you don't necessarily have to memorize every single character's stroke order. There are some generalized rules that you can follow to make an educated guess as to a kanji's stroke order, and many times you can still make a character that looks very nice without following the exact order as specified by rigid standards. In fact, many Japanese/Chinese people don't always follow the correct stroke order, especially for uncommon or complicated characters, but may instead use a stroke order that they feel comfortable with, provided it still creates a similar result.
   
   As far as learning individual kanji, I am of the opinion that you should always write every kanji you learn multiple times - at least until you can successfully and consistently recreate it in a way that doesn't look sloppy. It really helps to hammer the shape and form of the kanji into your brain and reinforce your learning. Of course, this adds to the time you spend on an individual kanji, but I think it's more than worth it for proper literacy. Sure, plenty of people learn to read Japanese/Chinese without ever picking up a pen, but those people are of the devil I find that writing practice as a supplement to other forms of study helps immensely with retention. Personally, I have a separate study notebook that is dedicated solely to "kanji doodling", so that I can have lots of space to just cram kanji writing practice in.

Pretty much everyone will tell you that is nearly impossible to accurately gauge. It depends on how much you study each day, what materials you have to help you, how good you are absorbing the information, etc.

I feel that if you have enough time to absorb around 20 vocab a day (not as hard as it sounds, some days I try for around 50) for the first few months (then cut it down a bit as you go, as the grammar you are covering becomes more involved), and practice 1-3 grammar points a day (depending on their complexity/involvement), and avoid kanji for the first month, then start slowly (5 a day, not learning more until you know the current and it's associated vocab), using this book:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568365268/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

I feel like you could read random sentences of a very simple manga within 6-12 months. These numbers are all arbitrary, as it all depends on your motivation and ability to truly absorb and retain all the information.

I can give you a list of materials that I find essential, and I think anyone that used them would recommend them as well:

A general textbook like Yookoso or Genki. I use Yookoso myself, but have heard little bad about either. You can skip this if you are good about learning what you need to focus on next on your own, or if you have someone else guiding your studies, but they are not that expensive, and I would recommend both levels of Genki or Yookoso.

https://www.amazon.com/Yookoso-Invitation-Contemporary-Japanese-Third/dp/0072408154/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496923360&sr=1-1&keywords=yookoso

Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar (once you learn the majority of it, they have a second and third level of this book [intermediate/advanced])

https://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Basic-Japanese-Grammar/dp/4789004546/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=4789004546&pd_rd_r=MARVSJ4E1JD75N4JANKK&pd_rd_w=supQ1&pd_rd_wg=oQkTv&psc=1&refRID=MARVSJ4E1JD75N4JANKK

501 Japanese Verbs. Fantastic for learning conjugations, and checking yourself while you practice them each day.

https://www.amazon.com/501-Japanese-Verbs-Verb/dp/0764137492/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496923311&sr=1-1&keywords=501+japanese+verbs

The Learner's Kanji Dictionary. This will help you look up any Kanji you do not know, and does not have Furigana. It gives you stroke order, Chinese and Japanese pronunciations, and tons of vocab combinations for each Kanji. It is tricky learning how to look up Kanji by radicals, but you only need to learn it once. You can learn Kanji from this, but it would be a terrible idea, as it is a dictionary, and not organized in a way that will help you retain anything.

https://www.amazon.com/Learners-Japanese-Kanji-Dictionary-Bilingual/dp/080483556X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1496923666&sr=8-3&keywords=kanji+dictionary

Lastly that Kanji book I linked earlier. Many will tell you it is silly to not learn Kanji right away as you learn the vocab, but it takes a lot longer, most modern texts have Furigana (the hiragana characters of how to pronounce the Kanji) for all the Kanji, and Kanji do not help for listening or speaking skills anyways.

I do feel that learning the Kanji from the get-go is far better for vocab retention, but you will pick up vocab so much more slowly. You can pick up Kanji later, once you can actually understand some basic Japanese and are much more motivated to continue your studies.

I listed the materials I recommend in the recommended order (minus the Kanji book listed early on, which I recommend last). Good luck, and let me know if you have any questions.

Edit: Also, learn the kana first. Both Hiragana and Katakana. There is no excuse not to, they are invaluable. I would go so far as to say do not even bother starting vocab until you are comfortable enough to sound out a word written in kana in your head without a reference. Does not matter if it takes you a while, you will see them every day, and you will get used to them. Bare minimum, write the entirety of both every morning and night, and whenever you find yourself bored throughout the day.

As always, others will argue this, but again, there is no excuse not to learn it. Most good learning resources will use it anyways. They are very easy to learn.

Please don't use Rosetta Stone. It's really terrible for language acquisition. And no, it's not all there is... the great thing (and also overwhelming thing) about learning a language is that there are tons of different methods of tackling it!

Here's some resources I've found that have worked well for me:

Grammar:

Genki: This is a great two-part textbook provides a really good introduction into the language. Lots of practice problems as well.

Tae Kim's Guide: A free online resource for learning about Japanese grammar. Also very good, and worth reading even alongside Genki.


Vocabulary:

Anki: A very good SRS flashcard program. (SRS means that it shows you things you know well less frequently than things you are unfamiliar with... very efficient)

Rikaisama: A Firefox extension that allows you to hover over Japanese words in a webpage, and it will automatically display dictionary results for that word. It even has the ability to let you add hovered words straight to your Anki deck as vocabulary cards.

Read the Kanji: A website that provides you with around 7000 unique sentences worth of vocabulary and reading practice, with a really nice progress tracking system. Unfortunately, it's not free.

Kanji:

Remembering the Kanji: An excellent book that teaches you over 3000 kanji with a very strong system. It breaks the kanji into elements, and teaches you them as combinations of those elements. For example, unlike many books which try to teach you a 20 stroke kanji by saying "write it a bunch of times until you remember all the strokes", this book teaches it to you by saying "Hey look, this kanji isn't that bad... it's just a combination of two or three kanji characters that you've already learned."

Reviewing the Kanji: A website meant to be used alongside the above book. Provides tools to review the things you've learned, and track your progress. Also includes user comments and stories to be used as a supplement to those in the book.

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I'd start with those. But when you get further along in the language, even more opportunities for practice open up to you. Playing Japanese video games. Watching Japanese movies and shows. Listening to Japanese radio, or music. Browsing Japanese websites. Singing along to Japanese karaoke. Talking with Japanese natives. Whatever you enjoy. And there's tools to help you with all those things as well.

Upvoted because I think this is a good conversation, but I'm going to offer an alternative point of view.

I'm going to quote a few excerpts from Fluent Forever by Gabriel Wyner who put it far better than I ever could. I cut out and shortened sections because I don't want to plagiarize too much (Get the book!)

> I was recently asked the following: "If I had four hours to prepare for a date with a Cambodian supermodel, what would be the best use of my time?" Here's my answer: learn to say one phrase-any phrase-really well. Sit on YouTube or Wikipedia for a few hours, look at pictures of mouth positions, and mimic recordings until you can sound like a native speaker for three seconds. It will Blow. Her Mind.

