(Part 2) Top products from r/LearnJapanese

I wrote a PM to someone yesterday who essentially asked me the same question. It may not apply to you exactly, since I wrote it for someone else, but I think it will help you regardless. Here it is:

I'm assuming you're studying by yourself, so most of my advice is geared toward that. However, if you actually are taking a class, or decide to take a class in the future, my advice will still be valid. Also, if you use an instant messaging program of some sort (AIM, MSN, Skype, Steam, whatever), please add me and I can help you in real-time rather than through private messages. I hope I'm not being creepy by repeatedly asking this, but I honestly love talking to people in and about Japanese!

Where are you learning grammar? When I started, I bought Genki I and used that for quite a long time. It has some problems, like teaching mostly the polite form and very little casual Japanese, and that example of poor explanation of grammar I posted earlier, but it's overall a great book for beginners. You can also find it for free at some places if you can't afford it, or want to try it out first. You only need the actual textbook if you do plan on buying it; the workbook isn't needed and the CD with listening exercises was really expensive, so I just downloaded that.

I also started using Tae Kim's grammar guide, a free online guide to Japanese grammar, about a month or two after I had started using Genki. It's not complete enough to learn solely from it, but what it does have is very well explained. The only drawbacks are the relatively small amount of examples for each individual grammar point, and no example exercises to check what you've learned.

You should, in my opinion, be learning katakana and hiragana simultaneously. Since each character directly correlates to another one, just like the English capital and lower case characters (though the usage is different, it's the same idea), it makes it easier to remember both. I highly recommend writing them out by hand. Writing something by hand helps with memorization via muscle memory and recall rather than just simple recognition, and I guarantee you that you will some day want to be able to write Japanese by hand, so you might as well get started with that on day one.

What I did to memorize kana was print out this Hiragana chart and this Katakana chart, courtesy of Wikipedia, and hung them up on the wall above my monitor. Then I would try to write down the five or so characters that I wanted to memorize that day a dozen or so times, spaced apart maybe 30 minutes to an hour. For example, let's say I wanted to learn あ い う え お... I would grab a notebook and look at the chart once for each character to see how to write it, then write that character a couple dozen times, and repeat this for all of the ones I wanted to learn that day. I would then go do something else for half an hour or whatever, long enough to have the shape of the character gone from short term memory, then try to write them all again without looking up how to write them. If I could successfully write them again, say, five times in a row without needing to look them up, I considered the character memorized and moved on. This took me maybe a week and a half to memorize both types of kana.

As for kanji... you should start on kanji immediately after getting down hiragana and katakana. It's a little difficult to explain how I studied kanji in the laggy environment of PMs, so I'll just point you toward the website I started off with (and am still using) to study kanji, located here.

>watch a few select animes (Death Note is freakin awesome!)

Anime is good for listening comprehension, but only if you watch it without English subtitles. I guarantee if you're watching it with subtitles, especially if you're only a beginner, you won't learn anything. You'll feel like you're learning stuff and maybe understanding it, but the second you turn off the subtitles and watch something you haven't seen before, you'll realize you're not actually learning or understanding anything. I know because I've been there myself.

You also need to be careful about what you learn from anime, because the characters in anime are, well, characters, and not real people. The guys use very masculine and aggressive speech, and the women use very feminine speech. That's actually yet another difference in Japanese from English! There are certain words and pieces of grammar that are masculine and feminine, and to use some of them makes you look more manly or girly or whatever. Note that I'm not saying "You can't learn from anime!", because that's not true: You just need to actually understand what is being said so you don't end up saying something rude or weird.

If you end up contacting me via an instant messenger, I can even give you a couple basic grammar lessons to help you start off. I absolutely love the language: I enjoy learning it, I enjoy speaking to anyone in it, regardless of skill level, and I enjoy teaching what I already know to those who may not know it yet.

がんばってください！

I didn't mention it in the PM, but another great way to practice is manga. One of my favorite manga for this purpose is 「よつばと」 (yotsuba to; often translated as Yotsuba&), for several reasons: It uses very simple but realistic, every-day Japanese, has furigana, and most importantly is actually good; I would read it even if it had nothing to do with Japan because it's honestly a really, really good manga.

In my own opinion, grammar is the most important part of any textbook. How well a book explains a grammar point determines how well I like the book. There are 3 major areas of grammar that I look for: verb modification, particle usage, and how well the book explains 関係節 (using a verb/sentence to modify a noun: "The chair that he sat in")

I've looked at a few textbooks:

Yookoso (which has, apparently changed its cover...) is a sort of intense, high-density textbook that makes it a bit hard to look up grammar points. However, it is well written and has a lot of practice. It also only requires 2 books to "get the job done". The grammar explanations are short and don't really explain away the confusion, but it's FULL of practice. There isn't much translation in the book, so if you have a question... your screwed (unless you have a teacher with you). However, you probably won't have many questions while reading because the sentences kind of stay mundane.

This book gets a 4 out of 5 on the "Evan Grammar-Explanation Scale of Justice": It explains it, gives good examples and practice, but the explanations are lacking depth. Good for learning the basics, bad for learning the specifics.

Nakama isn't really anything special.

Adventures in Japanese is a series of books that I'm using on my website to teach Japanese a little bit. However, I only chose this textbook because it is the book being used by the local high school, so my students are using it. The book isn't bad, but it teaches a lot of things that really don't need to be taught. Also, some of their explanations/translations are... less than accurate? -- I find myself saying "yes, this is right, but... Really it's this" too much to recommend this book. There is also a stunning lack of practice/guidance. It's NOT a self-study book, you NEED a teacher for it. The workbook for this book is nice, however, and would probably be good practice. The grammar points taught in this book are easily-referenceable.

This book gets a 4 out of 5 on the "Evan Grammar-Explanation Scale of Justice": Similar to Yookoso, however the practice is lacking. It's a textbook and a workbook rolled into one.

Ima! is a book that I kind of detest. When using it to teach, I found myself having to make my own materials in order to get the point across. It's a thin book without hardly any grammar explanations.

This book gets a 1 out of 5 on the "Evan Grammar-Explanation Scale of Justice". I hated using this book. A lot. It was just a glorified workbook.

Genki seemed pretty decent as far as a textbook went. It had plenty of practice, the grammar points were short, concise, and easy-to-reference. I would use it as a textbook in the future.

This book gets a 4.5 out of 5 on the "Evan Grammar-Explanation Scale of Justice": Great explanations and easily referenceable. It seems like a pretty good buy.

Japanese the Spoken Language is my bible. The grammar points are in-depth, effective, and incredibly well thought-out. If you want to know exactly how to use a grammar point, this textbook is the one you want. It is JAM-PACKED with practice that can be done completely solo. It also comes with audio cds that are worth a damn. When I want to know the difference between ～て、～たら、～れば、and ～すると, you can expect a great amount of explanation. The practice sentences in this book aren't just mundane sentences, either: the authors intentionally use weird examples in order to show the student the true meaning of a grammar point. That is, it doesn't just use "one-sentence examples", it uses "entire conversation contexts, and then weird 'breaks the rules' verbs to highlight how the grammar works"

HOWEVER- the language is dated - this book was written in the 80s (earlier?) and has never been updated; it uses a weird romanization system (zi = じ, tu = つ, ti = ち); is intended to teach the SPOKEN language (get Japanese: the WRITTEN language to learn how to write); and the grammar explanations are almost TOO long and convoluted (long and convoluted, but extremely insightful and specific).

