Japanese Books

Essential Kanji: 2,000 Basic Japanese Characters Systematically Arranged For Learning And Reference

P. G. O'Neill

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 52 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Pointless 1 out of 5 stars.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful.

There is no reason to buy this book. It is not a kanji dictionary, so it will be of limited use for that purpose. It also has very limited use as a self-instruction text, because the order the kanji are presented in is illogical for foreign learners (so many times you end up learning a complicated kanji, only to find that simple parts of that kanji turn up as their own kanji *later in the book*), and there are no mnemonics of any kind. Many compound words are presented, but there is no information on how to actually use them, so you cannot use it to learn new vocabulary unless you already know the words. The stroke order diagrams are mildly helpful, but you can find animated ones online for free (WWWJDIC will have a diagram for probably every single kanji in the book). Basically, the book amounts to one big kanji list. Henshall's Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters, Heisig's Remembering the Kanji, etc. are much better than this.

Editorial Review:

Essential Kanji is an integrated course for learning to read and write the 2,000 basic Japanese characters. It introduces the kanji that are now in everyday use, a mastery of which makes it possible to read most modern Japanese. Devised for either home or classroom use, the book has been tested and refined by years of use in university classes taught by the author.

Making Sense of Japanese: What the Textbooks Don't Tell You (Power Japanese Series) (Kodansha's Children's Classics)

Jay Rubin

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Making Sense of Japanese is the fruit of one foolhardy American's thirty-year struggle to learn and teach the Language of the Infinite. Previously known as Gone Fishin', this book has brought Jay Rubin more feedback than any of his literary translations or scholarly tomes, "even if," he says, "you discount the hate mail from spin-casters and the stray gill-netter."
To convey his conviction that "the Japanese language is not vague," Rubin has dared to explain how some of the most challenging Japanese grammatical forms work in terms of everyday English. Reached recently at a recuperative center in the hills north of Kyoto, Rubin declared, "I'm still pretty sure that Japanese is not vague. Or at least, it's not as vague as it used to be. Probably."
The notorious "subjectless sentence" of Japanese comes under close scrutiny in Part One. A sentence can't be a sentence without a subject, so even in cases where the subject seems to be lost or hiding, the author provides the tools to help you find it. Some attention is paid as well to the rest of the sentence, known technically to grammarians as "the rest of the sentence."
Part Two tackles a number of expressions that have baffled students of Japanese over the decades, and concludes with Rubin's patented technique of analyzing upside-down Japanese sentences right-side up, which, he claims, is "far more restful" than the traditional way, inside-out.
"The scholar," according to the great Japanese novelist Soseki Natsume, is "one who specializes in making the comprehensible incomprehensible." Despite his best scholarly efforts, Rubin seems to have done just the opposite.
Previously published in the Power Japanese series under the same title and originally as Gone Fishin' in the same series.

Japanese Kanji Flashcards, Vol. 1 (Third Edition)

Max Hodges, Tomoko Okazaki

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 49 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The NEW 3rd Edition of White Rabbit Press' Japanese Kanji Flashcards: The Complete set of Kanji required for Levels 3 & 4 of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test

We've gathered all the essential information needed to master kanji into a convenient flashcard format that makes learning and drilling as efficient as possible.

Preferred by thousands of students, in over 25 countries, White Rabbit Press is the recognized world leader in Japanese kanji flashcards.

Each card includes six vocabulary building kanji compounds. We include more vocabulary than other publishers' cards because the essence of a kanji is best grasped by understanding the meanings it forms when combined with other characters.

We only use kana scripts--not romaji--to show kanji readings, and we provide clear and precise definitions in English, so you'll spend less time reaching for a dictionary and more time learning kanji. Each card also includes the kanji's On and Kun readings, stroke order diagrams, look-alike kanji, and more.

Quality Construction
Cards are varnished with rounded corners for durablilty.

Color-Coded
* 103 JLPT Level 4 cards in Green ink
* 181 JLPT Level 4 cards in Blue ink

*Includes a complete index.
*Boxed with plastic tray and shrink-wrapped

What's new in the Third Edition?
In addition to some minor design improvements, we made many changes to the vocabulary. The set now includes more official JLPT vocabulary and indicators to let you know which words are important for the test.

Japanese in Mangaland: Basic Japanese Course Using Manga

Marc Bernabe

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 30 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A bit too advanced for child. 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I was hoping for more manga. A bit heavy on the text. The book is very well done, perfect for an adult. But too heavy for early teen.

