I thought, for those who are interested, here is the Japanese resources I have on hand with me at the moment, lost in my packing madness. I know I have some more at my dad’s but they are a bit more low priority. For instance I rememeber I have some JLPT 1 books that I got for like a $1 second hand a million years ago.

Anyway, books were super cheap in Japan and not knowing (at the time) when I’d be back I wanted to get enough reading and learning material to last me years. I have several text books in various difficulties for grammar, kanji, listening, reading and even speaking. I researched what books (fiction intended for native Japanese people) other language learners recommend and also got a few that seemed interesting to me and I would like to try. If you have any questions about my books feel free to ask. I’m sure I’ll get around to talking about them all eventually. I am a believer that you can never have to many books! Plus if I get bored or stuck in one book, I can give it a breather and go onto something else, instead of being stuck in a rut.

My manga collection is atleast double the size of this… Long live Book Off.

Let’s see, what else have I been up to?

Was in Brisbane City and saw a Dalek. Got excited. Then noticed that the Doctor was around too.

I went to a Metallica concert. It was pretty awesome.

Photos taken with the awesome camera of the iphone 3g.

My neck was a bit sore after from looking up. I would say statistically people who love metal are male, white, and frickin tall. I fall under one of those categories.

Here’s the setlist from the show – totally different from what I thought they would be playing. It was great. Setlist nabbed from setlist.fm.

That Was Just Your Life
The Four Horsemen
Ride The Lightning
The Thing That Should Not Be
The Unforgiven
Harvester Of Sorrow
I Disappear
Sad But True
No Leaf Clover
Orion
One
Master Of Puppets
Fight Fire With Fire
Nothing Else Matters
Enter Sandman

Encore:
Blitzkrieg (Blitzkrieg cover)
My Apocalypse
Seek & Destroy

Well, I should get some lunch and continue the packing/clean up. See you on the other side Or should that be \m/

Assimil is different from other texts in that the bulk of it is dialogues which you listen along to with the provided CDs. While it does have explanations, called “まとめ　－　Revision and Notes”, a grammar enthusiast will be wanting more. The idea is to learn through assimilation. While it doesn’t really provide a totally authentic immersion environment, I am impressed at how much is covered in this beginner’s text.

Assimil has a pretty lengthy introduction which is quite good at introducing Japanese to someone who has only just come to the Japanese language. From pronunciation, how verbs and adjectives work, the writing systems… Then it says:

Ugh! Don’t panic. You don’t have to worry about about all of this right away.

Assimil works in two stages, passive and active. I only have the first book, so can only really comment on the passive stage. This is where you don’t really worry about trying to learn kana, kanji, What you do is just go through the lessons, reading along to the tapes. The idea is learning through assimilation. With enough exposure it will all sink in.

Every lesson is a dialogue. On the left page is the Japanese, the right in English. The Japanese has kanji with furigana, a phonetic guide and romaji. The first thing I did was get a black texta and got rid of all that romaji and pronunciation.

It is important, I guess, to note that I came to this book as something to reinforce what I had already learnt. So I already knew how to read hiragana/katakana. When you are just starting out romaji is good for a guide. But after a couple of lessons I still think you should black out all that information. It gets confusing, and you shouldn’t rely on it. Hell, this book makes it easy, you don’t even have to learn how to write if you follow this method to a t, but rather only recognise them. Any fool can do that!!

The English page is also great. It has an English translation and also a word by word translation so you can work out how sentences are put together. Down the bottom are little notes that help you understand the dialogue better. And every seventh lesson isn’t a dialogue but rather a “revision” lesson which explains all the major things that are happening in the dialogues you just studied.

The audio is good but not great. It provides almost 2 hours worth of audio in Japanese. Each dialogues are fairly short, most are around 2 -3 mins worth. The bad thing is that for the first few dialogues the pace is painfully slow. Perhaps this is good for absolute beginners, but I was not an absolute beginner when I started this. Also, the dialogues never reach a native pace. To a certain extent, this is good for a beginner if you realise it isn’t full speed. It is a good intermediate step. Even myself, sometimes, I find the pace just right when I am trying to read aloud and my tongue gets twisted. I imagine as my reading speeds up, I could modify the audio to also speed it up slightly.

