Recommended Japanese books and how to make a decision on what to buy

I’ve been through a lot of Japanese textbooks in my studies, some of them good, a lot of them not so good. When buying a new book from a site like Amazon.com, a lot of people rely on the review system, or just buy the most-purchased book, but there are a couple of problems when you do that.

One problem with the review system is that it’s difficult to really gauge what perspective the reviewer is coming from. Many reviewers post their opinions of the book after they’ve worked through at least some of it, but they leave out their initial expectations and personal goals. If you don’t know what their ultimate goal is for learning a language, you can’t estimate the utility of the book for your own studies.

This list of recommended books is a guide for serious learners of Japanese. These books are targeted at learners who want to eventually acquire fluency. If you want a quick-fix resource of set-phrases, this is not the list for you.

Beginner-level book

I looked for a book that uses only target-language native-characters (where the Japanese is written in Japanese and not the English alphabet), and provide at least 200 or 300 basic kanji (Chinese characters).

Genki is the book to introduce you to Japanese. If you want to power through the book with maximum retention, mine all of the sentences from it and put them in your SRS. If you want to know more about my SRS study method, please read about this successful language study method.

If you decide to study from a different book, I suggest that you stay away from Japanese for Dummies or Idiots Guide to Japanese, or any other book with a title that insinuates you are unintelligent.

Pre-intermediate and intermediate-level books

After getting through the fundamentals in a traditional textbook approach, I suggest a package of various texts that compliment each other. You don’t need to rigidly complete the texts in sequence, but can jump back and forth between various sources. The important thing is that you study at least a few minutes every day, and not just once a week.

The Japanese in MangaLand series is a refreshing take on Japanese language learning. One extremely useful tool that I suggest even to advanced-level students is the Google Image Search used as a dictionary. Learning a language through imagery is both efficient and beneficiary in solidifying the language in your memory. The Japanese in MangaLand series does what the Google Image Search does – It gives you images to associate with terms. It’s a powerful mnemonic that reinforces what I call “memory tags”. Imagine them as small flags that are placed on small chunks of language memory. The more flags there are, the easier it is to see.

Basic Connections and Making Sense of Japanese are must-have additions to your expanding personal Japanese language library. Jay Rubin, the highly acclaimed translator of Murakami Haruki books into English, is behind Making Sense of Japanese. Basic Connections is a grammar book that you can read through like a novel. The book provides two or three example sentences for every grammar point. Those example sentences should go directly into your SRS.

The Read Real Japanese series will help you jump into “live Japanese”. What I mean by “live Japanese” is Japanese produced by Japanese for Japanese. Up till now, we’ve been using materials designed for students, but it’s important to jump into live Japanese as soon as you can so that you can get a good feel of the language in use.

Breaking into Japanese Literature is also a good jumpstart into Japanese literature (as the name implies), but the readings are sometimes a little antiquated, and there are some uncommon kanji that may not be immediately useful for you. I prefer the Read Real Japanese series, but if you’re looking for expansion this book is good as a supplement.

Pre-advanced and advanced-level books

For advanced level books, you should be looking into Japanese novels. You’re going to have to get a feel for an author that speaks to you on a personal level; I can’t tell you who that is. A couple of my own favorites are Yoshimoto Banana and Murakami Haruki. Yoshimoto Banana keeps her sentences simple and succinct, while Murakami Haruki paints a vivid fantasy landscape in a pop-culture post-modern setting. Both of these authors provide a good look into the Japanese social psyche.

Besides novels, run searches on Google’s Blog Search function, and browse the Japanese Wikipedia Site. Both blogs and Wikipedia offer more live Japanese to devour. Blogs offer a unique feature of colloquial speech, so you have a chance to try and process Japanese as you might hear it spoken. The best part of both blogs and Wikipedia are their price tags – Free.

Deciding on what to buy

For serious learners, you should be buying texts that highlight language use and give a good amount of examples in context. Although you may be a baby in the language, you should not settle for being treated as one.