This book gets a 5 out of 5 on the "Evan Grammar-Explanation Scale of Justice". However, the grammar is SO well-explained that you might be a little confused trying to read it.

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To teach the language, I would use Genki or Yookoso to get people off the ground, then move into JSL. Then the student should be more than ready to self-study and translate native materials.

I took 3 years of Japanese in high school (I went to a 3-year high school), and although we learned vocabulary and our teacher (a 72 year-old Japanese man) told us a lot of great stories about Japan, when I got to college and started learning real Japanese, I found that I'd learned essentially nothing in high school. I had a fantastic teacher in college who was great at explaining the nuances of the language in a way easy for English speakers to understand. The most important thing to remember when learning Japanese is that it is not like English at all. Most early learners (even those with several years of experience) will try to translate from English literally into Japanese. This will almost never work. Even for fairly simple constructions like 私の名前は"name"です, you will learn that this is not the best way to say such things in Japanese.

But even with a great teacher in college, you still need a lot of personal time working on the language if you hope to achieve more than textbook understanding. I didn't discover r/LearnJapanese until after college, but this would've been a prime resource to have. Also, in case your professor hasn't made you do so already, there's a few books you should pick up to help your learning.

Makino's three book series on Japanese grammar is exceptionally helpful for understanding constructions in Japanese (like your ～ほうがいい and ～んです). A good Japanese/English reference dictionary, like Sanseido is also very helpful, but should not be your primary resource for learning the language. These books are good when you can't think of a single word (especially from the English-to-Japanese side). Also, when you get proficient enough in the language, a Kokugo Jiten (a dictionary written in Japanese, with definitions for Japanese speakers) will become your best tool. There are some companies which make good ones, like the aforementioned Sanseido, as well as the version I use, published by Shinmeikai, but I can't find one readily available online for purchase right now.

Is this your first book you're trying to read? Like /u/jayidx said, if you can understand what's being said without too much difficulty, it might be good for you. If not, might I suggest a variety of different graded reader series to try out?

10分で読めるお話 series: It's intended for native Japanese kids in elementary school, so they language will likely be more advanced than those of us still learning the language. They're general anthologies, and there's a wide range of subjects for grade 1 through 6, and others that don't specify grade. I have the Scary Stories version, and I am also studying N3, and I find it quite good and easy to understand. Look through their catalogue for books you may like.


イッキによめる series: Also intended for native Japanese kids in elementary school, this series are anthologies of stories with a good range of stories for grades 1 through 6, and others not associated with grades. I recently bought the 1-Year book after I bought the 6-Year book and found the language and vocabulary to be a bit too advanced for my current level. The stories include some from important Japanese authors like Akutagawa Ryuunosuke and Haruki Murakami, among others.


Japanese Graded Reader series: These books are intended for non-native speakers try to learn the languages. The levels are loosely based on JLPT levels, where level 0 is pre-N5, and Level 3 and 4 being aimed towards N3 and N2 readers. There are 3 volumes per level, and 5 books per volume. They come with a CD with audio recordings of some of the stories, but you can go to their website to download the rest. I find Level 3 to be ideal for me right now, and maybe Level 2 could be good as well. I have one volume of Level 4, but it's a bit challenging for me at the moment.


日本のむかし話 series: While not a graded reader, it's an anthology aimed at native speakers of old Japanese stories. There are 8 volumes I think. The stories are good, still a bit challenging for my level but I can mostly understand what's said.


Hope these help you find things you'll enjoy reading! Aim for a lower level first and see if you find them easy or hard, and then consider getting a book another level up or so.

I'm an international student who came to the US for college and grad school, so I've learned Japanese as a 3rd language through a 2nd language, English. (Btw, my mother language is not Chinese.) As for the level of skills, I passed the JLPT N2 in December 2015. This gave me confidence to seek a job in Japan. I did some interviews entirely in Japanese and got offers from two Japanese companies. I cannot say that I was able to say all that I would like to say, but getting offers proved that my proficiency was at a level where they decided to tolerate it.

I started learning Japanese in college in 2003. However, I have not been studying Japanese all the time in the 14-year span from then and now. I did:

• 3 years of Japanese in college,
  
• and another 3.5 years in grad school. (However, the courses I took were undergrad courses.)
  
  Outside class:
  
  
• I proactively had conversation with Japanese speakers. Both my college and grad school have communities of native Japanese speakers and students of Japanese who meet weekly to have lunch or dinner. I joined most of these meetings. I also had weekly conversations with a language exchange partner over Skype.
  
• I have been listening to radio shows from Japan while working.
  
• I have been trying to read novels (well, light novels, to be exact) and books.
  
  My Japanese improved the most when I took classes, and I found that I got a much better hang of the language when I'm forced to write long prose (essays, interview reports, presentation scripts, etc). Self studying other than reading books did not quite help probably because I'm bad at keeping a steady schedule. Reading books, on the other hand, has exposed me to new vocabularies and idioms.
  
  I'm fortunate that I took classes that required me to speak in almost every session. In my first four years of taking Japanese, I was supposed to practice in a language lab and remember "core conversations" before coming to class. Once in class, the teachers would do the live drills of those conversations with each of us individually. Thanks to this, I have no fear of speaking Japanese and making mistakes because I made so many mistakes before (and will continue to do so for a long long time).
  
  While a number of Japanese native speakers have said that my Japanese is "pera pera," I cannot that I can completely understand the language. The Japanese vocabulary is very large and I only know a sliver of it that I cannot get through reading a manga or a news article without a dictionary. There are many grammar patterns that I'm not familiar with, and I always struggle trying to communicate complicated and/or technical ideas. Of course, I will continue to learn, but I honestly don't know how many years it would take until my Japanese is as good as any other languages that I speak.
  
  Resources used:
  
  
• My undergrad courses were taught using Japanese: The Spoken Language up to Part 3. While the treatment of grammar and its cultural contexts is solid, the books themselves are extremely dry. I wouldn't recommend them for self studying.
  
• The first two Japanese courses I took in grad school used An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese. I enjoyed the book as it contains good reading passages and optional cultural notes.
  
• The next two classes was taught with トピックによる日本語総合演習　テーマ探しから発表へ 上級用資料集. This one has reading passages based on real newspaper articles and introduces N2-level grammars and vocabularies.
  
• I prepared for the N2 exam using the 日本語総まとめ series of books. I worked through 4 of them (grammar, vocab, kanji, listening), and that was super effective.
  
• The last three courses I took did not use any textbook. Our teacher chose the materials and the class activities herself. These include interviewing Japanese we could find on campus, watching episodes of Closed-up Gendai, debating, giving formal presentations, and reading newspaper articles, short stories, and novels ("Hiro-kun" by Okuda Hideo and a part of "Potos Lime no Fune" by Tsumura Kikuko).