> An accurate accent is powerful because it is the ultimate gesture of empathy. It connects you to another person's culture in a way that words never can, because you have bent your body as well as your mind to match that person's culture. Anyone can learn "bawn-JURE" in a few seconds...

> People with strong foreign accents are frequently treated as less adept at the language (and less intelligent as a person) than they are.

> And even if this is unfair, it is understandable. It's uncomfortable to speak with someone when you aren't sure what they're saying or whether they understand you. To try to relieve this discomfort, you may start speaking louder, using simpler words, switching to their language (if you can), or avoiding the person altogether. My father inexplicably develops an exaggerated Spanish accent whenever he orders Chinese food: "I LIKE-A CHEEKON FRY RICE-O PLEASE-O."

And here's a Youtube video that further supports this: American Wife Speaks Cantonese Better Than Chinese Husband

The Chinese husband is more fluent in terms of breadth of vocab and grammar, but the American wife simply has better pronunciation. As a result, there are comments on their videos like "Very very much impressed with her Cantonese!!! It is really better than her husbands's;) Sorry man...but really"

Ultimately, it all comes down to your goals. Some are happy to study Japanese to simply get by. For me, it already takes years and years to learn Japanese. I think it would be a waste to spend 5-10 years only to end up with a heavily accented tongue.

When I studied abroad, my buddies and I would often share stories where we couldn't understand why our host families would have trouble understanding something we said. Our families would then say, "OH! You mean 'such-and-such'??" repeating back the same exact phrase as if something was different... We'd shrug our shoulders and wonder what the hell was different. Looking back, I'm positive it was because our ears weren't attuned to pitch accent. Our Japanese teachers told us to not sweat pitch accent, yet we ALL had stories like this. They didn't happen super often, but with enough frequency to make us scratch our heads.

Compared to vocab and grammar, it's not really a huge time investment, but it's important to get right from the beginning so you don't develop bad habits. Despite not being great at pitch accent yet, after even just one year of adding Forvo.com pronunciations to my Anki cards, hearing poor pronunciation now sticks out like a sore thumb and is quite difficult to listen to. I think the time investment is well worth it.

Don't use Anki, it's trash. Memrise is much better. Here are some decks you should check out if you want to broad your knowledge: https://www.memrise.com/course/92902/the-ultimate-kanji-course/ ||| https://www.memrise.com/course/265789/core-japanese-vocabulary/

Grammar is very important because no matter how many thousands of words you learn, it's not use if you can't understand or create your own phrases. I may know 5000 words but what's the point if I can't even pin point the subject or the verb. Japanese has a LOT of meanings, both direct and indirect, many of which can only be picked up by having a solid grasp of the grammar. I've been studying Japanese for two years now, and I know some books that really helped me out when I was starting out. Here they are: https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Mangaland-Learning-Marc-Bernabe/dp/4889961151 ||| https://www.amazon.es/Dictionary-Japanese-Grammar-Seiichi-Makino/dp/4789004546/ref=asc_df_4789004546/?tag=googshopes-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=54379277235&hvpos=1o3&hvnetw=g&hvrand=5420217605497447637&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9049072&hvtargid=pla-138222419115&psc=1

Now, an important aspect for any language learner is to put the language he's studying into its context. Languages are like alive beings. They should not be put in cages until you deem it reasonable to free them, otherwise you cannot expect them to behave like proper living beings. They are no more than objects put there so you can coil or pet them whenever you want. What I mean by all of this is that the sooner you using or hearing Japanese in its proper context the better, because not only you'll feel more motivated, but your brain will also start picking up things faster and faster, to the point there will be words you are sure have never heard in your entire life but which can understand nontheless. And that is fucking amazing I tell you. If you fear things you have previously struggled to learn, then yeah, they will surely at some point skip your mind. It's a sad prospect, but it's the truth. There will be times in which something you put a lot of effort into memoricing or understanding will be forgotten. That's why it is extremely important to put those things into practice, whereas listening or reading, so they don't do that anymore, and that's why Visual Novels are an excelent tool to achieve it. Not only you learn more stuff, but also see again plenty of words and grammar points you have already gone through. It's a bit tricky setting those things to work on western PC's, as Japanese are xenophobic bunch who do not see with good eyes filthy gaijins like us dirtying their mostly porn games, but here are some helpful guides on the matter: https://djtguide.neocities.org/ ||| https://docs.google.com/document/d/15uvv72eVFBtcOlfHaHUfT_HhZsgWxd7VjT9u-zVSwdw/edit

If you need more help, you can mail me.

Is this your first book you're trying to read? Like /u/jayidx said, if you can understand what's being said without too much difficulty, it might be good for you. If not, might I suggest a variety of different graded reader series to try out?

10分で読めるお話 series: It's intended for native Japanese kids in elementary school, so they language will likely be more advanced than those of us still learning the language. They're general anthologies, and there's a wide range of subjects for grade 1 through 6, and others that don't specify grade. I have the Scary Stories version, and I am also studying N3, and I find it quite good and easy to understand. Look through their catalogue for books you may like.


イッキによめる series: Also intended for native Japanese kids in elementary school, this series are anthologies of stories with a good range of stories for grades 1 through 6, and others not associated with grades. I recently bought the 1-Year book after I bought the 6-Year book and found the language and vocabulary to be a bit too advanced for my current level. The stories include some from important Japanese authors like Akutagawa Ryuunosuke and Haruki Murakami, among others.


Japanese Graded Reader series: These books are intended for non-native speakers try to learn the languages. The levels are loosely based on JLPT levels, where level 0 is pre-N5, and Level 3 and 4 being aimed towards N3 and N2 readers. There are 3 volumes per level, and 5 books per volume. They come with a CD with audio recordings of some of the stories, but you can go to their website to download the rest. I find Level 3 to be ideal for me right now, and maybe Level 2 could be good as well. I have one volume of Level 4, but it's a bit challenging for me at the moment.


日本のむかし話 series: While not a graded reader, it's an anthology aimed at native speakers of old Japanese stories. There are 8 volumes I think. The stories are good, still a bit challenging for my level but I can mostly understand what's said.


Hope these help you find things you'll enjoy reading! Aim for a lower level first and see if you find them easy or hard, and then consider getting a book another level up or so.

Two resources that a majority of folks here will (without doubt) plug to you:

Kanji Damage

Heisig's Remembering the Kanji

Both of these are based around learning the components that comprise the Kanji (radicals) as opposed to learning each Kanji stroke by stroke. Make some flash cards and drill! I would suggest writing them out, but others seem content using an SRS like Anki. Some people also advise following Heisig's method and NOT learning the Japanese pronunciations until you've learning a hefty majority of the common use kanji, while others say you should learn the readings while you go (the Kanji Damage way). I've been chugging through Heisig's book at twenty kanji a day and it's been pretty easy.

Overall, as has been said over and over in this subreddit, do whatever you need to do to make learning it easy for you! Try stuff out and if it doesn't stick, move on to the next resource. Best of luck!