At the end of the dialogues are some exercises which are essentially useless. It consists of reading along with short phrases, and fill in the blanks that are entirely in romaji. I looked over these but largely ignored them. One feature I liked is that it has the page numbers written out in Japanese. Would have preferred them to be in kana, as they are in romaji, but it is still a neat feature for those learning their numbers.

I am quite impressed how far this book actually goes. For just over 300 pages, it covers a lot. I was impressed that the last dialogue starts off with a poem which was a bit tricky to get my head around at first. I haven’t encountered that in any other beginners text and so it was a nice surprise.

I am not sure if I personally would be satisfied to learn from this book, as you may know I like to learn by having things broken apart for me, and then some how I put the pieces back together. In this book you have to work out things for yourself, or perhaps not even work things out, you just go along with the flow and have faith that things will come together in the end.

However, as a revision tool I am quite impressed. In the second book you start the active phase, and I am keen to pick it up and see if it lives up to the first.

Purchase Japanese With Ease: Assimil

I went about learning Japanese by myself all wrong. I was excited about it, but didn’t really persue it as fully as I could of. I did not research how to learn languages, and when I got stuck on page 58, titled “Verb Conjugation” and didn’t understand, I didn’t go searching for an explanation elsewhere that would help me understand. And so I stopped learning Japanese. I didn’t exactly “give up”, it’s just that learning Japanese sort of fizzled out into the back ground and I didn’t pick up Genki again until the end of 2006 when I had decided I wanted to study Japanese at university.

Genki is a good text book, it is popular for a reason.
It weeds out romaji very quickly and never uses only romaji. By lesson 3 you better know your hiragana and katakana!
It has long, clear explanations of grammar points.
The text book is set out clearly. The font is large, which is great for beginners trying to look at all the strokes in kanji characters.
Lots of focus on exercises.
Great focus on reading and writing, as well as grammar points.

However, there are some points that I didn’t like about Genki, in particular for those self studying.
I felt like it did not give me enough examples.
There is no answer key, you have to buy it separately! I think this is a huge minus. Sure, a language doesn’t exactly follow “rules” but learning from one’s mistakes is a huge part of learning something, and that opportunity is missed.
I feel like you don’t get much bang for your buck with Genki. Even though I said the layout was great and offered lots of space, the compromise is that there isn’t as much substance in there as other text books.
Most of the exercises are best for class room/group participation or you need to purchase the audio. It is a well rounded text with the audio, but that plus the answer key – well, it ain’t cheap!

So those are the pros and cons of Genki from my perspective. Over all I think Genki is, while not perfect for me, a great text book.

Buy Genki

• Purchase from TheJapanShop.com
• Purchase from Amazon.com

In a recent post on the Language Learning Forums an interesting theory is being discussed. The idea is that it doesn’t matter what materials you use to learn a language, all that matters is time. In other words, you can use any method, it doesn’t matter what, but as long as you do it you will learn Japanese. I note that somewhere through the original poster changed his or her tune and started saying that method does matter (it has to be material that was intended for natives of the language, i.e. movies, books, etc) – Way to hurt your argument. I found this highly amusing that they are arguing one thing and saying another. Never the less, is time all you need?

Time

Time is an important factor when learning a language. For instance, many people ask “How long will it take me to learn Japanese?” My favourite answer to that is: “Exact (sic) 5.37011 years. Adjust up or down based on high school GPA” – from Japan Guide.

Time is also important because without spending any time on learning Japanese, well, you aren’t going to learn it. But, can you use any method at all and eventually you will know Japanese? Are all the different ways of learning Japanese essentially the same in terms of how much you learn an hour and therefore people need to stop worrying about the how and just do?

I would argue that time is important in that the more time you have the more opportunity you have to learn more. However, there are more effective ways of using your time. For instance, if I was to watch Japanese TV programs and read Japanese magazines, I would probably eventually learn to understand Japanese. But for me, these are very slow methods indeed. Instead, if I learn the grammar of Japanese through a text book (for me it needs to be in written form) I can learn a lot more in a smaller amount of time (and then watch TV shows to reinforce what I have learnt!).

Perhaps if we all had an infinite amount of time to learn a language it wouldn’t matter, but a lot of people only have a certain amount a time a day that they can dedicate to their studies. So while time is an important factor, it isn’t the only factor.

Method

Is there a secret method that will enable you to understand Japanese completely within a small amount of time? Not without some effort on your part. There are many variables when learning a language, such as what experience you have in similar languages and what particular learning styles you learn best with. To put it simply, there are methods out there that are better for you than other ones.