If you’re considering a book to buy, look for less lists and more full-sentences. Mine them. Put them right into your SRS and make the effort to review them every day. Power through a book, but don’t overlook anything. I guess what I’m saying is that you should be die-hard yet meticulous. Grab the bull by its horns and analyze it from the hooves up. Don’t buy into any “speak Japanese in two weeks” promises – It’s not going to work, and your motivation is going to take a hit.

By no means is this an exhaustive listing of texts, but it’s where I recommend you start from in your own language-learning journey. I’m looking to update this page every now and then with more, new recommendations.

On Time Boxing and Ironic Mistakes

“I’m trying to get my act together with time boxing, especially for my studies,” says Alex, as he types up a blog entry that distracts him from his priorities.

I just wanted to share with you the following outstanding error I came across on someone’s blog post.

To a certain extend, I suffer from a perfectionist personality which is why I find working on open ended tasks difficult. I’ll use some examples relating to my writing to illustrate: Should this sentence be structured in a passive voice? Does this paragraph look ok here? Are there enough anecdotes in this article?

(Emphasis mine)

He forgot one: “Am I using the correct words in my sentences?”

I’m not one to pick on spelling or grammatical errors (I’ve got enough of my own), but this one was too good to let slide by.

I’ll talk a little bit more about my newly adopted time management system time boxing, and its relation to my own personality (compulsive, among other things) in a later post.

This is the extend of what I want to write about today.

Threat: Illegal immigrants in Japan!

There are new posters around Ibaraki prefecture in Japan warning citizens of the threat of illegal immigrants invading the shores.

Caption reads: Stop them at the shores and protect [the nation].
Please cooperate in stopping foreigners from illegal entry and employment.

You might think the fully commando-suited five-man Japanese SWAT team armed with semi-automatic burst-fire weapons may be overkill in catching an illegal immigrant all by his lonely, but they’re a bigger threat than you might think.

Illegal immigrants are stealing all of the undocumented tax-evasion jobs from Japanese. How are Japanese citizens supposed to avoid paying taxes when these illegal immigrants won’t let them? How dare they.

[Found via JapanProbe.com]

Anti-Drunk-Driving Officer Drives Drunk

This story from Reuters,

A senior Tokyo police official tasked with keeping the city’s roads clear of drunk drivers has been arrested for driving under the influence, police said on Tuesday.

What a role model!

[Found at Japansoc]

Latest book order and Watchmen

I just put in an order for three books this afternoon, and I’m pretty excited about them:

First is the feel good holiday book of the year – Why We Suck: A Feel Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid. I feel warm and fuzzy just thinking about it!

Next, the sociology book. This is the one everyone seems to be suggesting for a fundamental grounding in sociology themes and perspectives, hence the name Sociology Themes and Perspectives. It’s a pretty smart title.

Finally, Watchmen. I’d never heard of this graphic novel before the movie trailer hit the YouTubes, but I’m pretty stoked about it. I’m a big fan of superhero and antihero genres, so what better than a combination of the two? An antisuperhero genre. Or, a superantihero genre? Anyways, if you haven’t already, check out the newest trailer for the film:

Successful language study method

Nobody asked me to (at least not through the internet), but I’d like to explain my study method a little bit, just in case someone finds it useful. I’ll mostly use Korean as my example target language, but I also use the exact same method for studying Japanese.

Let me just say that in order to use this method, you’ve got to be dedicated. An hour or two of study a week won’t cut it. This is something you’ve got to be on top of daily. You need to make it a lifestyle-habit, like putting on underwear in the morning. If you don’t put on underwear, you feel “out of place” all day.

First off, learn the frickin’ alphabet (한글, ひらがな and カタカナ, or whatever you’re studying). If you’re writing and reading in roman characters only, you’re never going to be a proficient language-user. What do you think of when you hear someone described as “illiterate”? What do you imagine they’d say? Probably something like, “Y’all dun come on ’round here ‘un brought us up some o’ dem loverly flowers from down in yer fancy city then have ye?”

