A ground-breaking book that sets out to demonstrate that Japanese is “simple, logical and beautiful” and that most of the apparently “arbitrary rules” that you “just have to learn” can be reduced to simple, easily intuitive patterns if you just understand how the language really works.

     The best website for learning Japanese grammar is now in print! My website has been helping people learn Japanese as it's really spoken in Japan for many years. If you find yourself frustrated that you can't understand Japanese movies or books despite having taken Japanese classes, then this book is for you. It will help you finally understand those pesky particles and break down grammatical concepts that will allow you to comprehend anything from simple to very complex sentences. You will also learn Japanese that's spoken by real people including casual speech patterns and slang, stuff that's often left out in most textbooks. Don't take my word for it, just check out my website and order this book to have it handy wherever you go.

    Abundantly illustrated and containing a wide variety of exercises, Genki is sure to bring vigor to your classroom! Though primarily meant for use in college-level classes, it is also a good guide for independent learners and is a nice resource book for teachers of Japanese. Genki's authors teach at Kansai Gaidai University, which hosts the largest number of North American students spending their junior year in Japan.

     Also, if you have an older (1st or 2nd gen) Kindle, please confirm it will display Japanese before buying. If you bought the Kindle version and the Japanese show as boxes, please contact me for an image version. Perfect for beginning and upper beginning students of Japanese. This affordable Japanese reader contains four complete stories of a clever and mischievous young man, Hikoichi. Get FREE MP3s of the stories read by a native Japanese speaker. Listen while reading. The link to the MP3s is found on the last page. Read--in Japanese--how the wise and young Hikoichi shows his smarts with these four short stories in Japanese. Yes, you can read real Japanese—even if you are just starting out in Japanese. • All Japanese have furigana (printed version) and romaji for those starting out. • Four full traditional Japanese stories about Hikoichi. • Every sentence is broken down word-for-word and with explanation of the grammar. • The full story in Japanese only (without the running gloss) is also provided so you can practice reading without interruption. • Finally, we have included a simple and mostly literal English translation for you to check your understanding (Don’t cheat! Work through the Japanese first!). • Download the FREE MP3s to listen while you study. The first story has the lord of the castle testing Hikoichi in a Solomon-esque question—which young lord is the true young lord? The second story shows choosing the first and most favorable isn't always best. In the end, only Hikoichi can enjoy the cherry blossoms. The third story is about a mysterious, but living umbrella. Some things are just too good to be true. We wrap things up with Hikoichi’s encounter with a Tengu—a mythical creature whose straw raincoat renders its wearer invisible. While beginners to Japanese can get a lot from this, hiragana knowledge is required. Finally, we invite the reader to contact us with questions or requests for future Japanese readers. You will find our personal email addresses in the book. To your Japanese!

    These books are really textbooks just for learning kanji. Each lesson covers about 10 characters and begins with a section called "About the kanji" which gives interesting background on the kanji you are about to learn. Next comes writing and reading lessons for each kanji. Lastly, there is a longer reading section followed by a game or some quiz.

    Volume I teaches the absolute minimum amount of Japanese to live in Japan and handle everyday situations. In the ten years since its publication, Japanese for Busy People has won acceptance worldwide as an effective, easy-to-understand textbook, either for classroom use or for independent study. In this new edition, numerous revisions and additions have been made, taking into account the comments and responses of both students and teachers who have been using the course. In Book I, the revisions are directed at making the grammatical explanations easier to understand, while adding further explanations of points that students have difficulty with. Changes have also been made in favor of more natural practice sentences and dialogues. In addition, new appendices list the particles, interrogatives, and sentence patterns in the book, as well as the kanji introduced. Vocabulary and grammar have been limited to about one-third that usually encountered in beginner courses, and words and patterns that students will find immediately useful are emphasized. The thirty lessons are composed of dialogues, notes on grammar, and vocabulary, exercises and quizzes. In addition to developing verbal fluency, by the time the student is one-third the way through Book I he will have mastered the two phonetic syllabaries of Japanese.