EDIT: I'd also like to add how even though kanji will seem really intimidating at first, once you get in the groove you'll find it's incredibly easy. Seriously. I'm at over 300 Kanji after three weeks of studying and can easily retain 90% of that when I'm studying and reviewing. If you approach it from the right angle, it shouldn't be too bad! :)

I'm an international student who came to the US for college and grad school, so I've learned Japanese as a 3rd language through a 2nd language, English. (Btw, my mother language is not Chinese.) As for the level of skills, I passed the JLPT N2 in December 2015. This gave me confidence to seek a job in Japan. I did some interviews entirely in Japanese and got offers from two Japanese companies. I cannot say that I was able to say all that I would like to say, but getting offers proved that my proficiency was at a level where they decided to tolerate it.

I started learning Japanese in college in 2003. However, I have not been studying Japanese all the time in the 14-year span from then and now. I did:

• 3 years of Japanese in college,
  
• and another 3.5 years in grad school. (However, the courses I took were undergrad courses.)
  
  Outside class:
  
  
• I proactively had conversation with Japanese speakers. Both my college and grad school have communities of native Japanese speakers and students of Japanese who meet weekly to have lunch or dinner. I joined most of these meetings. I also had weekly conversations with a language exchange partner over Skype.
  
• I have been listening to radio shows from Japan while working.
  
• I have been trying to read novels (well, light novels, to be exact) and books.
  
  My Japanese improved the most when I took classes, and I found that I got a much better hang of the language when I'm forced to write long prose (essays, interview reports, presentation scripts, etc). Self studying other than reading books did not quite help probably because I'm bad at keeping a steady schedule. Reading books, on the other hand, has exposed me to new vocabularies and idioms.
  
  I'm fortunate that I took classes that required me to speak in almost every session. In my first four years of taking Japanese, I was supposed to practice in a language lab and remember "core conversations" before coming to class. Once in class, the teachers would do the live drills of those conversations with each of us individually. Thanks to this, I have no fear of speaking Japanese and making mistakes because I made so many mistakes before (and will continue to do so for a long long time).
  
  While a number of Japanese native speakers have said that my Japanese is "pera pera," I cannot that I can completely understand the language. The Japanese vocabulary is very large and I only know a sliver of it that I cannot get through reading a manga or a news article without a dictionary. There are many grammar patterns that I'm not familiar with, and I always struggle trying to communicate complicated and/or technical ideas. Of course, I will continue to learn, but I honestly don't know how many years it would take until my Japanese is as good as any other languages that I speak.
  
  Resources used:
  
  
• My undergrad courses were taught using Japanese: The Spoken Language up to Part 3. While the treatment of grammar and its cultural contexts is solid, the books themselves are extremely dry. I wouldn't recommend them for self studying.
  
• The first two Japanese courses I took in grad school used An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese. I enjoyed the book as it contains good reading passages and optional cultural notes.
  
• The next two classes was taught with トピックによる日本語総合演習　テーマ探しから発表へ 上級用資料集. This one has reading passages based on real newspaper articles and introduces N2-level grammars and vocabularies.
  
• I prepared for the N2 exam using the 日本語総まとめ series of books. I worked through 4 of them (grammar, vocab, kanji, listening), and that was super effective.
  
• The last three courses I took did not use any textbook. Our teacher chose the materials and the class activities herself. These include interviewing Japanese we could find on campus, watching episodes of Closed-up Gendai, debating, giving formal presentations, and reading newspaper articles, short stories, and novels ("Hiro-kun" by Okuda Hideo and a part of "Potos Lime no Fune" by Tsumura Kikuko).

https://www.amazon.com/Living-Japanese-Diversity-Lifestyles-Conversations/dp/030010958X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1469162331&sr=8-2&keywords=living+japanese

I think that is an amazing recourse. Natural, REAL conversations with people of all ages and topics. Its really good for getting exposure you can learn from easily to native speaking that isn't "dramatized" or too over the top like most anime and Japanese TV acting in general.


LingQ.com (is also a great recourse. and its free if you don't use the in site word marking tools)

https://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese-Fiction-Contemporary/dp/1568365292/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469162459&sr=8-1&keywords=read+real+japanese

https://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese-Essays-Contemporary/dp/1568364148/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1469162459&sr=8-2&keywords=read+real+japanese

https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-into-Japanese-Literature-Classics/dp/1568364156/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1469162459&sr=8-3&keywords=read+real+japanese

the last three are good for written japanese, which is more polished and different than real "spoken" japanese (like any language). But they all 3 come with audio, grammar and vocab explanations and are an amazing recourse IMO.

For books or series we should all know about, I have some personal recommendations although as said before it depends heavily on your needs as a learner.
These are:

Dictionaries

• Kodansha's Furigana Japanese Dictionary
  Excellent bilingual dictionary with furigana throughout.
  
  
• Kodansha's Communicative English-Japanese Dictionary
  Likely one of the best En-Jp dictionaries that's also very easy to carry and use.
  
  Grammar
  
  
• どんなときどう使う 日本語表現文型辞典
  Essential Japanese Expression Dictionary: A Guide to Correct Usage of Key Sentence Patterns
  Contains various fundamental and common grammar patterns from N5 to N1. Translations in English, Chinese and Korean also.
  
  
• Kodansha's (formerly named) Power Japanese series
  Various useful supplimentary volumes such as All about particles, Basic Connections, Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication, Common Japanese Collocations etc.
  Mainly aimed at beginner/intermediate but contains gems that can be used well into advanced study.
  
  
• Japanese A Comprehensive Grammar
  
  Kanji
  
  
• Kanji in Context
  Textbook that contains all the Jōyō (common use) Kanji, in natural sentences and commonly used vocab, not isolated. Aimed at intermediate level upwards although does start from basic Kanji.
  
  
• Basic Kanji Book
  Kanji book series that takes you from absolute beginner. Memorable kanji illustrations and etymology.
  
  
• The Complete Guide to Japanese Kanji
  A much more 'academic' kanji guide with detailed etymologies, kanji history as well as coherent pneumonics to remember them.
  
  Textbooks
  
  
• みんなの日本語 Minna no Nihongo
  
  
• Japanese for Everyone
  
  
• Genki
  
  
• Japanese for Busy People
  
  
• 学ぼう！にほんご Manabo Nihongo
  
  
• ニューアプローチ 日本語 New Approach Japanese
  
  
• An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese
  
  In terms of buying textbooks, I've had good luck with http://www.gettextbooks.com/ which pools many sites to find the cheapest deal.

I heard Rosetta Stone is quite poor and expensive, but of course, naturally, I am not an expert :)
Here's what I bought on Amazon so far, still waiting for it to all ship to me:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/4805311444/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M3STG9N/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/4789014479/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I am under the impression that it's a good use of time to first learn the Kana (Hiragana + Katakana.) As such, I am currently learning to recognize them by playing https://learnjapanesepod.com/kana-invaders/. Once I learn to recognize them I will move to "Japanase Hiragana and Katakana for Beginners" and drill them so I am able to write them and recognize them more seamlessly, while still continue playing the game to review. I think by the end of next weekend I should be able to recognize the Kana, and hopefully after another 2-4 weeks of drilling I can write them too (I'm not sure if this is realistic at all).