All right, so now you can read Korean (or whatever other language). Now buy a book (or find a well writ website) that introduces the very basics of the language. The way you want to select a book is by choosing one with less English explanations and more example sentences. The more example sentences, the better, because here’s the thing – You’re not going to study patterns or lists of vocabulary. At all.

After you’ve got your source materials picked out, download an SRS (Spaced Repetition Software). I recommend Anki. What you’re going to do is “mine” the textbook or website you’ve picked out for sentences.

Go through the textbook and pick out all of the full sentences that you want to learn, and enter them into your SRS. On the “back side” of the SRS “card”, enter a word-for-word translation. Don’t write the sentence in perfect English – You don’t need it. Here’s an example of a Korean sentence:

Front side: 그래서 오전 수업이 끝나자마자 교내 식당으로 가서 친구들과 같이 점심을 먹었다.
back side: and so a.m. (morning) class-is finish-as-soon-as on-campus cafeteria-at go-and friends-with together lunch ate.

The reason you don’t want (or need) a perfect English translation is that you shouldn’t be memorizing any English in your study. The point is to be able to digest the Korean text as it’s presented. This will train you to start thinking in Korean, instead of translating in your head. (Which really slows you way down) [The sentence above in structured English is, "So, as soon as I finished my morning class, I went to eat lunch at the school cafeteria with my friends."]

Ideally, you should be processing 50 or so of these sentences per day, and going through all of the required review of past sentences in your SRS. Sometimes, though, you can’t always make the time to get through 50 sentences a day. (That’s right, “make” the time. Here’s a quote by me: “Time‚ like money‚ is not something that you can find; you have to make it yourself.”)

That’s the reading skill acquisition portion of your study. Now for listening. Download some MP3s with native speakers speaking. Don’t use materials that were produced for language learners. They’re a crutch that will atrophy your potential skills. You can’t build muscles lifting kittens. (Unless you’re Claytonian?) You can’t build proficiency using dumbed down materials.

The MP3s can be of whatever you like – News, podcasts, SNU lectures, whatever has native speakers speaking native Korean (or other language). Load the MP3s into an iPod or onto a CD, and listen to the same hours-worth of material over, and over, and over, and over, and over …

… and over, and over, until you’re repeating it in your sleep. You’re not going to understand any of it the first time around. Maybe not the second time either. But it’ll come to you. Keep on top of your SRS study, listen to the same MP3s, and you start to pick up a little piece here, and a little piece there, until suddenly you realize you can understand a good portion of the audio. You can feel yourself progressing. It makes you feel good, and you want to study more.

The first time I listened to the MP3s I chose, the only words I could pick up on were “안영하세요” (hello) and “그래요?” (oh really?). Now I’m able to pick up on sentences like, “라면, 과자, 빵등 밀 가루를 주로 사용하는 음식들의 가격이 빠르게 오르고 있습니다.” (“The costs of foods made mostly of flour, such as ramen, crackers, and bread, are rapidly increasing.”) It only took me about 15 hours of riding in the car between home and work daily with the hour-long CD constantly repeating!

Besides the listening and SRS, the only other thing I suggest (insist on) is a constant bombardment of Korean (or other language) on your input sensors. Watch Korean TV shows – WITHOUT SUBTITLES. You don’t have to know what they’re saying right now. Just keep watching. Weekly. Daily. Any shows – Dramas, variety shows, talk shows, “gag concert”, whatever you like. Me? I watch 미녀들의 수다 (Global Talkshow – A talkshow with foreign women who live in Korea) and 인간극장 (Human Theater – Weekly documentaries on people and families living in Korea). When an interesting one comes along, I also watch dramas. (You’ve got to abandon your critical judgements regarding production value and content when you watch a lot of Korean dramas.)

If you want some more advice (I agree with 95% of what he has to say – but not, for instance, Heisig), check out All Japanese All The Time Dot Com.

Now get out there and learn!

We can’t say that in English…

When you study a foreign language like Japanese or Korean, you begin to understand that there are a lot of terms that we can’t express in English because the words simply don’t exist.

