Japanese Resource Review #13: 上級へのとびら (Part 1) 

With all the books out there on this kinda thing i'm glad to see my favorite youtuber actually weed out the best to the not so practical. Thanks to the community as well for providing books for you to look over too, it's great you're putting this out for everyone to see. I'm sure it'll help many including me in our studies so thanks for being the one to put out all the great content... also I hope I can actually remember to join in on this week's anime night😂

I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS!!

I lost it at 1:40 and had to sign in and leave a comment. 🤣 You're hilarious. Thanks for the review!

Started with the JFZ book series, currently working with the Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese. I find Japanese Ammo with Misa RU-vid channel awesome for those that don't have a native speaker to talk with.

Glad I found your channel. At just shy of 40 years old and someone who has been to Japan twice without being able to understand anything, I've finally committed myself to learning the language so that I can at read signs and have basic conversations.

Hey, I gotta say I really appreciate your resource reviews as you always make a really honest in-depth review. As for the resources I use: I use Genki 1 (workbook included), "Minna no Nihongo", "A dictionary of basic Japanese grammar", and "Kanji from zero", as well as many other textbooks. I also love the app "Imiwa?" it's just a dictionary but it's amazing. And I use "Quizlet" as my flashcard source. I'm still on an N-5 level, though this upcoming school year I made a promise to study Japanese at least 1h/day. Also best of luck to those taking the JLPT test this December!

I find the writing useful myself doing self study of RTK1 and Genki I. If I just typed all my answers up in Genki as well as the assignments where we're supposed to write letters I'd have no way of testing whether I knew the kanji I was writing. Being able to just type the hiragana and hit space and pick the kanji would be too much of a crutch for me. Though of course it does take longer to write by hand, so the compromise I make studying Genki is to type my solutions to the textbook exercises in OpenOffice and then write out solutions to the workbook exercises by hand. Oh and for the contest I use the following to study Japanese, in order of use: Main Sources (every day study): 1. Genki I for grammar, vocab 2. Heisig's Remembering the Kanji, Volume 1 for learning how to write/recognize kanji 3. Anki for reviewing kanji, vocab, and grammar Secondary Sources (not daily study): 4. Pimsleur Japanese (for pronunciation and easy listening practice) 5. Persona anime (for hard listening practice, plus I love the stories) 6. Yotsubato! for reading practice (and also because it's funny) 7. Japanese version of Persona 4 The Golden on the PS Vita for hard reading and hard listening practice (and also because the game is amazing)

wow finally, its here

Genki 1, living language, yookoso an invitation to contemporary Japanese, Japanese for you the art of communication, all about particles, the handbook of Japanese verbs, the handbook of Japanese adjectives and adverbs, an introduction to modern Japanese, learn Japanese: college text vol 2 &3, intensive course in Japanese intermediate, remembering the kanji 1, for reading practice I have about 200 books on various subjects like tea ceremony, martial arts, history, manga, poety, ect. Apps I use kanji senpai, tae kim, anki and a few others I can't recall the names of atm. Also I have more text books but I can't remember what all I currently have and still moving so a lot of stuff is still packed or in storage. Also just wondering if you have a complete list of books you use/have used somewhere?

First, I just want to thank you for that bit about honouring the authors & not showing much of the content of the book! I get that textbooks can be expensive & not everyone can afford them but it's honestly really frustrating to see people asking for / giving out "free" pdf versions of these books. So thank you for that! Is there a sort of bridge textbook that you'd recommend for someone who has finished みんな II and wants to move onto Tobira? I'm good with kanjis and stuff & have a separate grammar book. But I want to make sure I know everything that's needed in order to dive into Tobira easily. I was considering 中級へ行こう but I'm now hesitating after watching your review on it Lol. Any recommendations would be appreciated :) Thanks! x

Good day to you. You have mentioned it in a few of the videos that I have watched recently and i feel very ignorant for needing to ask but, what do you mean by "sentence mining"?

Writing the Kanji actually down helps me tremendously with remembering them, so I appreciate the approach despite not actually writing a lot naturally!:)

I agree with you for most part but the writing part. Writing is proved to help memorization, if you write the kanji down you’ll be less prone to forgetting it, with repetition of course.

I'm using the Sou matome series, I used Minna No nihongo before and Genki

...人偏(にんべん) is the realistic Japanese name for the radical part. It's literally "person on the left side of the character." That said, I agree that that's unreasonable to expect someone to know for a beginner intermediate level kanji learner.

Well, mainly I use WaniKani for kanji, but I also have a book called "Understanding through pictures 1,000 kanji", which I bought from a trip to Japan. When it comes to grammar, I started off using the "Japanese from Zero" series all the way till book 3, then I switched over to "Genki 2". I also have a jlpt 4 review book from "J research" which is useful so I can gauge my skills on a jlpt scale. I also have a book called "Japanese the Manga Way" which is a really fun book that teaches Japanese grammar points using real (sometimes slightly edited" manga panels. For Vocab I mainly use the "Genki" series lists, but I also have a small vocab book from "J research" as well which goes over the jlpt n5-n4 vocab (most at least lol). For practice I read the "Doraemon" manga and "Yotsuba" manga, both really funny and easy manga to read. I also play video games like "Pokemon" and "Animal Crossing" in Japanese for exposure while gaming. Oh also I love your channel, keep up the great work! Looking forward to the Tobira Grammar Book review!

