A good Japanese sidekick book

[nhk9]

I find this book called "Core words and Phrases - things you can't find in a dictionary" by Kakuko Shoji to be a useful book. It contains information that is literally hard to find a good answer for. It explains, for example, how 'dokotonaku' and 'nantonaku' differ, or how the word 'nanimokamo' actually has a negative tone. (Whereas normall you would find it in the dictionary and mistakenly think that it is almost the same as 'subete')

It gives you example of words that you should see, and doesn't waste time on giving examples of obscure idioms that are not particularly useful, like most other books of this kind do.

If you can find this book in your local dictionary, give it a shot. This book is geared toward upper immediate and lower advanced students (ie JLPT 2 or JLPT 1)

ISBN 4-7700-2388-x