    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.

    This title takes the mystery and menace out of learning Japanese by walking readers step-by-step through the fundamentals of the language.

    Topics include parts of speech, sentence structure, idioms, and pronunciation advice. All Japanese words are presented phonetically. Important points of grammar or vocabulary, as well as subject heads, are printed in a second color as a quick-reference aid for students. New to this edition is a Japanese-English vocabulary list.---From back cover:Second EditionA methodical presentation of the elements of Japanese grammar and usage make this book ideal for those beginning their language study and those reviewing the Japanese they've already learned. Pronunciation, word order, sentence structure, and parts of speech are reviewed; idiomatic phrases, numbers, days, months, lists of synonyms and antonyms, and verbs charts are included.

    This handbook provides all the information one would need on these tricky units of grammar. All About Particles covers more than 70 particles those that are used regularly as well as those used less frequently in more than 200 uses. The book can be approached as a guiding textbook and studied from beginning to end. It is as a reference book, however, that All About Particles shines. It is light and easy to carry, slim enough to fit into the corner of a shoulder bag, and concise enough to quickly clarify particle-related questions. It is a priceless tool for any serious student of Japanese.

    As useful as it is fascinating, it's a book any new or aspiring Japanese language scholar will visit over and over. In clear, large-sized entries, A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters details each of the General Use Characters In clear, large-sized entires, A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters details each of the General Use Characters—the 1,945 characters prescribed by the Japanese Ministry of Education for everyday use. Both Japanese readings and English meanings are given, along with stroke-count and stroke-order, examples of usage, and suggestions for memorizing. The components of each character are detailed. The Japanese kanji are graded according to Ministry of Education guidelines, allowing the student to prioritize them and track progress. It will appeal to students seeking to learn kanji as well as Japanese language enthusiasts who want to know the history and etymology of Japanese kanji. This book includes:Origins and meanings of over 2,000 characters.Beautifly hand–drawn kanji.Additional compound characters for each featured character.valuable suggestions and mnemonic devices for memorizing characters.All the standard characters official designed for common use.Comprehensive and clear, A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters makes Japanese writing accessible to everyone wishing to learn Japanese.

    and Japan learn Japanese successfully.Japanese has two basic writing systems, hiragana and katakana, in addition to the one that uses Chinese characters or Kanji. This handy book teaches you a new mnemonics—based method to read and write the basic 92 hiragana and katakana characters.Memorable picture mnemonics help you to learn the characters by associating their shapes and sounds with combinations of images and English words already familiar to you.Clear examples and entertaining exercises offer opportunities to read, write, use and practice all 46 basic hiragana and 46 basic katakana characters, plus the remaining kana that stand for more complex sounds.Polish your knowledge with word searches, crossword puzzles, fill–in–the–blanks, timed recognition quizzes, and other interesting activities.The CD–ROM allows you to print out your own flash cards (featuring the same mnemonic images taught in the book) to help you review and practice, even while you're on the go.

    The spellbinding world of Hiromi Kawakami; the hair-raising horror of Otsuichi; the haunting, poignant prose of Banana Yoshimoto; even the poetic word-play of Yoko Tawada whatever a readers taste, he or she is sure to find something of interest and value in this book, suitable for students at the intermediate level and above. As in real Japanese novels, the text on each page runs from top to bottom and from right to left. Each double-page spread features translations of all the difficult passages. In the back of the book, moreover, is a built-in Japanese-English learners dictionary and a notes section covering issues of nuance, usage, grammar and culture that come up in each story. Best of all, the books comes with a free audio CD containing narrations of the stories, performed by a professional voice actress.

    By making use of a method of "imaginative memory," introduced in this book, you will be saved from the order of repetition. Following the method, you will be able to write and read all Japanese Kana in three hours and retain them by means of the incredible mnemonic methods. Instructions at the bottom of each page will ask you to skip backwards and forwards through the book, following the best "learning order." The lessons will guide you step by step through this process. As an added bonus, the book includes a supplement on "Learning How to Remember."