Review by Reviewer
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10 pun de yomeru denki for 1st Grade (Yomitoku 10 Fun)Kyoko ShioyaNot for language-learners
I'm sure this book is fine for Japanese kids learning to read, but I wouldn't recommend it for foreign language learners. The grammar is fairly simple and the print is large, but the vocabulary isn't limited in any way to what, say, a student who could pass N4 would know. Which is fine. You wouldn't expect to buy a book written for native speakers and not have to look up a few words. But the problem is that they only show first grade kanji, so I think for a beginner learner it would be hard to figure out what is going on (is this a word or a grammar or?) and it would be harder to look up the words without the kanji. If you want to buy something like this, I would buy one of the higher grades that contain more kanji. They are ironically easier to understand.
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Nihongo Kihon Bunpo Jiten: A Dictionary of Basic Japanese GrammarSeiichi Makino, Michio Tsutsui, Japan TimesI don't use this much...
I think this book is fine - lots of content, lots of examples, clear and concise, etc. But I struggle to find opportunity to actually use it. You could certainly read straight through it like any other book, but I think you're better off buying a grammar drill book where you can learn grammar and check your understanding with practice problems. Once you learn N4 and N5 grammar, you will know most of what's in this book. So when I come across grammar I don't recognize at this point, it's probably not in this book. Also the inclusion of romaji is really unfortunate. Furigana would have been way better...
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New Perfect Master Grammar Japanese Language Proficiency Test N43A NetworkComprehensive
I think this book is fantastic. Be warned that there really is not much English in this book. The format is basically this: Left side of page - introduces 2-3 grammar points that are similar. Includes a very short English explanation and several example sentences. Right side of page - 10 to 25 practice problems (answers in the back of the book) The thing that is so good about this book is that the example sentences and practice problems are extremely well designed. They are not just random sentences that happen to contain the grammar point, they are carefully crafted to be clear and easy to understand while demonstrating a specific way to use the grammar point. A great example about being clear is in the section about ni vs de. One of the practice problems basically says (my translation, from memory): "We built a window [in] the room. Afterwards the room was brighter." They could have just written the first sentence, but they included the second to remove any trace of ambiguity (are they building the window INTO the room or are they building A window in room that is going to be placed somewhere else (is that possible?)). I absolutely appreciated when they did that, every time. I was familiar with 75% of the grammar going into this book, but I learned something worthwhile on every page. If you have any doubt about your N4 grammar, pick up this book.
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MAJOR 2nd 1 (Shonen Sunday Comics)Takuya MitsudaIt's Major
If you liked Major, I really don't see why you wouldn't like this. It doesn't really get super interesting in this volume, but I think that's probably typical of longer series? I'm not super experienced in Japanese but this book has furigana and is fairly light on text. I picked up quite a few new words but it wasn't a struggle to get through. If you're N3 you'll definitely be fine. I've already ordered the next few :)
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New Nihongo 500 N4-N5 (with English and Vietnamese Translation)Noriko Matsumoto, Hitoko SasakiIt's Okay
I think this book is good practice, but there really aren't explanations so if you have never seen something before this book will not teach you it. I really only recommend this book if you have learned the N4 and N5 grammar/kanji/vocab and want some quick, simple practice problems to identify any holes in your knowledge. But really you can probably just move on to N3 and skip this.
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Shadowing: Let's speak Japanese! (Nihongo wo hanaso!) [Beginner to Intermediate level] (with English, Chinese and Korean Translation)Hitoshi Saito, Keiko Yoshimoto, Michiko Fukazawa, Tomoko Onoda, Rieko SakaiVery Useful
This book starts from very simple conversations ("Hello" "Hi" "What time is it?") and gradually gets harder. By the end, you still aren't listening to super long or complex conversations, but I would say they are at least at the N4 level. The advanced version of this book has longer and faster conversations and is just overall more challenging. But I think they are both quite useful. I picked up a number of phrases from reading through this book. It's organized by Japanese conversations on the left page and corresponding English translations on the right page. The audio CD is of course entirely in Japanese. I think this will be useful to all but advanced learners (though some might find the first 20% of the book to be painfully easy.