Good learning books?

[BobCat]

Where can I buy good learning books online (in England)? I've tried eBay but can't find anything... I heard 'Genki' books are the best? where can I buy these? and no e-books! I want something I can read without having to be at my computer!

Ideally, I want a book that teaches how to read/write hiragana, katakana and the vital Kanji. Oh and of course, practical phrases too! Ihave audio lessons, but you cant really learn Hiragana through audio lessons can you? =P

[Sukotto]

I cannot say where in England (so maybe I shouldn't post?),
but in the US there is "Cheng & Tsui", for one.

http://www.cheng-tsui.com/

[KrazyKat]

Originally Posted by BobCat

Where can I buy good learning books online (in England)? I've tried eBay but can't find anything... I heard 'Genki' books are the best? where can I buy these? and no e-books! I want something I can read without having to be at my computer!

Ideally, I want a book that teaches how to read/write hiragana, katakana and the vital Kanji. Oh and of course, practical phrases too! Ihave audio lessons, but you cant really learn Hiragana through audio lessons can you? =P

www.amazon.co.uk

I liked 'colloquial japanese' for my self study. It moves fast and gently starts Kanji from the beginning. In the end it didn't suffice just by itself though. Japanese for busy people is also highly rated, make sure to get the kana version.

There are hundreds of online sites teaching hiragana, you just really need to sit down and practice for a few hours, a book won't give you advantages here.

heisig seems popular with learning Kanji, although I didn't use it myself. "Basic Kanji book" also seems OK.

(shouldn't this be in the learning Japanese section?)

[BobCat]

wow lol, thats odd... I honestly, for the life of me, couldn't think of any online bookstores. I completely forgot about the most obvious one (amazon)! :S Yep, I'm going crazy...

I've started learning hiragana, but it's sooo inconvenient having to come online just to learn it. I found the flashcard lessons on TheJapanesePage.Com to be very good, especially the helpful mnemonics; I would like a book that is similiar to this. I find using mnemonics to remember the hiragana is sooo much easier than just trying to outright remember it...

[KrazyKat]

As you start reading and writing from your textbook your hiragana will get better. When you don't know it jsut look it up in the table in your dictionary etc. Flashcards won't help taht much once you are familiar with each of them a bit, you really need to be writting them out - vocab lists are very good places to do this - that way it serves two purposes too.

BTW I forgot to mention you really need to get the OXford Starter Dictionary, this is invaluable and I haven't seen a dictionary that comes close to it for beginners.

[Hide My Heart]

A VERY good clear consice text on the matter that I would recomend would be the books I used in high school :

Learn Japanese (new college text) by young and nakajima okano put out by hawaii press If youre interested in kanji I would recomend the second volume

Also Japanese All the Way put out by Living Language is very good too. It covers a wide range of subjects in short consice chapters with quizes at the end of everyone.

[Kinsao]

We're using 'Japanese for Busy People', it seems a pretty good text to me. It has hiragana and katakana and there are some areas for basic kanji (although I haven't learned them yet). It's got questions at the end of each chapter, exercises to test yourself.

The Oxford Starter Japanese Dictionary is also pretty good, with a useful middle section for quick reference on verbs, adjectives, counters, etc. etc.

[acquiredtarget]

I used the Easy Kana Workbook by Rita Lampkin to learn Hiragana and Katakana. I photocopied each page about 10 times or so and did the excercises on each page.

[MeAndroo]

In the beginning, I used the Nakama book series, and I found it to be fine for what I wanted to accomplish. The only problem with those books is that I believe they're fairly expensive.

[eric]

had a couple of books, like "japanese for dummies" and "japanese for business people" but I can never learn from those, so now I just ended up taking lessons and it really helps, so if you have time, might as well learn Japanese from a Japanese teacher instead

[Malaika]

Well for me, I've bought a book that teaches you japanese, but then it got me confused so I ended up taking a japanese class and the person who was teaching it, I knew her from the anime club, also I like her because she's very knowlegdeable and she can speak it very fluently. I like her! <3

Though I am considering getting the books that she has and reconmended me to buy, because they are very good. In which I'm thinking I should do - when I have money that is. *laughs*

[Newgi]

I heard that Borders Books & Music have great books on the subject

[Newgi]

Borders Books Online has teamed up with Amazon.com They offering free shipping. You should check them out.

[yukio_michael]

I like the text for Japanese for Everyone, though the audio which is rather expensive and only available from the publisher in Japan elicited a look of surprise from my ex....

I've read good things about Situational / Functional Japanese...

If you start writing the hiragana / katakana, you can use workbooks like Let's learn (Hiragana...), etc, you'll learn quickest I think by writing it--- don't bother with any sort of mnumonic system---

For Kanji I like a good set of kanji cards, kanji drill software, the book Easy Kanji, and a good dictionary from Kodansha... it's important to start learning the kana and kanji as quickly as you can when you begin learning Japanese--- Most good texts will start you out with a bit of roumaji and very quickly move to strictly the kana & kanji...

Overall I recomend a classroom environment, native speakers, or someone to practice with, watching a lot of Japanese television, and listening to a lot of music.

I'll just say that, Japanese is not a casual language to learn, and unless you are going to use it (and keep using it), you tend to forget it---- you can amass a good number of books and still not be able to conjugate verbs, recognize kanji, under stand particle use, ad infinitum...