Once I am comfortable with Kana I am going to move to the Genki books, which seem to be highly recommended. I think I will do the workbooks and make Anki decks to memorize Kanji/vocabularly. I think this is approximately 2-3 years of University classes but hopefully this process takes 1-1.5 years of dedicated work? Again, not sure what timelines are reasonable.

I wouldn't go for something like Murakami to practice translation because, as atgm points out, the translators wouldn't be translating 1:1.

Why not try one of the "Breaking into Japanese Literature" or "Read Real Japanese" books (any kind of reader really)? They usually come with a direct translation and a more artistic translation. The texts are shorter which should keep your interest up for longer but there's still enough stories for you to have enough to do.

There's plenty of others but a few examples would be:

Breaking into Japanese Literature: Seven Modern Classics in Parallel Text

Exploring Japanese Literature: Read Mishima, Tanizaki, and Kawabata in the Original

Read Real Japanese Fiction: Short Stories by Contemporary Writers

Read Real Japanese: All You Need to Enjoy Eight Contemporary Writers

Read Real Japanese Essays: Contemporary Writings by Popular Authors

I think all of those had the "look inside" enabled so you can decide which style of translation you prefer.

If translation is something that interests you, I recommend heading over to /r/translationstudies to get a few tips on good books on translation studies.

I'm going to guess beginner books like Genki and Minnanonihongo will be super boring and slow for you. And I'm going to guess you already have an intuitive feel for grammar, and you mostly need to learn kanji and get lots of level appropriate reading.

Here is a great overview of basic grammar (if you need it for reference), they also have intermediate and advanced (that cover different, harder topics) - this one will cover way more than the same $$ value in beginner textbooks:
https://bookclub.japantimes.co.jp/en/book/b309630.html

for level appropriate reading, since you already have vocab, and need to learn kanji, perhaps start from graded readers level 1 and work your way up:
https://verasia.eu/reading/919-naze-doushite-preguntas-sobre-ciencia-lecturas-1-primaria-en-japn-9784052031458.html
For example:

• Naze? Doushite? series
  
• 10-Bu de yomeru series
  
• I guess there are lots more that you can find in Japan. The idea is each level removes the kanji learned in the level below. So you gradually wean yourself off of the furigana above the kanji.
  
  For systematic Kanji learning, I've seen this Kanji course highly recommended by advanced learners who already have vocab knowledge (so might be better than the usual RTK/KKLC/Wanikani recommendations for beginners with little to no vocab experience):
  https://www.amazon.co.jp/Kanji-Context-Reference-Book-Rivesed/dp/4789015297
  
  Hopefully that helps a bit!

I remember using https://tangorin.com/

another good resource is https://ejje.weblio.jp/

it is japanese website but don't worry, search for the word you want and scroll down for the sentences, most of the time they are very short and pretty good..

I can suggest this book , I personally didn't used it, it has 1000 words for n5 with a sentence example.

personal opinion: I think just move on, even when you are not 100% sure about the word usage, specially if you are beginner. The material you are learning now will come again enough for you to fully grasp them while you study other words/grammar. :)

good luck

wrt Hiragana/Katakana: Though this mightn't be so useful if you're comfortable with your existing methods, I used Remembering the Kana (Amazon link) to memorize most of the Hiragana in one afternoon. Complete memorization came with subsequent constant use of the Hiragana. Something I've learnt from using mnemonics: Memory tricks are useful for the initial hump of getting things into your short term memory, but practice (and use) is are still important to get things into your long term memory.

wrt Kanji: You'll be fine putting it off for a while. But when you do: I once posted a short rant on Kanji that might be useful. Going at the nice slow pace of one Kanji a day seems to be nice, maybe slower at the beginning when you're overwhelmed with everything else. As for mnemonics, RTK ([click here for sampler](http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/publications/miscPublications/pdf/RK4/RK%201_s (maybe ramping it up later.ample.pdf), read the introduction!!) is oft recommended, but it misses usage examples and only teaches you how to write Kanji. A far, far, better book for looking at Kanji is Henshaw's Guide to Remembering the Japanese Characters. The only thing it misses is stroke order but you should get a hang of the general rules after learning the stroke order of the first 50 or so.

I'd say since you already started AJATT: keep on doing it!

Though I can't tell if you actually found AJATT or MIA (Mass Immersion Approach), because the latter was created by a YouTuber called Matt vs Japan who became fluent through AJATT but improved upon it to make it easier to get into and eventually branched off and called it MIA.

​

The MIA progression, as far as I understood it, starts with immersion and Kanji Study (Seems like you do immerse and already finished the Kanji and only review them).

Tae Kim is only meant as a small start into getting familiar with basic Japanese grammar, sentence structure etc.

From what I've seen, the current recommendation for MIA is to just read through Tae Kim without worrying about mining the sentences in there and to sentence mine from the Tango N5 and maybe the N4 book (N5 here and the N4 here) and alongside that, to sentence mine from the native material that you use for immersion. This is supposed to give you a good foundation in terms of grammar knowledge and vocab. At that point you should have have mined at least 2k-3k sentences and should already be quite proficient in reading.

At that point, you are supposed to do the monolingual transition, meaning that you ditch almost all English in your studies and try to just use Japanese. You do this mainly by sentence mining native material and looking up the Japanese definitions of words you don't understand.

You should never learn single vocab, only sentences, so you learn vocab in context and have a better understanding on how the words are used.

Now that is just a rough outline of the process. While I am definitely not fluent, all I wrote you can verify yourself by watching Matt vs Japan's YouTube videos, in which he goes into more detail (Don't get discouraged by the length of the videos, they can be quite "rambly" but still contain valuable information about the whole process).

Other than that, there is an ajatt sub where people asked all kinds of questions, probably yours as well.

​

All this goes against common sense and is quite different from the traditional, textbook-oriented approach, so don't let people tell you that your approach is wrong and you should do X or Y.

Watch Matt's videos and decide for yourself, whether this method is something you really want to follow.

Try some other schools? Usually you don't need to come in at rank beginner level if you already know a lot of Japanese. (I haven't been to one, but I am going to one in October).

The advantage of a school is that it offers you a 2 year visa. If there are other visa options, I'd recommend those - working holiday visa is available for some countries, etc. Then you can self-study and practice conversation. Assuming you're sufficiently motivated!

As for books, I did this book. It overlaps a bit with Genki 2 but it's a natural step up. Towards the end it gets quite difficult as it uses native texts. I'm now doing Tobira which is really fun and is placed between N3 and N2.