When you say you have studied Japanese for 2.5 years that's really not enough information. Have you been to Japan? Have you been there for an extended amount of time (e.g. several months?). I doubled my number of Kanji while I was staying in Japan, whenever I saw a sign / something written on my milk carton / my aircon remote, I would look it up and learn it that way. While in the subway I would take my time to look up random Kanji I saw in the advertisments.

I would use Kanji flashcards of the kind you can by in 500 box sets and go through a couple of them after a day of life in Japan: some characters I would have seen today but maybe would not remember, so going through the flash cards would help me remember them and clarify their reading. I would not learn with flash cards of Kanji I hadn't ever seen before - a useless exercise for me, I can only remember characters I've seen used in a real-life context. I don't "learn" Kanji programmatically taking them from some list and remembering the on- and kun-readings, I will only ever care about what I need to know in order to understand the text I'm working on. A children's book, song lyrics I got from the internet, texts for learners, Wikipedia articles, NHK news. The real lesson is: in order to get good at reading, you have to read a lot. Today I got a copy of a printed newspaper (読売新聞), you can buy those internationally, I got one from my local retailer at a train station in Germany. Reading an article takes an hour and a PC with a Kanji search by radical and a dictionary site, but I can do it.

For refreshment, I use resources like the amazing etymological dictionary "A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters" which will tell you the historical evolution and proper decomposition of Kanji, some stories can be really interesting. With this help I can tell that when seeing a character such as 緒, it consists of thread (糸) and the pronunciation しょ/しゃ(者), hence "the word meaning together (=bound by a thread) pronounced kind of like 者)". Next to etymological help you can also use pure visual clues.

When you read real Japanese texts, you quickly realize that 2000 Kanji is not enough. Even children's literature would use characters outside of that official list. 3000 is more realistic. You should have material (dictionaries, flash cards etc.) that covers more than the official list. Don't despair though, actual Japanese native speakers take their time learning them, too! The more Japanese you come in contact with every day, the better.

For books or series we should all know about, I have some personal recommendations although as said before it depends heavily on your needs as a learner.
These are:

Dictionaries

• Kodansha's Furigana Japanese Dictionary
  Excellent bilingual dictionary with furigana throughout.
  
  
• Kodansha's Communicative English-Japanese Dictionary
  Likely one of the best En-Jp dictionaries that's also very easy to carry and use.
  
  Grammar
  
  
• どんなときどう使う 日本語表現文型辞典
  Essential Japanese Expression Dictionary: A Guide to Correct Usage of Key Sentence Patterns
  Contains various fundamental and common grammar patterns from N5 to N1. Translations in English, Chinese and Korean also.
  
  
• Kodansha's (formerly named) Power Japanese series
  Various useful supplimentary volumes such as All about particles, Basic Connections, Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication, Common Japanese Collocations etc.
  Mainly aimed at beginner/intermediate but contains gems that can be used well into advanced study.
  
  
• Japanese A Comprehensive Grammar
  
  Kanji
  
  
• Kanji in Context
  Textbook that contains all the Jōyō (common use) Kanji, in natural sentences and commonly used vocab, not isolated. Aimed at intermediate level upwards although does start from basic Kanji.
  
  
• Basic Kanji Book
  Kanji book series that takes you from absolute beginner. Memorable kanji illustrations and etymology.
  
  
• The Complete Guide to Japanese Kanji
  A much more 'academic' kanji guide with detailed etymologies, kanji history as well as coherent pneumonics to remember them.
  
  Textbooks
  
  
• みんなの日本語 Minna no Nihongo
  
  
• Japanese for Everyone
  
  
• Genki
  
  
• Japanese for Busy People
  
  
• 学ぼう！にほんご Manabo Nihongo
  
  
• ニューアプローチ 日本語 New Approach Japanese
  
  
• An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese
  
  In terms of buying textbooks, I've had good luck with http://www.gettextbooks.com/ which pools many sites to find the cheapest deal.

I heard Rosetta Stone is quite poor and expensive, but of course, naturally, I am not an expert :)
Here's what I bought on Amazon so far, still waiting for it to all ship to me:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/4805311444/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M3STG9N/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/4789014479/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I am under the impression that it's a good use of time to first learn the Kana (Hiragana + Katakana.) As such, I am currently learning to recognize them by playing https://learnjapanesepod.com/kana-invaders/. Once I learn to recognize them I will move to "Japanase Hiragana and Katakana for Beginners" and drill them so I am able to write them and recognize them more seamlessly, while still continue playing the game to review. I think by the end of next weekend I should be able to recognize the Kana, and hopefully after another 2-4 weeks of drilling I can write them too (I'm not sure if this is realistic at all).

Once I am comfortable with Kana I am going to move to the Genki books, which seem to be highly recommended. I think I will do the workbooks and make Anki decks to memorize Kanji/vocabularly. I think this is approximately 2-3 years of University classes but hopefully this process takes 1-1.5 years of dedicated work? Again, not sure what timelines are reasonable.

I tried Genki as a complete self-learner but wasn't able to stick with it past a few chapters. I think it being classroom oriented was part of the problem. I kept skipping parts that involved practicing with other students. Overall I lost interest for some reason. I may try going back to it someday.

There were a couple books that were really helpful for me learning grammar. One is "Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication":

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1568364202/

It has 142 sentence patterns that cover a lot of practical grammar that I found useful when visiting Japan. I entered all the sentences into Anki, which ended up being 1160 cards. For each card I added notes about the pattern from the book. I found that using flashcards was the most effective way for me to remember the material.

The other book, which other people have mentioned, is Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar. This book is awesome and has great explanations that are hard to find elsewhere. I started with the Anki deck but suspended all the cards initially. When I encountered some grammar I didn't understand I would look it up in the dictionary, unsuspend the cards and apply some edits (there are some mistakes in the cards). I would also add useful notes from the book in additional fields.

Depends on what exactly you mean by "intermediate". The general consensus is that if you've went through all of Genki (or other resources of similar level), Tobira picks up very smoothly from that point. Tobira can be a bit pricey, especially for the complete set - certainly it's a bigger investment than Genki, which is usually very cheap, especially for a "textbook" - but I would think that it's worth it. Although, if you're really serious and dedicated about self-study, that begs the question of whether or not you even really need a textbook at this point? There are plenty of free intermediate and advanced resources out there that you can learn a tremendous amount from without paying a dime.

If you really feel that you need a textbook, the next best option from Tobira would probably be An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese, which can be found for pretty cheap, maybe even as low as $30 in some secondhand stores (though be sure that you are able to get the audio that comes with it - you might be able to find that part online if nothing else).

I remember using https://tangorin.com/

another good resource is https://ejje.weblio.jp/

it is japanese website but don't worry, search for the word you want and scroll down for the sentences, most of the time they are very short and pretty good..

I can suggest this book , I personally didn't used it, it has 1000 words for n5 with a sentence example.

personal opinion: I think just move on, even when you are not 100% sure about the word usage, specially if you are beginner. The material you are learning now will come again enough for you to fully grasp them while you study other words/grammar. :)

good luck

I'd say since you already started AJATT: keep on doing it!