To find the right one, you will have to discover how you learn best and seek out these methods. I recommend you use a range of techniques for effective learning and to compliment what you have learnt elsewhere. It also stops things from getting stale – when you feel you have had enough of one method you can move onto another seamlessly.

Many programs and gurus talk about using materials that you find fun. This is good advice in that it keeps you motivated and time can fly by without feeling like you are learning. However, fun activities may not be the most effective ways to learn. So while you are having fun you may plateau or move at a slow pace – two things that may entice you to give up even though you are having fun.

The thing many methods forget to tell you is that learning Japanese is work. It doesn’t have to be hard work, but it is work. If your ideal way of learning is through grammar – well, I think we can all agree that grammar in itself isn’t fun. However, perhaps you can find a way to make the boring bits fun.

Perhaps you find fun in challenging yourself, to see how much you can learn in an hour, for example, excites you. Setting challenges can be an effective way to study. It is a type of goal setting, and seeing if you can work to your arbitrary goals. Your mind is focused on learning and less likely to get distracted, and when you meet your goals and exceed them, that can be very satisfying.

Another way is to balance out the “boring yet necessary” bits with fun. One way I do this is to set myself a goal to reach, and once I have reached it I get to watch a TV show, for example. The boring bits will make you appreciate the fun bits all the more, and motivate you to work hard for your reward. It also pays off when you find you can hear/read etc. what you have just learnt in your reward – knowing you have made progress is a great feeling.

To sum up:

Time is an important factor when learning Japanese, however it is possible to waste time on ineffective learning methods.

Discover how you learn best and utilise this information to learn at your optimum pace. Use a range of materials to keep you interested and to compliment what you have learnt in other places.

Having fun while learning is a great motivation factor (to keep you continuing your studies and not give up) however it can also be a poor use of your time. I recommend trying to find a balance between the boring and fun bits – and believe me you don’t remember the boring bits when you are understanding a chunk of real Japanese.

What are your thoughts?

What are your thoughts on people’s quests to find the magical method to learn Japanese quickly and painlessly? Should people just work on learning Japanese instead of worrying about how to go about it, or should people take some time to consider what methods they should use? Leave a response in the comments!

I’m half way through Japanese for Everyone, and I find this book right for my level. This actually makes me more impressed with Japanese For Everyone – it is a good textbook and takes you far. I’m finding that I will learn a grammar point in one book, and then a week or so later the same grammar point is covered in the other one. Why do I have both then? I like seeing examples from both texts. I get more vocabulary from both texts. Integrated also has harder kanji and more reading passages.

Every chapter begins with a section called “Culture Notes“. These are little paragraphs in English about something to do with Japanese culture. For instance, in the first chapter they talk about “How to Address Someone”. In chapter six the culture note is about restaurants.

Next there are three dialogue conversations. They are a page in length each and are good reading practise as well as listening practise. Then there is a reading passage, again a page long. Finally a couple of pages of vocab, divided up into the conversations and reading passage they were featured in.

The Kanji section follows, and leaves a lot to be desired. It is divided into two sections: Kanji that you should be able to read and write and kanji that is just to be recognised at this stage. I lie, it isn’t exactly just kanji, what is presented here are words – kanji compounds as well as kanji with the hiragana tail. What it doesn’t do is tell you how to write them, how to pronounce them or what the words actually are. Perhaps this is genius in that you have to go out and actively discover these words for yourself (a process which would no doubt help in the learning of these kanji). I believe they are featured in the previous “vocab” section, but I haven’t checked all of them.

The Grammar Notes are short, sweet and the way I like them. That is, a brief description in English, and then example sentences. These grammar points refer back to the dialogue conversations and the reading passage in the beginning, giving line numbers to go back and check them out. There is sometimes little passages to explain a certain nuance of a grammar point. Over all, these are very easy to understand (so far!) and I find it easy to move forward.

Exercises – I admit I haven’t done any yet, so I can’t comment! There are one or two tasks for each grammar point, with five or six questions in each. There are also some questions that look like they involve group work, which hopefully can be adapted for the self learner – hopefully I can update on this when I’ve gone through the book more. There is also a listening exercise for those who have the tapes. The questions and answers are all in Japanese, which I like. I hope to tackle these soon.

To end off each chapter is another reading passage with a couple of questions at the end. Oh, and a little quote. At the end of chapter one it says:

しっぱいはせいこうのもと
失敗は成功のもと
lit. Failure is the basis for success

I like it.