I don't have much input on your techniques, sorry, but, there IS a book that I thought might fit your situation.

http://www.amazon.co.jp/Kanji-Context-Reference-Book-Rivesed/dp/4789015297/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452780771&sr=8-1&keywords=kanji+in+context

I was sort of in a situation like you (studied in college, had a 5 year gap with no studying at all, and picked up studying again) and I needed to do a lot of review but also move forward. The book linked above, "Kanji in Context" (and the accompanying 2 text books) are great for that. Good luck!

I've never used Japanese for Dummies, so I don't know how far it takes you and how well it allows you to transition to more advanced learning materials. As has already been mentioned, the easiest method is to exhaust all the grammar your current book can teach. The most popular alternatives to JfD are Genki and Japanese from Zero. If you asked anyone who studied Japanese for a while, if they used either book or at least heard about them, they'll most likely say yes. On top of that, it's easy to build up on your knowledge after you finished the textbook. After Genki 1, you can use Genki 2 and after you finished that as well you'll be quite good at Japanese.

If you want to practise natural speaking and writing, I'd recommend to take a look at an app called HelloTalk. It basically lets you chat with native speakers of a language of your choice for free. It might feel like it's still a little too early to try that but when I look back at how I learnt Japanese, I wish that I would have used that app much, much sooner. It's never to early to start speaking/ writing!

You're not just going to be able to guess/work it out/get an answer in even a long reddit post.

Are you actually studying Japanese? You need a self-study book at the very least (many people recommend the Genki series) or, if you just want to dabble, look at the Pimsleur or Michel Thomas audio series. Another fun approach you may enjoy is Japanese the Manga Way.

It's well worth making the effort. Good luck!

The back section of the workbook has writing practice but honestly if you don’t know how to write the kana I would put Genki aside and go through a dedicated kana workbook first. I used this one which was pretty good- https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/4805312270/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_GN2CDb2Q1D277

Well first let me tell you how much i appreciate the very thorough and helpful reply! I think i pretty much have it, the textbook i am currently using is this one. http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Hiragana-Katakana-Beginners-Mastering/dp/4805311444/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416891998&sr=8-1&keywords=japanese+book

I think the book mainly focuses on this type of characters 教科書体 which is pretty much impossible for me to imitate lol but you're saying as long as i use this font while writing 明朝体 then i am not doing anything incorrect? As long as i can tell the difference between the characters with serifs or without then ill be fine? i can see those websites being extremely helpful but how can i type in a kana or kanji on an american keyboard? as you can see i am very new and clueless lol sorry!

You seem to have a good grasp on things. It looks like some of the linked threads follow a similar path, and I'll probably be following a very similar path myself. Nice books, too. I have quite a few myself. I'm not quite sure which of these are good (since they all had great Amazon reviews). I have the following:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014RTDPBA/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078G5P6Q4/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/4789014401/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/478901441X/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/4805312270/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1572229195/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GW5KTDK/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0976998122/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0658014900/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

(Although Genki I and the Genki workbook, plus the Kata/Hira quick guide looks good)

If we're talking about books that are available in Japan and hard to get outside:

• primary school kanji dictionary
  
• primary school vocab dictionary
  
• grammar dictionary with English descriptions
  
  There's something that need to be said about efficiency of looking up things in paper dictionaries, but those are especially targeted at kids - hence, they're easier to grasp. At least for me :D
  
  There's also a group of books, usually one per topic (reading, listening, etc) per JLPT level available, by different publishers. There's plenty of them, and I can't really recommend a particular publisher. A friend swears by this one. Usually those books (at least for lower levels) come with tri-lingual explanations in English, Chinese and Korean. Careful, engrishness of English varies :D
  
  I'd also go to Book OFF and grab a heap of mangas appropriate to your level :D
  
  Good luck, and tell us what you got and what's your opinion about those books.

> I don't really care if Hayashi did his homework or if the lady reading the newspaper is Tanaka and neither do the people I want to talk to.

At my undergrad school, I taught the language lab (1 hour per week required intensive practice session where we drilled the students) for three years. I was surprised at how surprised the actual instructors were that the students often wrote very similar criticisms on their course evaluation forms. No one gives a fuck what Hayashi is or is not doing. But, everyone was up on the latest chapter of whatever Shōnen Jump manga was popular at the time.

I'm a huge fan of manga. Even as a first year student I enjoyed plodding along in my favorite story with my trusty denshi jisho, and copies of my Yellow and Blue. (The Red one hadn't come out yet.)

Pick a story and go for it. Even if you have to keep a translated copy nearby to help understand.

This is a step up from the other list to the extent that it is sourced from a modern Japanese corpus and mostly is composed of real words, but this still is not very good.

The biggest problem is that the corpus is a single source. A good language frequency dictionary or list will use many sources as its corpus. Newspapers, novels, tv and movie dialogue, and so on. In short, language from fiction and non-fiction writing and spoken dialogue from broadcast and film. The failure of using Wikipedia as a corpus is clear when you see that 放送 is ranked with higher frequency than 行く, even though 行く is one of the most commonly occurring verbs in the Japanese language.

Another problem is that it uses kanji for common words rarely written in kanji such as 成る、有る、居る. What is remarkable is that 居る（いる) is marked as the #1,340th most common word in Japanese. This is ridiculous!

If you want a real and useful Japanese frequency dictionary, here it is - the 5,000 most frequently used Japanese words. Yes, it costs about $45 but at least you are getting something useful. Its corpus is compiled from books, newspapers, official documents, web pages, and spoken dialogue for a comprehensive sample of the Japanese language.

I promise everyone - you are allowed to follow Rule #4.

> １０分で読めるお話

Are these what you are referring to? I tried digging around on Amazon U.S. but only came up with these. Thanks for sticking my username on there though as these look like a useful future resource.

if you are still at the level where you feel like you need English translation, maybe try something like satori reader or the Read Real Japanese books. They will have information on the grammar and explain nuances to you which is a lot better for learning than trying to compare to the English translation. As other have said translation isn't literal, and I don't think it will help you know if you got it right in all cases. That said I do sometimes read stories which I have read in English as at least I know the basic premise and it helps me figure things out in a broader context.

Your comment—and the general consensus around here—convinced me that I should get that series of grammar books. However, I'm not sure I found the right series. If there's any chance you could confirm it's these (basic, intermediate and advanced, seems to be all for ￥11,130) it would be highly appreciated. :)
Thank you!

Ask’s offerings for JLPT vocab are excellent. Words are grouped by theme/situation, sentences are virtually always i+1 and grammar builds progressively also. Audio is available to download for free, and Nukemarine has Anki decks (up to N3, I think) that he’ll give you access to if you send him proof of purchase.

There’s been a lot of discussion around these books and many people believe them to be superior to Core (I am one of those people).

Yotsuba& is the go-to manga for that. Cute and interesting, yet very easy.

There's also a series called 'stories you can read in 10 minutes' (10分で読めるお話) that has different grade levels. http://www.amazon.co.jp/10%E5%88%86%E3%81%A7%E8%AA%AD%E3%82%81%E3%82%8B%E3%81%8A%E8%A9%B1-%E4%B8%80%E5%B9%B4%E7%94%9F-%E5%B2%A1-%E4%BF%A1%E5%AD%90/dp/4052022033/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1348875802&sr=1-2 That's the first story one. There's also another that's more like essays, I think. There are 12 in total, 6 grade levels each. Each contain multiple stories.