Though I can't tell if you actually found AJATT or MIA (Mass Immersion Approach), because the latter was created by a YouTuber called Matt vs Japan who became fluent through AJATT but improved upon it to make it easier to get into and eventually branched off and called it MIA.

​

The MIA progression, as far as I understood it, starts with immersion and Kanji Study (Seems like you do immerse and already finished the Kanji and only review them).

Tae Kim is only meant as a small start into getting familiar with basic Japanese grammar, sentence structure etc.

From what I've seen, the current recommendation for MIA is to just read through Tae Kim without worrying about mining the sentences in there and to sentence mine from the Tango N5 and maybe the N4 book (N5 here and the N4 here) and alongside that, to sentence mine from the native material that you use for immersion. This is supposed to give you a good foundation in terms of grammar knowledge and vocab. At that point you should have have mined at least 2k-3k sentences and should already be quite proficient in reading.

At that point, you are supposed to do the monolingual transition, meaning that you ditch almost all English in your studies and try to just use Japanese. You do this mainly by sentence mining native material and looking up the Japanese definitions of words you don't understand.

You should never learn single vocab, only sentences, so you learn vocab in context and have a better understanding on how the words are used.

Now that is just a rough outline of the process. While I am definitely not fluent, all I wrote you can verify yourself by watching Matt vs Japan's YouTube videos, in which he goes into more detail (Don't get discouraged by the length of the videos, they can be quite "rambly" but still contain valuable information about the whole process).

Other than that, there is an ajatt sub where people asked all kinds of questions, probably yours as well.

​

All this goes against common sense and is quite different from the traditional, textbook-oriented approach, so don't let people tell you that your approach is wrong and you should do X or Y.

Watch Matt's videos and decide for yourself, whether this method is something you really want to follow.

Try some other schools? Usually you don't need to come in at rank beginner level if you already know a lot of Japanese. (I haven't been to one, but I am going to one in October).

The advantage of a school is that it offers you a 2 year visa. If there are other visa options, I'd recommend those - working holiday visa is available for some countries, etc. Then you can self-study and practice conversation. Assuming you're sufficiently motivated!

As for books, I did this book. It overlaps a bit with Genki 2 but it's a natural step up. Towards the end it gets quite difficult as it uses native texts. I'm now doing Tobira which is really fun and is placed between N3 and N2.

I've never used Japanese for Dummies, so I don't know how far it takes you and how well it allows you to transition to more advanced learning materials. As has already been mentioned, the easiest method is to exhaust all the grammar your current book can teach. The most popular alternatives to JfD are Genki and Japanese from Zero. If you asked anyone who studied Japanese for a while, if they used either book or at least heard about them, they'll most likely say yes. On top of that, it's easy to build up on your knowledge after you finished the textbook. After Genki 1, you can use Genki 2 and after you finished that as well you'll be quite good at Japanese.

If you want to practise natural speaking and writing, I'd recommend to take a look at an app called HelloTalk. It basically lets you chat with native speakers of a language of your choice for free. It might feel like it's still a little too early to try that but when I look back at how I learnt Japanese, I wish that I would have used that app much, much sooner. It's never to early to start speaking/ writing!

I recommend reading a book on classical grammar. I used this one and it's quite good. Particles have uses in classical Japanese that don't appear at all in modern Japanese, and there are similar-looking auxiliary verbs that are completely different in what they mean, so it's good to build a background. As far as free online stuff goes, there's imabi, but I'd recommend a book over imabi because it's not very well organized and it's pretty obtuse for a learner.

That said almost all of these will also be defined in a J-J dictionary, which if you already know your verb forms and such, is probably your best bet. It's just a matter of grabbing the kanji-fied form of the iroha poem and looking up the parts that are bungo.

For example (from Meikyo):

を (as in 散りぬるを)

〔接助〕文語

逆接の確定条件を表す。…のに。「大雨の折にも車の贅はやられぬ身成しを、一念発起して帽子も靴も取って捨て〈一葉〉」 ※【表現】「のに」に比べて、論理関係を述べる力が弱く、詠嘆の趣がある。


じ (as in 浅き夢見じ)

〔助動 特活型〕文語〔○‐○‐じ‐じ‐じ‐○〕

① 打ち消しの推量を表す。…ないだろう。…まい。「ただ事にはあら─」「君が才をあまり妬しと思ひながら待たるる心神ならで知ら─〈与謝野晶子〉」

② 打ち消しの意志を表す。…ないようにしよう。…まい。「サルスベリの花が猛暑に負け─と咲き誇る」

It's good, but I'd suggest taking a look at 日本語文型辞典 英語版 ―A Handbook of Japanese Grammar Patterns for Teachers and Learners

It's got pretty much every grammar construct you're likely to ever come across in a single volume, with good indices for looking stuff up. I have the original Japanese version (I bought it before the English one was available) and it's just really great.

Well first let me tell you how much i appreciate the very thorough and helpful reply! I think i pretty much have it, the textbook i am currently using is this one. http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Hiragana-Katakana-Beginners-Mastering/dp/4805311444/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416891998&sr=8-1&keywords=japanese+book

I think the book mainly focuses on this type of characters 教科書体 which is pretty much impossible for me to imitate lol but you're saying as long as i use this font while writing 明朝体 then i am not doing anything incorrect? As long as i can tell the difference between the characters with serifs or without then ill be fine? i can see those websites being extremely helpful but how can i type in a kana or kanji on an american keyboard? as you can see i am very new and clueless lol sorry!

Back in the dark ages when I was learning Japanese, I picked this book up in Japan, and swore by it for a while:

https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4874241549?tag=kurosiopb-22&linkCode=as1&creative=6339

It's similar to the DB(I/A)JG, but all in Japanese. I also liked the 新明解国語辞典, a J-J dictionary which has explanations that are more colloquial than the 広辞苑, which tends to be more ubiquitous and popular.

I would always encourage people to try to make the jump (or at least expose yourself) to native reference materials as quickly as possible (i.e. as soon as they begin to make sense to you), as (1) the explanations are invariably more detailed and (2) one of the things that will really help you "level up" in Japanese is being able to understand the language as a native speaker does, rather than in terms of English (or whatever your first language is).

