These self-teaching methods help you remember and write by harnessing the power of the imagination.

    Read Japanese Today is a comprehensible and storylike approach to an often difficult language. Intended for people on the go, this book will teach you to recognize and read the 400 most commonly used Japanese kanji characters.Completely revised and expanded and featuring 25 percent more kanji than previous editions, Read Japanese Today is a fun way to demystify the beautiful language of Japan.

    Even the smallest effort to speak to locals in Japanese will be warmly received!Get More From Your Trip with Easy-to-Find Phrases for Every Travel Situation!Lonely Planet Phrasebooks have been connecting travellers and locals for over a quarter of a century - our phrasebooks and mobile apps cover more than any other publisher!Order the right meal with our menu decoderNever get stuck for words with our 3500-word two-way dictionaryWe make language easy with shortcuts, key phrases & common Q&AsFeel at ease, with essential tips on culture & mannersCoverage includes: Basics, Practical, Social, Safe Travel, Food!Lonely Planet gets you to the heart of a place. Our job is to make amazing travel experiences happen. We visit the places we write about each and every edition. We never take freebies for positive coverage, so you can always rely on us to tell it like it is.Authors: Written and researched by Lonely Planet, Yoshi Abe, and Keiko Hagiwara.About Lonely Planet: Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, as well as an award-winning website, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet's mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places they find themselves in.TripAdvisor Travelers' Choice Awards 2012 and 2013 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves; it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia)

    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.

    The concocted variety tends to be insipid, flat, stiff, standardized, completely lacking in exciting and imaginative use of language. Read Real Japanese Essays, and its companion volume Read Real Japanese Fiction, allows readers to experience the work of several of todays foremost writers as if they were lifelong Japanese speakers. The pieces in Read Real Japanese Essays are informed by the personalities of the writers: Haruki Murakami, Banana Yoshimoto, Mitsuyo Kakuta, Junko Sakai, Yoko Ogawa, Kou Machida, Keiichiro Hirano and Hideo Levy. By turns humorous, serious, beautiful and biting, they have been selected on the basis of their appeal. All are stimulating works that will motivate readers to want more. Just like real Japanese books, the text in this collection runs from top bottom and from right to left. For those needing backup, the essays have been supplemented with facing-page translations of the phrases used therein, often with notes on nuance, usage, grammar or culture. In the back of the book, moreover, is a built-in Japanese-English learner's dictionary and a notes section covering issues of nuance, usage, grammar and culture that come up in each essay. Best of all, the book comes with a free audio CD containing narrations of the essays, performed by a professional voice actress. This will help users to become familiar with the sounds and rhythms of Japanese, as well as the speed at which the language is normally spoken.

    This book is for those learning the Japanese language it is an Intermediate level book.

     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!

    The lessons and techniques used in this series have been taught successfully for over ten years in classrooms throughout the world.Using up-to-date and easy-to-grasp grammar, Japanese From Zero is the perfect course for current students of Japanese as well as absolute beginners.In Book 1 of the Japanese From Zero series, readers are taught new grammar concepts, over 800 new words and expressions, and also learn the hiragana writing system.Features of Book 1: * Integrated Workbook with Answer Key* Over 800 New Words and Expressions* Learn to Read and Write Hiragana* Easy-to-Understand Example Dialogues* Culture Points about Japan* Bilingual Glossaries with Kana and Romaji...and much more

    Presenting all spoken Japanese as a variation of three basic sentence types, Japanese the Manga Way shows how to build complex constructions step by step. Every grammar point is illustrated by an actual manga published in Japan to show how the language is used in real life, an approach that is entertaining and memorable. As an introduction, as a jump-start for struggling students, or (with its index) as a reference and review for veterans, Japanese the Manga Way is perfect for all learners at all levels.Wayne P. Lammers has taught Japanese at the college level and is an award-winning literary and commercial translator. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