Or you could use graded readers. These contain simple stories, by level, with furigana and audio. http://www.thejapanshop.com/Japanese-Graded-Readers-Readers-and-More-Japanese-Bookstore/b/2359252011

So I recently found out about these books called Japanese From Zero. He has an entire Youtube channel dedicated to the books and questions from people. IMO he's been a great teacher and provided tons of free content in addition to the books. There are currently 4 JFZ books. https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Zero-Techniques-Students-Professionals/dp/0976998122/

Anyone ever read the "Read Real Japanese" books?

http://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese-Fiction-Contemporary/dp/1568365292 Fiction

http://www.amazon.com/Read-Real-Japanese-Essays-Contemporary/dp/1568364148 Essays

I was looking at them in the bookstore, and they seem to have interesting authors. But I couldn't tell if it is really any help in learning, or if it is something you need to be pretty advanced to get anything out of.

Pre-school books are about all you'll find since kids start learning Kanji from the first grade. There are plenty of books with furigana though (small hiragana written over Kanji to tell you how to read it, e.g. [漢字](#fg "かんじ")). Popular manga aimed at kids-teens particularly will be full of furigana. There are also books like this that target specific school grades, which can work pretty well if you're studying Kanji in the school order.

Just to learn the Kana, Heisig's little book is awesome. You can learn them extremely quickly. If you want to learn Kanji later, I highly recommend 'remembering the kanji', and related sites like kanji koohii.

http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Kana-The-Hiragana-Katakana/dp/4889960724

I think you would be better off with the 2nd editions. I met one of the authors and he told me that they changed some things after some feedback on the first edition. He gave a talk at my school but I don't remember any of the examples.

The GENKI I is about 15 dollar used but I would make sure that it is the 2nd edition.

GENKI II is about 40 dollars

https://www.amazon.com/GENKI-Integrated-Course-Elementary-Japanese/dp/4789014401

https://www.amazon.com/Genki-Integrated-Elementary-Japanese-English/dp/4789014436

Possibly better on Abe

Genki I

https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=21808789441&searchurl=kn%3Dgenki%2B2nd%26sortby%3D17%26ds%3D20

Genki II

https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=22386775654&searchurl=kn%3Dgenki%2B2nd%26sortby%3D17%26ds%3D20

For those interested in something with far fewer issues than this list, I can recommend A Frequency Dictionary of Japanese [non-ref] from Routledge. They use a larger corpus (~100M words) from a more representative sample of contemporary Japanese.

It also has the meaning of each word and usage notes (register and example sentences) It's kinda pricey, but it is a lot better than any of the online frequency lists I've seen - main difference being that this was prepared by language scholars with access to high-quality corpora prepared by other language scholars, not by someone on the internet parsing a random selection of public domain (or possibly illegal) books.

Yep, that's definitely true. This, incidentally, is what Heisig set out to do with Remembering the Kanji, to give an English speaker the same advantage in Japanese as a Chinese speaker (that is, know how to write each kanji and a rough approximation to its meaning).

Most dialects you won't encounter too much. However, I really would recommend learning (to understand - not necessarily speak) the Kansai dialect (Osaka/Kyoto/Kobe region) as it's nearly as prominent as the Tokyo dialect. You'll hear it all the time on TV, movies, and even in the street.

Here's a good book for an intro

I found it easier for a physical book for the kanas as well. This book was good for me and cheap enough to justify the purchase.

If you find that you remember better with a physical component, like writing, you can try a book (I'm using this one and my handwriting is terrible but I get a better memory result if I am writing it and saying it at the same time. There is not enough room in the book to copy a character enough times to memorize it, so use notebook paper once you have the idea, and do them in groups of five.

The Anki (or AnkiApp for iOS if you can't afford to donate $25) is also a very useful and important tool. SRS is a magical thing.

The third thing to try is drag & drop hiragana or real kana which you can also use for Katakana (and learn different font recognition, which is very difficult at first, but very important!!)

I recommend checking out the book Fluent Forever, which has a number of useful tips to get the most out of any flashcard system.

Frequency lists have a place, but ideally you would make your own cards which complement your way of thinking and your personal goals in the language.

I would very much like for the three Dictionaries of Japanese Grammar (Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced) to be digitized to make searching easier.

There's three great books out there that I can think of off the top of my head.

[Read Real Japanese: Short Stories by Contemporary Writers] (http://www.amazon.co.jp/Read-Real-Japanese-Fiction-Contemporary/dp/1568365292)

and

[Read Real Japanese Essays: Contemporary Writings by Popular Authors] (http://www.amazon.co.jp/Read-Real-Japanese-Essays-Contemporary/dp/1568364148)

and

[Breaking into Japanese literature: Seven Modern Classics in Parallel Text] (http://www.amazon.co.jp/Breaking-into-Japanese-Literature-Classics/dp/1568364156)

PS: if you are "fresh out of Genki 2" level, I'd say these books may be fairly advanced for you, but to each their own. Some people don't mind. There are english translations after all.

Japanese in Mangaland: Learning The Basics. This one looks interesting (I've never read them though):

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/4889961151/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=1880656906&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1CS4B5KSEJW9C9QQR9S4




I read these when I started learning kanji after I already had a basic grasp of grammar and vocabulary. It's the Doraemon Kanji dictionary, meant for Japanese school kids. They were fun, and went through the grade levels in Kanji in order. I still remember the specific manga for various characters every time I see that symbol.

http://tinyurl.com/yeb5c7a (amazon.co.jp)

What about this grammar dictionary?

I feel it's level is above N2, so it should be interesting for him.

Read Real Japanese is also very good. (2 books actually)

For all interested in kansai-ben exist a dedicated book about differences between "standard" japanese and Kansai-ben:

Colloquial Kansai Japanese: The Dialects and Culture of the Kansai Region: A Japanese Phrasebook and Language Guide

Something like this?: https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Japanese-Hiragana-Katakana-Self-Study/dp/4805312270/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522956920&sr=8-1&keywords=Learning+Japanese+Hiragana+and+Katakana

I have it and really like it.

大阪ええやんか！

Just to clear up: you'll usually hear it referred to as 関西弁 (kansai-ben), which is the Kansai regional dialect and includes subdialects in Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe, Wakayama, etc.

I lived in Osaka for about 2 years. I can vouch that everyone will understand you if you speak Standard Japanese (標準語 hyōjungo), but you might have trouble understanding others if they speak Kansai-ben until you get used to hearing it.

I found this book really useful: https://amzn.com/0804837236

By the way, if you're there for business, rest assured that people will be more likely to use Standard Japanese in a formal setting. I mean, not completely – they'll probably mix in a bit of Kansai-ben from habit depending on their age, class and where they grew up – but it will be less than if you go talk to a 65-year-old street vendor.