You seem to have a good grasp on things. It looks like some of the linked threads follow a similar path, and I'll probably be following a very similar path myself. Nice books, too. I have quite a few myself. I'm not quite sure which of these are good (since they all had great Amazon reviews). I have the following:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014RTDPBA/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078G5P6Q4/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/4789014401/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/478901441X/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/4805312270/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1572229195/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GW5KTDK/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0976998122/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0658014900/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

(Although Genki I and the Genki workbook, plus the Kata/Hira quick guide looks good)

If we're talking about books that are available in Japan and hard to get outside:

• primary school kanji dictionary
  
• primary school vocab dictionary
  
• grammar dictionary with English descriptions
  
  There's something that need to be said about efficiency of looking up things in paper dictionaries, but those are especially targeted at kids - hence, they're easier to grasp. At least for me :D
  
  There's also a group of books, usually one per topic (reading, listening, etc) per JLPT level available, by different publishers. There's plenty of them, and I can't really recommend a particular publisher. A friend swears by this one. Usually those books (at least for lower levels) come with tri-lingual explanations in English, Chinese and Korean. Careful, engrishness of English varies :D
  
  I'd also go to Book OFF and grab a heap of mangas appropriate to your level :D
  
  Good luck, and tell us what you got and what's your opinion about those books.

issue with sentence order? Sentence order isn't important, as long as the verb is at the end it's correct. The rest is mostly subtle inflections and phrasing. That is the benefit of particles. English is very sentence order focused, Japanese is not. However if you want examples galore to help you garner a better understanding then i can recommend this book

Get Kanji & Kana by Spahn and Hadamitzky. Not only does it give you the kanji's readings in kana, it gives the on'yomi in katakana and the kun'yomi in hiragana, along with each readings' different meanings and example compound words. It's an excellent kanji dictionary. Arguably the best out there, if you don't mind it only covering the jōyō and jinmeiyō kanji.

http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Kanji-Kana-Revised-Language/dp/0804820775

As for a textbook, go and give Genki by Banno, Sakane, Ono, and Shinagawa a look. It's the defacto standard in universities; and, is very easy to use and is great for grammar. It will give you what you want: it always gives you the on'yomi in katakana and the kun'yomi in hiragana for vocabulary. The only downside is that it's a little weak on the character learning front. It doesn't teach you about radicals, and it only formally introduces about 300 kanji in its writing lessons. Even so, though, it will greatly aid your studies and and will ease you off of romaji in no time. Switching to kana is the right move, and the sooner the better.

http://www.amazon.com/Integrated-Course-Elementary-Japanese-English/dp/4789009637/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1313916758&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Genki-Integrated-Course-Elementary-Japanese/dp/4789011631/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1313917396&sr=1-2

Get a textbook. It sounds like you're trying to absorb way too many things at once. Get your hiragana down, then your katakana, THEN start worrying about kanji.

Kanji are brute-forced in Japanese schools. Kids learn by using them in sentences, seeing them every day, and writing sets of kanji 20 times a day -- it's like learning spelling in America. The first 200 or so can be really annoying, but once you've gotten used to them, you realize that they all have basically the same fundamental parts and they get a lot easier to memorize.

Kanji are nice for multiple reasons. One, they make sentences much shorter. Two, once you know lots of kanji, it's relatively easy to intuit the meanings of words you don't know. Three, once you're out of the advanced stage, they make reading much easier/faster since you recognize kanji by shape and context and they're shorter than tons of hiragana.

右 alone is not ゆう, it's みぎ. Another reason you need to get a textbook.

の is like a genitive case; it can be used to denote possession or it can be used to adjectivize a noun.

わたしのいえ my house

いぬのいえ dog house OR the dog's house

が shows a subject that is doing an action. は introduces previously unknown topics. に shows a location, time, and/or movement. へ shows directional movement. も is basically "and" or "also." There are lots of particles and they basically do what word order does in English or cases do in other languages.

Seriously, get a textbook. You sound like you're learning from reddit, and people who post here are all over the place in levels, and that's a really disorganized and confusing way to learn. I recommend the Genki series by the Japan Times.

This is a step up from the other list to the extent that it is sourced from a modern Japanese corpus and mostly is composed of real words, but this still is not very good.

The biggest problem is that the corpus is a single source. A good language frequency dictionary or list will use many sources as its corpus. Newspapers, novels, tv and movie dialogue, and so on. In short, language from fiction and non-fiction writing and spoken dialogue from broadcast and film. The failure of using Wikipedia as a corpus is clear when you see that 放送 is ranked with higher frequency than 行く, even though 行く is one of the most commonly occurring verbs in the Japanese language.

Another problem is that it uses kanji for common words rarely written in kanji such as 成る、有る、居る. What is remarkable is that 居る（いる) is marked as the #1,340th most common word in Japanese. This is ridiculous!

If you want a real and useful Japanese frequency dictionary, here it is - the 5,000 most frequently used Japanese words. Yes, it costs about $45 but at least you are getting something useful. Its corpus is compiled from books, newspapers, official documents, web pages, and spoken dialogue for a comprehensive sample of the Japanese language.

I promise everyone - you are allowed to follow Rule #4.

Already lots of great answers, but I'm going to toss in a recommendation for Japanese Verbs and Essentials of Grammar. A fantastic reference for the conjugations of both verbs and adjectives, as well as explaining so many other important concepts.

> １０分で読めるお話

Are these what you are referring to? I tried digging around on Amazon U.S. but only came up with these. Thanks for sticking my username on there though as these look like a useful future resource.

Whoa it's out of print and hard to get a hold of? That's interesting. (edit: I just checked Amazon, it seems to be in stock.) Anyway, I have that book, and it was amazing. It was instrumental in helping me with grammar a few years back when I was actively going to the JLPT. I highly recommend it.

I have another book, 'A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Sentence Patterns,' which is similar. It covers a lot of the same topics as Effective Communication, but it's unnecessarily complicated in its presentation, IMO. Still a good alternative if you can't find Effective Communication.

> Is there something more valuable I could be doing instead of this?

You could buy Totsuba! in Japanese, and try to read it to get a feeling of which directions it's useful to improve your Japanese.

You could create an account on lang-8, and try to find something to say about your day every day.

Not like this, no. Still, you can put in the work, build your own, and share it with others if you're feeling generous.

The closest example would be to get some of the Japanese readers out there like "Read Real Japanese", "Breaking Into Japanese Literature", and "Exploring Japanese Literature". These are aimed at people still learning so they're chosen to be notable, but still easy to read. More relevantly they typically have vocabulary at the bottom of each page to help you. Admittedly, there are other features present (full parallel text in English, Japanese audio for each, etc.), but that's why they're specifically sold as teaching tools.

It was a couple thousand bucks for you? I bought it off Amazon.co.jp. Here's the textbook, and here's the workbook. I didn't get the CDs, but those are just another ￥5000. Anyway, I'm pretty sure these would be a fair bit beneath your level, given the stuff I've seen you translate.

Ask’s offerings for JLPT vocab are excellent. Words are grouped by theme/situation, sentences are virtually always i+1 and grammar builds progressively also. Audio is available to download for free, and Nukemarine has Anki decks (up to N3, I think) that he’ll give you access to if you send him proof of purchase.

There’s been a lot of discussion around these books and many people believe them to be superior to Core (I am one of those people).

Yotsuba& is the go-to manga for that. Cute and interesting, yet very easy.

There's also a series called 'stories you can read in 10 minutes' (10分で読めるお話) that has different grade levels. http://www.amazon.co.jp/10%E5%88%86%E3%81%A7%E8%AA%AD%E3%82%81%E3%82%8B%E3%81%8A%E8%A9%B1-%E4%B8%80%E5%B9%B4%E7%94%9F-%E5%B2%A1-%E4%BF%A1%E5%AD%90/dp/4052022033/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1348875802&sr=1-2 That's the first story one. There's also another that's more like essays, I think. There are 12 in total, 6 grade levels each. Each contain multiple stories.

