Genki Japan Blog はじめまして。

Regardless of how you choose to do the bulk of your learning, whether through speaking and using the language, Japanizing (my new word) your environment, or by memorizing textbooks, you're going to have to delve into some native literature. Why? Because it'll get you ready for how the Japanese actually speak and write, and it can be quite a bit different from your sanitized textbook. Granted, you'll have to watch actual Japanese shows, too, in order to familiarize yourself with how the Japanese speak, namely, with how fast they speak, but that's for the next post. No, this one concerns reading, which is easily the most difficult thing to do in Japanese. Now, I recommend you use Heisig for learning the kanji, so how do you learn the readings? Memorizing them from your textbook, dictionary, or any other reference tool just won't work. Been there, tried that, failed hard. You want to learn the kanji in context, and since the Kanji in Context book is boring for a lot of...

So, you think you can just go and learn basic Japanese without all those boring textbooks? You think you can just use manga? While I wouldn't recommend this book as your sole text book, I do endorse it as being a great book to familiarize yourself with casual, spoken Japanese. I'm sure another textbook comes to your mind: Japanese in Mangaland . The big difference between this book and that book is that this one uses real manga. It takes the actual manga, and then uses it to build lessons regarding reading, grammar, and other basic skills. I've heard that the manga featured in the other book is actually made up. I also found a few small errors in the Mangaland book. It slowly builds up on complex sentence structures, covering things most formal texts leave out, and it's fairly easy to remember what you've read. My biggest disappointment with this book is that it only covers basic skills. It should really come out with more volumes, like Japanese in Mangaland does,...