げんき I for self study , みんなの日本語 with my tutor, WaniKani for Kanji, Anki for vocab and several resources for reading up on certain grammar points.

I've never seen anyone blow up over radical names. Funny stuff. Personally though, I don't think it's not such a bad thing to have the radical names. I've met a few people online whose draw to Japanese (specifically to kanji) is calligraphy - myself included. Should they ever want to practice writing something that has a particular radical, they'd easily find characters to practice by using “[radical name]を使う漢字" as a template for a Google search, even if they had very little Japanese knowledge. For example rather than trying to get the idea of "kanji containing the ‘person’ radical with an extra line on top" across, why not just spit it out as "kanji containing the ぎょうにんべん”? As someone who has looked at calligraphy resources in Japanese, I know that specific radicals are difficult to write perfectly under calligraphy standards, and thus they are addressed specifically, referenced by the radical's "proper" name. Then again, if someone had enough Japanese to use that specific search term, they're likely not a complete beginner anyway...

I really liked having the stroke order, words and everything all in one place 😂Usually, I'm all in for paying a little more for convenience, but as someone who's from Brazil and doesn't get paid in dollars, that's TOO EXPENSIVE I study a lot with the N5読む (I'm not focusing on taking the JLPT but I like having some sense of direction every now and then, you know?) and a website called Visualizing Japanese Grammar. But mostly I try to read using the NHK easy news and hukumusume and watch animes on daiweeb (your recommendation!)

Genki 2, Japanese The spoken Language part 2, and Tay Kim's "A Guide to Japanese Grammar."

Ok I'm so confused but love listsning to you explain chad😀😀😀

LingQ for reading & listening practice. Italki for speaking practice. Genki for grammar. LingQ is probably the best platform I've ever used for language acquisition, but it does require a lot of time.

books minna no nihongo-grammar lessons a dictionary for basic japanese grammar-if you can only get one thing this the book right here apps: kanji senpai-for jlpt vocab anki-for vocab in general lingo deer-the asian language version for duo lingo. no need to enter me in the book. the above is to help out. 👌🏽🤙🏽

The resources I use to study Japanese... Wow that's a bottomless hole! XD Honestly, I have used a lot for different reasons. I have used Genki, obviously, I took a class in college, I've bought so many books my bookshelf started telling at me! Right now, I am going through this book called Japanese Tutor Grammar and Vocabulary book and it's helping me really piece together sentences which was a goal of mine since for some reason conjugation is troubling me. I also use RU-vid, Google searches for free resources and of course I try out every app I find on the play store and keep the ones I like. I'm also currently using Duolingo as well as something to do on my phone besides waste time with Facebook 😂

Nice!. Just got the notification! Sadness I couldn't get first

i... dont think youtube videos realy encourage people rip screen shots off the videos to study from..( '3') i think youtube videos are good for a flip through to showcase to people the design of textbooks and can really get people interested in a book if they weren't already

I wish someone can send you とびら Beginning Japanese to review and compare to げんき I

Where's #12

4:06

Hey! I already did this one!!! XD

You need to know how to write Kanji because they are sorted by stroke order in Kanji dictionarys. Allthough I am not so sure how often you would use one haha xD

IM FINALLY MY FIRST COMMENT SUCK IT EVERYONE ELSE

Japanese Resource Review #12: Lost in Translation

Yo chad it's been a while

Whait what?! What you mean you don't need to learn how to write? Tell me how did you learn english in school, did you just look at some pictures and learned the alphabet? less than 30 letters withe more than one way of reading depending on where the letter is placed in a word. So if english or other language is studied through writing, what makes you think learning 2000+ kanji most of them with multiple pronounciations and vastly more complex in structure is done best by igniring the one element that helps you memorize in the first place. This might be your opinion and your way of doing things but a lot of people still enjoy to put things on paper. Just because tachnology is advancing fast doesn't mean we will forget how write and just text, forget how to read and just listen or forget how to work out because we are to busy watching Netflix or playing games. This last coment is generalised. Thanks for the review, and I agree it is not a book I, as well, would use to study. Cheers.

pog

Chad had lose his sanity xd !

I have worked with their main book(the blue one) and it is horrible and feels like it was lazy designed. Each chapter you have a meaningless text after text without any exercises(in relation to grammar), at the end of each chapter they slapped all grammar units that were hidden within the texts with example sentences that are often show the same word formation process(not very useful). If you want to work with the book and just check were you find something. Lets say ように, you saw it somewhere and want to know what it means in a certain context. You check the vocabulary index.... no all grammar words got removed from it for whatever reason. In order to find it you have to check the overview of each chapter and if you missed it you have to check each chapter again. They later released a exercise book and even there they missed the mark by a mile. It is mostly just sentences with huge holes you have to fit something in that uses the new grammar. Issue is: the solutions are always overly specific sentences that will be different from what you wrote, so the learning feedback is dog feces here. The Kanji book is ok imo. In summary, working with the Tobira series was the worst experience I ever had. It is only ok if you already know Japanese well, but then what is the point of these books then?

No Kanji book that isnt called RTK is ever worth it