Or you could use graded readers. These contain simple stories, by level, with furigana and audio. http://www.thejapanshop.com/Japanese-Graded-Readers-Readers-and-More-Japanese-Bookstore/b/2359252011

Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication was my favorite grammatical resource when I was an intermediate student. It's a great way to brush up on and get a feel for all the basic grammatical patterns.

So I recently found out about these books called Japanese From Zero. He has an entire Youtube channel dedicated to the books and questions from people. IMO he's been a great teacher and provided tons of free content in addition to the books. There are currently 4 JFZ books. https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Zero-Techniques-Students-Professionals/dp/0976998122/

Pre-school books are about all you'll find since kids start learning Kanji from the first grade. There are plenty of books with furigana though (small hiragana written over Kanji to tell you how to read it, e.g. [漢字](#fg "かんじ")). Popular manga aimed at kids-teens particularly will be full of furigana. There are also books like this that target specific school grades, which can work pretty well if you're studying Kanji in the school order.

there is a book on Japanese sentence patterns, Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication.

It is the closest I can think of for what you want. But as someone else said learning a language takes time, you aren't just going to be able convert English to Japanese and sound natural by using a book or an app. If it was that easy, google translate wouldn't be so entertaining in it's mistranslations.

I think Heisig is good as a reference book, as in, if you have difficulty learning/remembering a particular kanji, you can take a look at it and hopefully that will lock in the kanji and pronunciation, but as the only way to learn kanji it seems a bit troublesome to me. Another book that is pretty good is Pict-o-Graphix which again is good as a reference book, not a good learning resource.

I personally use Anki and a new site memrise to practice a lot of kanji reading/meanings.

For those interested in something with far fewer issues than this list, I can recommend A Frequency Dictionary of Japanese [non-ref] from Routledge. They use a larger corpus (~100M words) from a more representative sample of contemporary Japanese.

It also has the meaning of each word and usage notes (register and example sentences) It's kinda pricey, but it is a lot better than any of the online frequency lists I've seen - main difference being that this was prepared by language scholars with access to high-quality corpora prepared by other language scholars, not by someone on the internet parsing a random selection of public domain (or possibly illegal) books.

Most dialects you won't encounter too much. However, I really would recommend learning (to understand - not necessarily speak) the Kansai dialect (Osaka/Kyoto/Kobe region) as it's nearly as prominent as the Tokyo dialect. You'll hear it all the time on TV, movies, and even in the street.

Here's a good book for an intro

Well textbooks are not necessary since I didn’t use them and did fine....but if someone needs a bit of extra support they could just grab a reference book like Japanese Verbs and Essentials of Grammar (https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Verbs-Essentials-Grammar-Third/dp/0071713638/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1519463726&sr=8-4&keywords=Essentials+of+Japanese+grammar) which covers all of Genki 1 and 2 grammar wise for only $15 and it’s not going to bore you with unnecessary exercises or useless vocab.

I found it easier for a physical book for the kanas as well. This book was good for me and cheap enough to justify the purchase.

It partially depends on what kind of treatment you prefer, such as how much grammatical and historical explanation there will be.

I'm not sure I know of any resources that are "good".

One that's free is what /u/Pennwisedom suggested: imabi

If you're looking for English resources then Haruno Shiroe's books are the most frequently recommended I think.

Depending on your access to libraries and scholarly sources you might find interesting linguistics articles about it, but that's a lot more work to digest.

There should be lots of materials in Japanese (high school textbooks, websites, etc.), but that might be a bit tough to slog through.

There is a Japanese site with lots of free educational videos (kinda like youtube-y recorded sessions) called manavee. There are videos about all kinds of subjects there.

When you look up older Japanese (typically all lumped together as Classical Japanese) stuff in Japanese, you'll have to look under 古文 (こぶん)

The stuff I know is hobbled cobbled together from lots of places, so unfortunately I don't have a great recommendation :/

Edit: Rhyming words!!! *shakes fist\

If you find that you remember better with a physical component, like writing, you can try a book (I'm using this one and my handwriting is terrible but I get a better memory result if I am writing it and saying it at the same time. There is not enough room in the book to copy a character enough times to memorize it, so use notebook paper once you have the idea, and do them in groups of five.

The Anki (or AnkiApp for iOS if you can't afford to donate $25) is also a very useful and important tool. SRS is a magical thing.

The third thing to try is drag & drop hiragana or real kana which you can also use for Katakana (and learn different font recognition, which is very difficult at first, but very important!!)

This is an excellent series. I linked to the intermediate book, but there are beginner and advanced versions as well.

A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar

Well do you care if it's a slightly older edition? Because those you can get on amazon for $10 before shipping.

This isn't an academic source, but it may be interesting nonetheless:

http://www.amazon.com/Dirty-Japanese-Everyday-Slang-Whats/dp/1569755655

You can find it floating around on the internet as well.

For yotsubato. You can try to read through a sample here http://yotuba.com/yotu_comics.html

I personally find them really enjoyable and a nice break from my anki reps. If you like it heres an amazon link. Its cheap but you have to pay shipping as well

For all interested in kansai-ben exist a dedicated book about differences between "standard" japanese and Kansai-ben:

Colloquial Kansai Japanese: The Dialects and Culture of the Kansai Region: A Japanese Phrasebook and Language Guide

there is a book that is called "kanji pictographics" that helps with about 1000 basic kanji. nice to have on your coffee table. or kotatsu once you get to japan.

http://www.amazon.com/Kanji-Pict-O-Graphix-Over-Japanese-Mnemonics/dp/0962813702/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269813970&sr=8-1

大阪ええやんか！

Just to clear up: you'll usually hear it referred to as 関西弁 (kansai-ben), which is the Kansai regional dialect and includes subdialects in Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe, Wakayama, etc.

I lived in Osaka for about 2 years. I can vouch that everyone will understand you if you speak Standard Japanese (標準語 hyōjungo), but you might have trouble understanding others if they speak Kansai-ben until you get used to hearing it.

I found this book really useful: https://amzn.com/0804837236

By the way, if you're there for business, rest assured that people will be more likely to use Standard Japanese in a formal setting. I mean, not completely – they'll probably mix in a bit of Kansai-ben from habit depending on their age, class and where they grew up – but it will be less than if you go talk to a 65-year-old street vendor.

In practice, there usually isn't a clear boundary between hyōjungo and Kansai-ben, because living in Osaka will influence the way people speak hyōjungo anyway (not just words/particles, but intonation and pitch accent as well). Just imagine them on a spectrum, with people who exist along the whole spectrum.

If you have a lot of money you can invest in the Japan Times Grammar dictionaries.

If you do not have so much money, this one is also pretty solid.

If you want a Japanese book on Grammar, the 日本語文型辞典 should be the best bet, I doubt you will find it in a Book Off, though.

It covers a VERY wide range of grammatical topics, I'd say about every topic you'll find in the Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate/Advanced Japanese Grammar combined. Kanji in example sentences have furigana, but grammar explanations don't have them, so I don't know if you'll understand all the explanations, but with a bit of dictionary work it should be fine?