At the moment I’m only in the middle of chapter two, after adding chapter one’s grammar points to my SRS. Now that I own the book, I can go through it properly, writing and highlighting in it like I like. Overall I like the textbook, and hope that I can complete it by the end of the year. I think that the “Intermediate” title is misleading – I certainly don’t feel intermediate but feel like I can handle this. The only major drawback I have with this text at the moment is the Kanji section, but as I supplement my Kanji learning with other resources, I don’t think this will be a problem for me.

Buy this text from JapanShop.com
Buy this text from Amazon.com

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In my bookfest there are three sections: High Quality (really old books in good condition, hard cover books, etc – most priced around $7), Priced (each book is priced, around $3 each) and Unpriced (the book is priced by type of book, fiction and non fiction are $1, I think childrens books are 50c). I joyfully went around each section, picking up books… Over all for the day I got 20 books for $35 which is fantastic! I got two High Quality books, a couple Priced, but most were in the Unpriced section.

You may be wondering why the hell I’m posting about this here. Well… I got some fantastic bargins on Japanese books! I couldn’t believe my luck. I got:

2 Japanese novels. Of course my Japanese isn’t good enough to read them yet, but I can’t wait till I can!
Loney Planet’s Japanese Phrasebook. It was only $1 so I had to get it. It has the romaji, kanji/kana and English, with lots and lots of phrases and vocabulary. I will be adding some new words to my flash card program with this!
A English phrasebook written in Japanese. Yes, the complete opposite of my lonely planet phrasebook. It has the kanji/kana, English, then katakana to explain how to pronounce the English. It’s pretty cool, I’m pleased with this find!
A JLPT Level 2 Study Guide Text Book. Something like this would cost me $40 to get in real life, and here I have it for $1! Sure, I might not need to use it for a little while yet, but I’m hoping over the next two years or so I’ll get up to around this level. Hopefully!
Three JLPT Level 1 Study Guide Text Books! Yep, three of these! Again what a bargin for only $1 each. I am planning to get to this level eventually
Three books I have no idea what the hell they are about! OK, so one has “The Japan Foundation Japanese Language Institute” written in English down the bottom, and one has the Kanji for “read” on the cover, so I’m hoping they are just readers. Ah, but they could be “The Idiot’s Guide To Bricklaying” for all I know! One day I’ll be laughing at myself thinking “why did I buy these??” but for now I’m happy with them! (I keep meaning to bring them to my Japanese friends and asking what they are about, but I’m a bit scared as to what they might be!!)
Kenkyusha’s New Pocket Japanese-English Dictionary. I haven’t actually got a Japanese paper dictionary up until now. I just have been using the net. This was only $3 and is small, but it was the best one I saw out of the dictionaries there (there were a few!). One day I want to buy a more expensive one anyway, or possibly an electronic one.
And finally, More Making Out In Japanese. I got this one for a bit of fun! It is all in romaji/english which is a bit of a turn off, and who knows how much out of date slang is in it, but it’s for shits and giggles, not serious Japanese learning (although, I might learn a thing or two from it!).

I also got some cheap fiction books, with nothing to do with Japan except for a book called Ninja by Eric Van Lustbader, simply for the reason it has “Ninja” in the title. It’ll probably be crap, but NINJA!

So head to your local bookfest now!! I also saw:

A lot of manga in Chinese. Dammit, they were Japanese stories I knew and loved, but the Chinese translations. If only I was learning Chinese.
Japanese for Busy People If only it wasn’t such a crap text book I might have got it.
Lots of Japanese-English and English-Japanese dictionaries. If you are thinking of shelling out around $30 or so for a dictionary, don’t!

So check out your local area for a second hand book sale. I live close to the city so there are quite a few around me. This bookfest, in particular, is fairly large (and popular – I got there 30mins after it opened, at 8:30am on a Saturday, and it was already packed!) and has a “foreign language” section. I got a fair bit from that section as well as the “reference” section. Anyway, check out your local second hand book sales because you might find some really cheap materials to help you on your quest to learning a second language.

(We were also searching for an Indian food cook book. Could you believe it, there was thousands of Italian, Casseroles, Mexican, every type of food cook book under the sun but no Indian/Curry cook books! So, it’s all about the luck of the draw. So good luck on your book hunting!)