In practice, there usually isn't a clear boundary between hyōjungo and Kansai-ben, because living in Osaka will influence the way people speak hyōjungo anyway (not just words/particles, but intonation and pitch accent as well). Just imagine them on a spectrum, with people who exist along the whole spectrum.

I would recommend the book "Kanji in Context". I am curious as to where this goal/requirement has come from.

I have an anki deck for the first 3 chapters (1200 kanji). Only includes the red words (the ones the authors of the book decided were important). 2369 cards, so approximately 2 words per kanji.

If you have a lot of money you can invest in the Japan Times Grammar dictionaries.

If you do not have so much money, this one is also pretty solid.

Hi again, I've noticed that Genki textbooks are significantly cheaper on JP Amazon, when compared to local bookstores in Australia. I'd imagine this is simply due to markups for profit. Is there something I'm missing? For instance, Genki 2 here is ~$40 AUD whereas it's ~$100 here. Am I missing something?

Lots of people here are mentioning Tobira, which I don't have any personal experience with, but I just wanted to chip in by saying that my university/universities went from Genki I and II to An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese + its workbook and almost all of the the JLPT N3 books. After that there were a bunch of different textbooks in Japanese; can't remember that well, but I can see if I can dig something up later.

Edit:

One of the Japanese universities used the 中級を学ぼう books which was...okay. But at least the first one could be comparable to the Genki level, though.

They also used this, but that would be for later, when you start wanting to write more advanced reports/essays.

Had a look at someone's 聞いて覚える話し方 日本語生中継 books, which was quite rubbish and/or very basic.

Some also bought these and these but I can't vouch for them.

Different selection of words. I don't remember what exactly the source of 10k was, but as was said, it's rather newspaper-heavy and includes some outdated vocabulary like 日ソ, along with some incredibly infrequent words.

Nayr is based on this book, which uses a mix of written and oral material for its corpus and is purely frequency-based.

I kinda prefer Nayr's approach, but since I was already 6k words into Core10k when I found it, I haven't actually used it.

There are various JLPT vocab books out there. There is also A Frequency Dictionary of Japanese. If you’re going to learn from a word list, it might be effective to just learn the first few thousand words that way, and then learning words directly from native materials, focusing on a specific genre or author (narrow reading).

The above is merely armchair theorizing on my part, because I did not use these books to learn vocabulary; I simply read as much as I could, for example from older readers such as Modern Japanese: A Basic Reader.

My japanese class is using yookoso! Along with the workbook of the same name and some other activity book. It's been working out pretty well, but we don't completely follow the book's order.

For books, I thought Colloquial Kansai Japanese was well-priced and gave a good overview.

I would recommend purchasing the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series (Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced), and then entering the plethora of example sentences into Anki.

In my opinion it's harmful to directly memorize grammatical explanations, as it's contrary to the way that a native's cognition works when producing sentences. Instead, one should use grammatical explanations to gain intuition for how the moving parts of the example sentences add together to produce the meaning (as illustrated by the translation), and then forget the specific grammatical explanations while reviewing only the sentences (looking at the translation if necessary but otherwise just trying to visualize the meaning).

Routledge have just published one of these. Anyone know if it's any good?

What's your level at? I recommend the Dictionary of [Beginner | Intermediate | Advanced] Japanese Grammar, which my program uses as a supplement for material taught in class. It was originally written back in 1995, but it is packed with explanations and examples for a wide variety of grammar structures.

If you can directly import from Amazon Japan, the prices aren't that bad. They are currently ￥3,780 each for the textbooks, ￥1,728 each for the workbooks, and ￥864 for the answer key (note these prices have tax included so if you are ordering and shipping them outside Japan they may remove the tax--I paid ￥3,500, ￥1,600, and ￥800).

Links:

http://www.amazon.co.jp/GENKI-Integrated-Course-Elementary-Japanese/dp/4789014401

http://www.amazon.co.jp/GENKI-Integrated-Course-Elementary-Japanese/dp/4789014436

http://www.amazon.co.jp/GENKI-Integrated-Elementary-Japanese-Workbook/dp/478901441X

http://www.amazon.co.jp/GENKI-Integrated-Elementary-Japanese-Workbook/dp/4789014444

http://www.amazon.co.jp/GENKI-Integrated-Course-Elementary-Japanese/dp/4789014479

Anyone know if the Japanese From Zero will take you farther, shorter, or if its comparable? Getting close to finishing book 1 and kinda curious.

Hmm, you might want to try buying those from the amazon.co.jp sites instead. I bought them for $130 (GENKI 1 & 2 costed me $69) and the workbooks too + a dictionary. I think you could buy them for ￥６４００ which equals to $55 shipping included.
Here the links:
Workbook 1 ||
Genki 1 ||
Genki 2 ||
Workbook 2

While I personally do not know any, as I am a beginner (for like, 4 or six years due to my lack of studying :D )
u/overactive-bladder had shown me some.

• short stories in japanese: https://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/0143118331/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
  
  
• read real japanese: https://www.amazon.fr/Read-Real-Japanese-Fiction-Contemporary/dp/1568365292/ref=pd_rhf_ee_s_qp_0_2/259-4279497-3692713?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1568365292&pd_rd_r=8c5f99d9-2bc8-4db6-bfd2-bdddd29633d3&pd_rd_w=jWAij&pd_rd_wg=hH6jb&psc=1&refRID=5E58M7B8QYFHW89NYBEN
  
  https://www.amazon.fr/Read-Real-Japanese-Essays-Contemporary/dp/1568364148/ref=pd_sim_14_1/259-4279497-3692713?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1568364148&pd_rd_r=d172be83-a0ea-11e9-a0e7-ff5133ca3569&pd_rd_w=0Ju56&pd_rd_wg=onHm2&pf_rd_p=7e133c34-2a2a-4f4f-8372-6a26c70ca073&pf_rd_r=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8&psc=1&refRID=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8
  
  
• breaking into japanese literature: https://www.amazon.fr/Breaking-into-Japanese-Literature-Classics/dp/1568365896/ref=pd_sim_14_3/259-4279497-3692713?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1568365896&pd_rd_r=d172be83-a0ea-11e9-a0e7-ff5133ca3569&pd_rd_w=0Ju56&pd_rd_wg=onHm2&pf_rd_p=7e133c34-2a2a-4f4f-8372-6a26c70ca073&pf_rd_r=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8&psc=1&refRID=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8
  
  exploring japanese literature: https://www.amazon.fr/Exploring-Japanese-Literature-Tanizaki-Kawabata/dp/1568365411/ref=pd_sim_14_5/259-4279497-3692713?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1568365411&pd_rd_r=d172be83-a0ea-11e9-a0e7-ff5133ca3569&pd_rd_w=0Ju56&pd_rd_wg=onHm2&pf_rd_p=7e133c34-2a2a-4f4f-8372-6a26c70ca073&pf_rd_r=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8&psc=1&refRID=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8

Did you mean A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar and A Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar? My Basic dictionary is sitting right next to me, so I figured thats what you meant, but wanted to clarify for the OP.