For forming sentences, you need to start with some basic sentence patterns. This is a good book: https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Sentence-Patterns-Effective-Communication/dp/1568364202.

Lots of people here are mentioning Tobira, which I don't have any personal experience with, but I just wanted to chip in by saying that my university/universities went from Genki I and II to An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese + its workbook and almost all of the the JLPT N3 books. After that there were a bunch of different textbooks in Japanese; can't remember that well, but I can see if I can dig something up later.

Edit:

One of the Japanese universities used the 中級を学ぼう books which was...okay. But at least the first one could be comparable to the Genki level, though.

They also used this, but that would be for later, when you start wanting to write more advanced reports/essays.

Had a look at someone's 聞いて覚える話し方 日本語生中継 books, which was quite rubbish and/or very basic.

Some also bought these and these but I can't vouch for them.

Websites:

• WordReference Japanese language forum
  
  
• Jeffrey's Japanese English Dictionary Server
  
  
• ALC J<->E word / sentence dictionary
  
  Books:
  
  
• Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar
  
  
• Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar
  
  
• Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar
  
  
• Nihongo So-Matome Series (Good as a JLPT Study guide)
  
  

Different selection of words. I don't remember what exactly the source of 10k was, but as was said, it's rather newspaper-heavy and includes some outdated vocabulary like 日ソ, along with some incredibly infrequent words.

Nayr is based on this book, which uses a mix of written and oral material for its corpus and is purely frequency-based.

I kinda prefer Nayr's approach, but since I was already 6k words into Core10k when I found it, I haven't actually used it.

Here's a link for you.

Incidentally, Danboard (the series' cardboard-box robot you may have seen around the Internet) is something like Amazon Japan's unofficial mascot.

Routledge have just published one of these. Anyone know if it's any good?

For books, I thought Colloquial Kansai Japanese was well-priced and gave a good overview.

What's your level at? I recommend the Dictionary of [Beginner | Intermediate | Advanced] Japanese Grammar, which my program uses as a supplement for material taught in class. It was originally written back in 1995, but it is packed with explanations and examples for a wide variety of grammar structures.

I like the JLPT Tango vocab books. They have a red sheet so you can test yourself, and you can download audio for the sentences. They have books for N5-N1 vocab- here’s a link to the N5 book
https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/4872179811/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_c_HguIDbJ2D2XJR

Anyone know if the Japanese From Zero will take you farther, shorter, or if its comparable? Getting close to finishing book 1 and kinda curious.

Assuming you already know modern Japanese, get this book to learn about the grammar. I also have this dictionary, although if you're living outside Japan, shipping might be expensive. I highly recommend it though, as I haven't found any good online dictionaries for classical Japanese.

When you start out, read printed material, not kuzushiji. I started with Houjouki, since the writing style is simple and the material straightforward. From there, you can go on to poems (like in Kokinshu) or novels (like Genji or Umegoyomi).

I have several more translation posts on my blog now, so check it out.

While I personally do not know any, as I am a beginner (for like, 4 or six years due to my lack of studying :D )
u/overactive-bladder had shown me some.

• short stories in japanese: https://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/0143118331/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
  
  
• read real japanese: https://www.amazon.fr/Read-Real-Japanese-Fiction-Contemporary/dp/1568365292/ref=pd_rhf_ee_s_qp_0_2/259-4279497-3692713?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1568365292&pd_rd_r=8c5f99d9-2bc8-4db6-bfd2-bdddd29633d3&pd_rd_w=jWAij&pd_rd_wg=hH6jb&psc=1&refRID=5E58M7B8QYFHW89NYBEN
  
  https://www.amazon.fr/Read-Real-Japanese-Essays-Contemporary/dp/1568364148/ref=pd_sim_14_1/259-4279497-3692713?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1568364148&pd_rd_r=d172be83-a0ea-11e9-a0e7-ff5133ca3569&pd_rd_w=0Ju56&pd_rd_wg=onHm2&pf_rd_p=7e133c34-2a2a-4f4f-8372-6a26c70ca073&pf_rd_r=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8&psc=1&refRID=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8
  
  
• breaking into japanese literature: https://www.amazon.fr/Breaking-into-Japanese-Literature-Classics/dp/1568365896/ref=pd_sim_14_3/259-4279497-3692713?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1568365896&pd_rd_r=d172be83-a0ea-11e9-a0e7-ff5133ca3569&pd_rd_w=0Ju56&pd_rd_wg=onHm2&pf_rd_p=7e133c34-2a2a-4f4f-8372-6a26c70ca073&pf_rd_r=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8&psc=1&refRID=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8
  
  exploring japanese literature: https://www.amazon.fr/Exploring-Japanese-Literature-Tanizaki-Kawabata/dp/1568365411/ref=pd_sim_14_5/259-4279497-3692713?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1568365411&pd_rd_r=d172be83-a0ea-11e9-a0e7-ff5133ca3569&pd_rd_w=0Ju56&pd_rd_wg=onHm2&pf_rd_p=7e133c34-2a2a-4f4f-8372-6a26c70ca073&pf_rd_r=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8&psc=1&refRID=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8

I have the Japanese version it's pretty good. Another one is どんなときどう使う日本語表現文型辞典, which has everything broken down by JLPT level and is in 3 languages (korean, chinese, english). It's kind of like a condensed kanzen master but reference only. However it has come in handy a lot.

It's a pain in the ass for the most part if all you've studied is standard contemporary Japanese. This applies to both speaking it and listening to it. The kansai dialect is even broader in its own sense being that you only find certain constructs within certain areas.

Colloquial Kansai Japanese is often recommended for trying to prepare yourself but it really is hit or miss with what is used and what isn't as mentioned above.

Another popular site to familiarize yourself with the kansai dialect is http://www.kansaiben.com/.

My personal recommendation is to go through kansaibenkyou.net.

At Cornell we used Japanese: The Spoken Language series by Eleanor Jorden and Mari Noda. This was also used by the very well-regarded Falcon intensive course.

For kanji lookups, once you get past the jyouyou, Andrew Nelson's Japanese-English Character Dictionary is essential.

For a dictionary, once you can make sense of it, you should start using a Japanese-Japanese dictionary -- that is, not wa-ei, that is, one aimed at Japanese people not foreigners. It doesn't matter which one. You should make it a practice to start using it before you are comfortable doing so. It will take you three times as long as using a wa-ei, but it will pay off in the long run.

It's less than $5 used on Amazon if you don't mind getting it without the CD: http://smile.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/4789009637/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used

If you don't mind having the first edition, you can get a used copy off of Amazon for around　£２５

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Genki-Integrated-Course-Elementary-Japanese/dp/4789009637/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1347125733&sr=8-3

> Since you are learning you may also want to check out Read Real Japanese

Also Exploring Japanese Literature and Breaking Into Japanese Literature

It's not easy. Your best bet is getting to a good solid foundation on modern Japanese first and then seeking resources aimed at natives. That being said I can't recommend Haruo Shirane's Classical Japanese enough.