Good idea, but not a great execution 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Right now, I'm learning Japanese through manga. The problem for this review is that I'm doing it with another product- Japanese the Manga Way: An Illustrated Guide to Grammar and Structure. Japanese in Mangaland is a decent book, but it's by no means the best, and it's easily lost in a sea of better material.

The first and biggest strike against Japanese in Mangaland, is that it doesn't include real manga- all the "manga" included was drawn for the book. This pretty much violates the entire concept. Compare Japanese in Mangaland side-by-side with Japanese the Manga Way, which uses authentic material, and you'll see that the art used in Mangaland isn't really even close to authentic manga a majority of the time. Japanese in Mangaland mostly looks like western stereotypes of what manga is supposed to look like, and this is largely drawn from the artistic style of popular anime. You'll see lots of big eyes, Sailor Moon style. You won't see any of the extremely simple and often very cheaply printed styles of, for example, Shin-Chan.

Aside from violating the whole concept of learning through manga, Japanese in Mangaland isn't a bad book at its core. The best part of the book is that it has plenty of real exercises and practice lessons, which is the one thing that Japanese the Manga Way sorely lacks. Japanese in Mangaland also has multiple volumes and plenty of workbooks, meaning it's overall a more intensive program than Japanese the Manga Way, which is one standalone book with no exercises.

However, I really can't suggest Japanese in Mangaland even for its workbooks and exercises. If you've got the motivation to get that far into learning a language, it's time to join in on a real Japanese learning course, or to just pick up some real manga and look up the parts you don't recognize in reference books. A book like Japanese the Manga Way is really meant to be a stepping stone, encouraging you to go buy some real Japanese reading material and immerse yourself. That's a much better way to learn the language. Japanese in Mangaland is just your average workbook disguised by false manga-styled drawings.

So I can't recommend purchasing Japanese in Mangaland. If you really want to read manga, pick up Japanese the Manga Way and start reading real manga now. If you're more interested in just reading the language for its own sake, lessons on topics like swearing and onomatopoeia (words that describe sounds, like "zzz.." for sleeping or "vrooom" for driving) are best left to later courses while you work on your basics. I'd only recommend Japanese in Mangaland to someone who really can't help falling asleep reading a coursebook unless it has cute pictures in it, or maybe if you're really desperate for a few pages on topics like swearing and onomatopoeia- in which case you might want to pick it up from the library instead.

Editorial Review:

This book is designed to help one master the basics of the Japanese language using the popular "manga" (Japanese comics) as a didactic tool. Its clear explanations and vivid examples help one naturally to get the "feel" for the basic patterns of Japanese grammar and at the same time to remember vocabulary associated with concrete situations. Besides that, learning with manga is more fun than simply reading page after page of dry prose. The 30 lessons that make up the book include drills, and a small glossary of 160 basic "kanji" is appended as an added bonus.

Remembering the Kanji, Vol. 1: A Complete Course on How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Japanese Characters

James W. Heisig

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 92 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The aim of this book is to provide the student of Japanese with a simple method for correlating the writing and the meaning of Japanese characters in such a way as to make them both easy to remember. It is intended not only for the beginner, but also for the more advanced student looking for some relief from the constant frustration of how to write the kanji and some way to systematize what he or she already knows. The author begins with writing because - contrary to first impressions - it is in fact the simpler of the two. He abandons the traditional method of ordering the kanji according to their frequency of use and organizes them according to their component parts or "primitive elements." Assigning each of these parts a distinct meaning with its own distinct image, the student is led to harness the powers of "imaginative memory" to learn the various combinations that result. In addition, each kanji is given its own key word to represent the meaning, or one of the principal meanings, of that character. These key words provide the setting for a particular kanji's "story," whose protagonists are the primitive elements. In this way, students are able to complete in a few short months a task that would otherwise take years. Armed with the same skills as Chinese or Korean students, who know the meaning and writing of the kanji but not their pronunciation in Japanese, they are now in a much better position to learn to read (which is treated in a separate volume).