Take “lifestyle” for example. In Japanese, 生活. In Korean, 생활. It would be fine if it only existed as a noun, like it does in English. But in Japanese and Korean, you can tack on the verb “do” to the end. Now you are “doing lifestyle”. While we can still say “have a lifestyle” in English, it’s not as flexible as the terms in Japanese and Korean.

Korean: 학생들은 보통 국제 학생 기숙사에 머물면서 생활한다.
Japanese: 学生たちは、普通に国際学生寮に泊まって生活する。
English: Students typically stay (and lifestyle!) at an international student dorm.

It’s really difficult for me to include the “do lifestyle” part of the sentence. Of course, that probably just means I’m not cut out to be a translator. The following sentence sounds awkward:

“Students typically stay in and have a lifestyle at an international student dorm.”

To translate it simply, we could just write it as, “Students typically live in an international student dorm,” but we have to abandon the idea that they aren’t simply “staying” there, but have a distinct lifestyle within the housing unit. While it’s easy enough to translate the information, it’s difficult to translate every subtle nuance and insinuation. I guess that’s one of the skills people have to master in order to become good translators.

What does “Westernized” mean, exactly?

I don’t think the term ‘Westernized’ is actually a valid label for most of what’s going on in societies all over the globe today.

I was doing a couple of rounds on iKnow when the following example sentence popped up:

今日の日本の若者は欧米化している。

Translation:

“Young people in Japan today are Westernized.”

The voice sounded like it was a grumpy, older man. It got me to thinking, though – What’s “Westernized”?

I think people use it to mean that culture from the West has invaded a non-Western land, but what is “culture from the West”, exactly? Is it McDonalds? Hip Hop? iPods?

See, those things aren’t necessarily “Western” (or more specifically American), more than they are “post-modern”. They just happened to be made in the post-modern West. Continuing with Japan as a comparison model, what has come from this non-Western nation? Sony Walkmans? Anime? TV-capable cell phones?

Things that are accused of causing “Westernization”, specifically attitudes, fashion, and entertainment, aren’t actually a product of the “West”, from my point of view. They’re products of an increasingly connected global society. Yet the “imports” into many traditionally Confucian societies* are perceived considerably more negative than the “exports”.

I don’t really have time to dig down deep into my thoughts and analyze this at the moment, but what I’m feeling in my gut is that this isn’t a battle between Western and Eastern cultures, but between two sets of more universal groups: (1) Older and younger generations, and (2) nationalist and internationalist (or maybe even just “non-nationalist”) identities. The older generations are more likely to be nationalist, but not necessarily always, as are the younger generations more likely to be internationalist, but not always.

I’m tired right now, so I think I’ll have to leave this at that, but what I want to get into if I have the time later is the contrast between Western and Eastern complaints regarding post-modern culture, and where the blame is typically laid.

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*Note: I use “traditionally Confucian societies” as an example because that’s where my personal experience is.

Remake of Karate Kid…Is nothing sacred anymore?

Actor Will Smith’s 10-year-old son will star in a remake of Karate Kid. How dare Hollywood defile one of the identity-defining pop-culture films of my childhood!

First of all, Daniel Laruso is about 16 or 17 years old in the movie, and in the position of an outcast in the popularity-driven society of high school. What’s this business about a 10-year-old kid? He’s not even allowed to have a part-time job, so how’re they going to make him wax Mr. Miyagi’s car and paint his fence? That’s child labor!

What about the Halloween scene? Are they going to have 10-year-old bullies? How old will Mr. Miyagi be if he was supposed to have fought in WWII?

Why is this injustice happening? Why are they remaking another movie that’s already perfect? So perfect, in fact, that I find a little bit of Daniel-san in myself as I sit here, typing this from Japan. If one of the 80,000 gods of Shinto is a movie-god, why can’t he save us from this tragedy?

Today is 11/11

In honor of this day of single digits, I offer you a composition made of single letters:

i-n-v-u, n-m-e.

y?

u-r-a-b-u-t.

(Posted at 11:11 on 11/11)