    Breaking into Japanese Literature is specially designed to help you bypass all the frustration and actually enjoy classics of Japanese literature.Breaking into Japanese Literature features seven graded stories covering a variety of genres: whether it's the spellbinding surrealism of Natsume Soseki's Ten Nights of Dreams, the humor of Akutagawa Ryunosuke's fable of temple life (The Nose), or the excitement of his historic thrillers (In a Grove and Rashomon), you are sure to find a story that appeals to you in this collection.The unique layout-with the original Japanese story in large print, an easy-to-follow English translation and a custom dictionary-was created for maximum clarity and ease of use. There's no need to spend time consulting reference books when everything you need to know is right there in front of your nose.To make Japanese literature fun, Breaking into Japanese Literature also has some unique extra features: mini-biographies to tell you about the authors' lives and works, individual story prefaces to alert you to related works of literature or film, and original illustrations to fire your imagination. Best of all, MP3 sound files of all the stories have been made available for FREE on the Internet.Breaking into Japanese Literature provides all the backup you need to break through to a new and undiscovered world-the world of great Japanese fiction. All the hard work has been taken care of so you can enjoy the pleasures of the mind. Why not take advantage?Learn o 50% of all common-use kanji covered o Kanji entry numbers given for follow-up study o Japanese + English translation + custom dictionary on the same page o Every single kanji word explainedListen o Free download of sound files from the NetLook o 7 original atmospheric illustrationsLink o Original stories for Kurosawa's Rashomon and DreamsAll the stories in this book are available on the Internet as MP3 sound files read by professional Japanese actors.For students who want to consolidate their understanding of kanji, the entry numbers for any of the 2,230 characters in The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary have been provided when those characters feature in Breaking into Japanese Literature. This makes cross-referencing a matter of seconds.

    Designed specifically for native-English speakers approaching Japanese as a second language, this book presents 142 essential Japanese sentence patterns, first by giving equivalents in English, then following with Japanese translations. Each pattern is accompanied by a concise, easy-to-follow explanation and several Japanese example sentences that demonstrate its usage. In addition, practice sections for each pattern allow the student to test his or her understanding of the material presented.Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication is organized into twelve chapters according to communicative function, including such tasks as making simple, declarative statements about people and things in the world; making comparisons; talking about events in the past, present and future; expressing desire, conjecture and intention;stating causes or reasons; making requests; asking and giving permission; and using the passive and causative-passive voices. Extensive charts at the back of the book outline the rules for inflecting and conjugating adjectives and verbs-essential to fluent communication.

    It has been edited with the needs of English-speaking users in mind, whether students, teachers, business people, or casual linguists, and special care has been taken at each stage of its compilation including the selection of entry words and their equivalents, the wording of the detailed explanations of Japanese words, the choice of example sentences, and even its functional page design to maximize its usefulness. What is furigana and why is it so important? Furigana refers to the small kana that are printed above or alongside kanji to show their pronunciation. With furigana superscripts, the beginner who is familiar with hiragana and katakana is able to read even the most difficult and obscure kanji at a glance. Other dictionaries either provide little or no guide to kanji readings or romanize some or all of the Japanese words and sentences. In the past, romanized dictionaries were of some value to students using textbooks that contained no Japanese script. Now, however, an increasing number of influential curricula around the world are based on a rationale and methodology that demands the introduction of hiragana and katakana from the earliest stages. Learners and their teachers using such curricula will inevitably feel more comfortable with a dictionary such as Kodansha s Furigana Japanese Dictionary, one that shows the pronunciation of kanji with a familiar and authentic kana script. Combining Kodansha's Furigana Japanese-English Dictionary (1995) and Kodansha's Furigana English-Japanese Dictionary (1996) in one portable. affordable, and user-friendly volume, this dictionary has the following unique features: o A basic vocabulary of 30,000 entries covers the most frequently used English and Japanese words o Special treatment has been given to hundreds of words, names, and phrases of special relevance to English-speaking students of Japanese o Semantic and usage differences between Japanese words and expressions are explained in clear English o Thousands of example sentences and phrases illustrate how Japanese words are used in context o Special information is provided on verb conjugations, formality, and other aspects of Japanese grammar and usage

    The co mpanion will interest tourists, students and business travel lers to Japan. '

    Over time this language evolved into stylized abstract forms that are hard to memorize. In Kanji Pict-o-Graphix, Michael Rowley offers a whole new set of contemporary visual and textual memory aids—mnemonics—that reveal the meanings of over 1,000 Japanese kanji. Fully indexed and cross-referenced."Kanji Pict-o-Graphix offers an engaging way to learn and memorize Kanji."—Rocky Mountain Region Japan Project"A fun book for studying kanji. The illustration reveals more of its contents and method than any description ever could."—Japan Times"It is a very nice book, simple and pretty effective. A useful addition to the library of all beginners who aspire to learn Japanese. Recommended."—Protoculture Addicts Learn more about kanji from Stone Bridge Press: Kana Pict-o-Graphix, Designing with Kanji, Kanji Starter 1&2, and Crazy for Kanji

    "Yookoso! An Invitation to Contemporary Japanese" is a complete package of instructional materials for beginning language study.