Let's Learn Hiragana: First Book of Basic Japanese Writing (Kodansha's Children's Classics)

Yasuko Kosaka Mitamura

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

AMAZING!!!!! 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Ok, believe it or not, Using this book, I mastered reading Hiragana in 3 days. Of course, I couldn't put it down, and I also bought hiragana flash cards too which helped a lot as well, but still, the books was AMAZING. if you are trying to learn Hiragana in a flash, this is a great book. I can now read hiragana just by looking at it, and I can write it too. It's a great book and I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn hiragana easily, and in a way, kinda fun too!

Editorial Review:

There are three types of Japanese script-katakana, hiragana, and kanji. It is possible to read Japanese knowing only a limited number of kanji, but it is not possible with only a limited number of katakana or hiragana-one must know all of them. Let's Learn Hiragana, and its companion volume Let's Learn Katakana, is a textbook that introduces the learner to the basics of one of these fundamental Japanese scripts. Being a workbook, it contains all the exercises that allow the student to master hiragana by the time the book has been finished. Let's Learn Hiragana is a classic in the field, and the huge number of students that have used it successfully is a sign of its preeminence as a self-study guide.

Japanese Step by Step : An Innovative Approach to Speaking and Reading Japanese

Gene Nishi

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 43 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A fabulous reference for the beginner and intermidate student! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

First off, this book it not going to have you speaking japanese once you finish reading it. What is will do, and do VERY well, is explain to you the complicated and heady rules and structures of japanese sentences and grammar. I found it to be a fabulous tool in showing everything from conjugating verbs to structuring simple sentences, all the way up to more comlicated sentences. Until I bought and used this book, I found that most books on Japanese were very vague on japanese grammar. The method of teaching tended to revolve around loosely explaining, and then showing students different sentences over and over until the meanings and usages eventually sunk in. The author here(who states early on that he is an engineer by career) uses a much more logical and systematic approach. He uses flow charts and lays out the stuctures of the senteces bare, explaining each part and how it works. Rather than naturally figuring it out ( which could take a great deal of time) he points out how everything works and encourages you to make use of this knowledge. In this manner you are shown the things you would learn naturally and then shown how to corelate it to equivlant english meanings. This is the way that adult brains glean knowledge best. Given a bit of time and practice, the english associations soon fade away and you can look a Japanese sentence and understand both its meaning and its stucture!
As you progress through the book, the sentences get more challenging and build on things you've learned in previous chapters, so it becomes a natural preogress for your mind to learn the next step. It's a very effective and rewarding method, because as you may know when learning a language, the more you learn, the more you WANT to learn...it becomes fun and addicting. Struggling to memorize the usages of particles and verb versus noun cojugations only slows down the process and can take away the students' desire to stay at it. "Japanese Step by Step" helps alleviate this; it really helps you feel like Japanese is not an impenetrable force...just another language that's a little different than your own.
However, as i first stated, this book alone is not going to have you speaking perfect japanese. It's a terrific resource that I think every student of the language should have...in ADDITION to at least one other comprehensive text (and/or audio lessons, and even better, live classes). My only complaint is that this book WAS designed for IBM employees originally, and as such teaches strictly very formal, professional japanese...the type an educated adult would use in the office or workplace. This is not a bad thing per se, but if you strictly learned to speak like this, you would sound rather awkward in social or family situations, particuarly among the younger crowd. But again, I don't recommend this as your sole learning source, just a strong supplement!
Anyone who's fist dipping into the Japanese language will find a lot of help in this book, and any intermediate student can benefit from it as an informative reference text. There's a lot to be learned here; I know I wasn't disappointed!!

Editorial Review:

This self-study text offers a breakthrough approach for beginning learners of Japanese, as well as an indispensable reference for intermediate students. The unique study method in Japanese Step By Step teaches how to construct Japanese sentences, from the simplest to the most complex, using an easy-to-follow, step-by-step method. Also contains flow charts for verb conjugations and derivations.

Random House Japanese-English English-Japanese Dictionary

Seigo Nakao

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 57 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Good Dictionary 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

All the ones I had where Japanese-English only so with this one it is a great way to look for the words, and it does bring some examples too but for a quick search tool or to look a bit more after know how the word is, it is very useful.

My favorite Japanese / English Dictionary 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This is by far my favorite dictionary for Japanese. And believe me, I went through several trying to find one I liked. The Romanji and Kanji definitions are exactly what I needed as a beginner and now, as an intermediate student, they still prove very useful. I use this everyday.

I would also recommend The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary as a nice compliment to this dictionary. If you're using Japanese in a business environment, I might suggest Cassell's English-Japanese Business Dictionary which may be hard to find but is a good permanent piece for your reference collection.