If you're willing to forego English buy still want furigana, this may be for you: https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/aw/d/4874241549/

Example page: http://static.wixstatic.com/media/f6084b_d614118ac4014dcba3f652a5a89cda3b.jpg/v1/fill/w_498,h_664,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01/f6084b_d614118ac4014dcba3f652a5a89cda3b.jpg

A bit of a late reply, but this book uses this method, but in a simpler form (i.e.: it doesn't use the Japanese names of the different base forms, it just calls them Base 1 (for a-form), Base 2 (for i-form) etc.) It contains an explanation of all the ways you can use each form.
http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Verbs-Essentials-Grammar-Third/dp/0071713638

This book was my bible.

https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Verbs-Essentials-Grammar-Third/dp/0071713638/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1523726293&sr=1-4&keywords=japanese+verbs

I own a copy of "Classical Japanese: A Grammar" but have not used it yet.

Imabi also has a rather extensive section on Classical Japanese.

is it this? http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-The-Spoken-Language-Part/dp/0300038348/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1371872142&sr=8-2&keywords=JSL

There's a [whole book] (http://www.amazon.com/Kanji-Pict-O-Graphix-Over-Japanese-Mnemonics/dp/0962813702) of these.

Learn to Read in Japanese (Roger Lake / Noriko Ura)

Vol. 1 (beginner to intermediate)

Vol. 2 (building on Vol. 1, intermediate to advanced)

And of course:

Breaking into Japanese Literature

Exploring Japanese Literature

Try this.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1569755655/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1510567304&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=dirty+japanese

https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%81%A9%E3%82%93%E3%81%AA%E3%81%A8%E3%81%8D%E3%81%A9%E3%81%86%E4%BD%BF%E3%81%86%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E8%AA%9E%E8%A1%A8%E7%8F%BE%E6%96%87%E5%9E%8B%E8%BE%9E%E5%85%B8-%E5%8F%8B%E6%9D%BE-%E6%82%A6%E5%AD%90/dp/4757418868/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1542813365&sr=8-3&keywords=%E3%81%A9%E3%82%93%E3%81%AA%E3%81%A8%E3%81%8D%E3%81%A9%E3%81%86%E4%BD%BF%E3%81%86

this one.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/4789009181

I haven't used it myself, but I have seen recommendations for 日本語文型辞典, which you can get from amazon.co.jp
https://www.amazon.co.jp/日本語文型辞典-グループジャマシイ/dp/4874241549

I took N3 and found the listening to be the easiest section. Perhaps only 4 questions I was unsure about.

I actually got kind of bored during the reading section and lost track of time so I didn't have time to answer the final 2 questions. Even so, I'm fairly comfortable with the rest of my answers.

Also for JLPT test prep, I think this is a better book than the Dictionary of ~ Japanese Grammar books: どんなときどう使う日本語表現文型辞典

http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%81%A9%E3%82%93%E3%81%AA%E3%81%A8%E3%81%8D%E3%81%A9%E3%81%86%E4%BD%BF%E3%81%86%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E8%AA%9E%E8%A1%A8%E7%8F%BE%E6%96%87%E5%9E%8B%E8%BE%9E%E5%85%B8-%E5%8F%8B%E6%9D%BE-%E6%82%A6%E5%AD%90/dp/4757418868/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1404684467&sr=8-2&keywords=%E3%81%A9%E3%82%93%E3%81%AA%E3%81%A8%E3%81%8D%E3%81%A9%E3%81%86%E4%BD%BF%E3%81%86%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E8%AA%9E%E8%AA%9E%E5%BD%99%E5%AD%A6%E7%BF%92%E8%BE%9E%E5%85%B8

I have this one. Don't really recommend it...Just use grammar textbook vocab instead

This book teaches you beginner-intermediate Japanese only using Romaji. Its basically been shit on by most academics I know of and the community sees it as an inefficient way of learning JP, but hey have it your way.

https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Spoken-Language-Part-1/dp/0300038348

If you want to avoid affiliate links, stop after the first multidigit number. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1569755655

If all else fails, Amazon.

Not an affiliate link

Dirty Japanese: Everyday Slang from (Dirty Everyday Slang) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1569755655/

1.An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese

2.シャドーイング 日本語を話そう 初〜中級編

3.聞いて覚える話し方 日本語生中継・初中級編〈1〉

4.中級日本語文法要点整理ポイント20

5.新・中級から上級への日本語

From the list, 1,2,3 and are fine for intermediate, but book #4 may be kind of difficult for lower/beginning intermediate. And if you look at the pages in book #5, that may also be difficult, so maybe hold off on something like that. Look inside the books and see what you think you'd use, but I think 2 and 3 may be better to use at first.

there are many graded readers out there with exactly what you're describing though.

• short stories in japanese: https://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/0143118331/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
  
  
• read real japanese: https://www.amazon.fr/Read-Real-Japanese-Fiction-Contemporary/dp/1568365292/ref=pd_rhf_ee_s_qp_0_2/259-4279497-3692713?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1568365292&pd_rd_r=8c5f99d9-2bc8-4db6-bfd2-bdddd29633d3&pd_rd_w=jWAij&pd_rd_wg=hH6jb&psc=1&refRID=5E58M7B8QYFHW89NYBEN
  
  https://www.amazon.fr/Read-Real-Japanese-Essays-Contemporary/dp/1568364148/ref=pd_sim_14_1/259-4279497-3692713?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1568364148&pd_rd_r=d172be83-a0ea-11e9-a0e7-ff5133ca3569&pd_rd_w=0Ju56&pd_rd_wg=onHm2&pf_rd_p=7e133c34-2a2a-4f4f-8372-6a26c70ca073&pf_rd_r=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8&psc=1&refRID=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8
  
  
• breaking into japanese literature: https://www.amazon.fr/Breaking-into-Japanese-Literature-Classics/dp/1568365896/ref=pd_sim_14_3/259-4279497-3692713?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1568365896&pd_rd_r=d172be83-a0ea-11e9-a0e7-ff5133ca3569&pd_rd_w=0Ju56&pd_rd_wg=onHm2&pf_rd_p=7e133c34-2a2a-4f4f-8372-6a26c70ca073&pf_rd_r=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8&psc=1&refRID=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8
  
  exploring japanese literature: https://www.amazon.fr/Exploring-Japanese-Literature-Tanizaki-Kawabata/dp/1568365411/ref=pd_sim_14_5/259-4279497-3692713?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1568365411&pd_rd_r=d172be83-a0ea-11e9-a0e7-ff5133ca3569&pd_rd_w=0Ju56&pd_rd_wg=onHm2&pf_rd_p=7e133c34-2a2a-4f4f-8372-6a26c70ca073&pf_rd_r=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8&psc=1&refRID=47RS5KNR1PN2A3V66MX8
  
  also, i am a native middle eastern and i studied arabic there. now that i moved away (thank god) i am anxious of losing my dialect and the written language. i have been looking into getting back into kawa3ed for the harakat part. even natives mess up a LOT. i still remember my arabic teacher saying "i always cringe when i hear a news reporter screw up the kawa3ed lmfao.