I have the Japanese version it's pretty good. Another one is どんなときどう使う日本語表現文型辞典, which has everything broken down by JLPT level and is in 3 languages (korean, chinese, english). It's kind of like a condensed kanzen master but reference only. However it has come in handy a lot.

Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar https://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Advanced-Japanese-Grammar-English/dp/4789012956

It's a pain in the ass for the most part if all you've studied is standard contemporary Japanese. This applies to both speaking it and listening to it. The kansai dialect is even broader in its own sense being that you only find certain constructs within certain areas.

Colloquial Kansai Japanese is often recommended for trying to prepare yourself but it really is hit or miss with what is used and what isn't as mentioned above.

Another popular site to familiarize yourself with the kansai dialect is http://www.kansaiben.com/.

My personal recommendation is to go through kansaibenkyou.net.

Nit sure if it is progressive or not, but:
http://www.amazon.com/Kanji-Context-Reference-Rivesed-Edition/dp/4789015297/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_4?ie=UTF8&refRID=1C8A9TG2REJCSZ8FWA80

Buy Graph paper or Japanese style notebook, and Kanji in Context Reference Book

ここ

Get this:

(http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Kana-The-Hiragana-Katakana/dp/4889960724)

You can learn it in a weekend and will remember it.

https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%81%A9%E3%82%93%E3%81%AA%E3%81%A8%E3%81%8D%E3%81%A9%E3%81%86%E4%BD%BF%E3%81%86%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E8%AA%9E%E8%A1%A8%E7%8F%BE%E6%96%87%E5%9E%8B%E8%BE%9E%E5%85%B8-%E5%8F%8B%E6%9D%BE-%E6%82%A6%E5%AD%90/dp/4757418868/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1542813365&sr=8-3&keywords=%E3%81%A9%E3%82%93%E3%81%AA%E3%81%A8%E3%81%8D%E3%81%A9%E3%81%86%E4%BD%BF%E3%81%86

this one.

Textbook part 1 This is the main textbook that you need, includes the mp3 cd.

Optional workbook part 1 Extra practice for the textbook.

Textbook part 2 You move onto this book when finished with part 1, also has a cd

Optional workbook pt 2 extra practice that accompanies the second part

These are all the 2nd ed.

I took N3 and found the listening to be the easiest section. Perhaps only 4 questions I was unsure about.

I actually got kind of bored during the reading section and lost track of time so I didn't have time to answer the final 2 questions. Even so, I'm fairly comfortable with the rest of my answers.

Also for JLPT test prep, I think this is a better book than the Dictionary of ~ Japanese Grammar books: どんなときどう使う日本語表現文型辞典

http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%81%A9%E3%82%93%E3%81%AA%E3%81%A8%E3%81%8D%E3%81%A9%E3%81%86%E4%BD%BF%E3%81%86%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E8%AA%9E%E8%A1%A8%E7%8F%BE%E6%96%87%E5%9E%8B%E8%BE%9E%E5%85%B8-%E5%8F%8B%E6%9D%BE-%E6%82%A6%E5%AD%90/dp/4757418868/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1404684467&sr=8-2&keywords=%E3%81%A9%E3%82%93%E3%81%AA%E3%81%A8%E3%81%8D%E3%81%A9%E3%81%86%E4%BD%BF%E3%81%86%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E8%AA%9E%E8%AA%9E%E5%BD%99%E5%AD%A6%E7%BF%92%E8%BE%9E%E5%85%B8

I have this one. Don't really recommend it...Just use grammar textbook vocab instead

I live in Finland, just tried simulating the purchase and with shipping and the import fees deposit it ended up being 5,566yen or 49,68€. I literally bought the book yesterday from amazon.de for 49€ (free shipping to Europe, or to Finland at least).

Sadly in most cases it is not worth it even though it might look like it.

> I'm also looking to match the brush strokes without investing in a brush haha.

Most Japanese people write Japanese using the same shitty pencils and pens everyone else does all over the world. You don't really use a brush or fude pen unless you're doing calligraphy.

1.An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese

2.シャドーイング 日本語を話そう 初〜中級編

3.聞いて覚える話し方 日本語生中継・初中級編〈1〉

4.中級日本語文法要点整理ポイント20

5.新・中級から上級への日本語

From the list, 1,2,3 and are fine for intermediate, but book #4 may be kind of difficult for lower/beginning intermediate. And if you look at the pages in book #5, that may also be difficult, so maybe hold off on something like that. Look inside the books and see what you think you'd use, but I think 2 and 3 may be better to use at first.

there are many graded readers out there with exactly what you're describing though.

• short stories in japanese: https://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/0143118331/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
  
  
• read real japanese: https://www.amazon.fr/Read-Real-Japanese-Fiction-Contemporary/dp/1568365292/ref=pd_rhf_ee_s_qp_0_2/259-4279497-3692713?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1568365292&pd_rd_r=8c5f99d9-2bc8-4db6-bfd2-bdddd29633d3&pd_rd_w=jWAij&pd_rd_wg=hH6jb&psc=1&refRID=5E58M7B8QYFHW89NYBEN
  
  https://www.amazon.fr/Read-Real-Japanese-Essays-Contemporary/dp/1568364148/ref=pd_sim_14_1/259-4279497-3692713?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1568364148&pd_rd_r=d172be83-a0ea-11e9-a0e7-ff5133ca3569&pd_rd_w=0Ju56&pd_rd_wg=onHm2&pf_rd_p=7e133c34-2a2a-4f4f-8372-6a26c70ca073&pf_rd_r=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8&psc=1&refRID=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8
  
  
• breaking into japanese literature: https://www.amazon.fr/Breaking-into-Japanese-Literature-Classics/dp/1568365896/ref=pd_sim_14_3/259-4279497-3692713?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1568365896&pd_rd_r=d172be83-a0ea-11e9-a0e7-ff5133ca3569&pd_rd_w=0Ju56&pd_rd_wg=onHm2&pf_rd_p=7e133c34-2a2a-4f4f-8372-6a26c70ca073&pf_rd_r=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8&psc=1&refRID=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8
  
  exploring japanese literature: https://www.amazon.fr/Exploring-Japanese-Literature-Tanizaki-Kawabata/dp/1568365411/ref=pd_sim_14_5/259-4279497-3692713?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1568365411&pd_rd_r=d172be83-a0ea-11e9-a0e7-ff5133ca3569&pd_rd_w=0Ju56&pd_rd_wg=onHm2&pf_rd_p=7e133c34-2a2a-4f4f-8372-6a26c70ca073&pf_rd_r=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8&psc=1&refRID=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8
  
  also, i am a native middle eastern and i studied arabic there. now that i moved away (thank god) i am anxious of losing my dialect and the written language. i have been looking into getting back into kawa3ed for the harakat part. even natives mess up a LOT. i still remember my arabic teacher saying "i always cringe when i hear a news reporter screw up the kawa3ed lmfao.