Editorial Review:

This dictionary is designed for non-native speakers of Japanese, perfect for business people and students. There are over 50,000 entries, including the most common meanings. Japanese terms are shown in romanized Japanese and standard Japanese characters. The romanized entries are listed in alphabetical order, so no knowledge of Japanese is required.

Dirty Japanese: Everyday Slang from "What's Up?" to "F*ck Off!" (Dirty Everyday Slang)

Matt Fargo

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Beware... 2 out of 5 stars.
12 of 13 people found this review helpful.

I am a student of the Japanese language so I bought a copy of "Dirty Japanese" thinking it would nicely round out my education, which is mostly from staid textbooks. Well, I showed it to a bunch of my Japanese friends, and they were laughing their a**es off at the extent to which many of the phrases in the book were either inaccurate or simply dated. I admit this book is somewhat humorous to read even if you don't speak Japanese at all, but beware, you might not be learning anything useful by reading it.

A BIG DISAPPOINTMENT 1 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I have a fairly large collection of Japanese language textbooks (many of which I've bought at Amazon over the years). Much to my surprise, I've found that I consistently use all of them and none of them collect much dust.

However, with this particular title, I've finally found a real dud among my Japanese language learning texts.

The biggest problem is the lack of an index (which pretty much means that, while some people may find the book funny to thumb through, they won't find it useful as a reference book).

The second big problem is that the author injects far too much of himself into the book. He very loudly and aggressively wants us all to know that he is the hippest person to ever walk the streets of Japan.

That, combined with his endless, jarring hip hop/street slang is very distracting and annoying (it was annoying enough almost two decades ago when the middle-class Vanilla Ice tried to convince us he came from the 'hood; it's even more annoying now).

I would also fault the author's grasp of the Japanese language. His "English" translations of a lot of phrases include many expletives that simply aren't there in the original Japanese text.

Last, but not least, is that the author doesn't seem very well informed about Japan. He informs us that Japanese cops don't carry guns (not true) and that they're the biggest jerks in the world. The fact is, if the Tokyo police were indeed "jerks" to the author, he richly deserved it (as he gleefully spends much of the book talking about all the fights and reckless trouble that he got into while in Japan). For the record, I've visited Japan and found it to the safest, most peaceful nation I've ever seen. The Japanese people are some of the most polite folks on earth--but you'd think they were all a bunch of violent thugs after reading this book.

The world still needs a good comprehensive reference book that rounds up Japan's trendy language and street slang. This book isn't it.

Editorial Review:

Invaluable for those traveling to Japan, this guide features useful sidebars featuring English expressions commonly used in Japan. Pronunciation guides, a reference dictionary, sample dialogues, and an offensiveness-rating system from "use at will" to "use at your own risk" also help readers learn to communicate effectively.

The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary

Jack Halpern

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 48 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary answers the urgent need for an easy-to-use kanji dictionary compact enough to be easily carried around, yet detailed enough to satisfy the practical needs of the beginning and intermediate learner.
Its basic goal is to give the learner a thorough understanding of kanji by providing instant access to a wealth of useful information on the meanings, readings, and compounds. Normally, the learner must memorize numerous compounds as unrelated units. A unique feature of this dictionary that overcomes this difficulty is the core meaning, a concise keyword that defines the dominant sense of each character, followed by detailed character meanings and numerous compounds that clearly show how thousands of building blocks are combined to form countless compound words.
Another unique feature is the System of Kanji Indexing by Patterns (SKIP), an indexing system that enables the user to locate characters as quickly and as accurately as in alphabetical dictionaries.
Modern linguistic theory has been effectively integrated with sophisticated information technology to produce the most useful kanji learner's dictionary ever compiled. For the first time, learners have at their fingertips a wealth of information that is linguistically accurate, easy to use, and carefully adapted to their practical needs.
FEATURES
o 2,230 entry characters, including all the kanji in the Joyo and Jinmei Kanji lists
o 41,000 senses for 31,300 words and word elements show how each character contributes to the meanings of compounds
o 1,200 homophones with core meanings explain differences between closely related characters
o 386 variant forms used in prewar literature and in names
o 1,945 stroke order diagrams show you how to write each kanji stroke by stroke
o 7,200 character readings, including name readings
o Over 2,000 cross-references and five appendixes give instant access to a mass of useful reference data