I'm beginning to try to learn Japanese. I've made half hearted attempts at it before so I already know hiragana and katakana and a handful of kanji (basically enough that I can make use of the Japanese tsumego books I have). This time I'd actually like to get to the point where I can read more text heavy books and newspapers/websites.

I have a few books from Kodansha about Japanese that I got from Barnes and Noble a couple years ago. I have one about particles, one about verbs, and a kanji dictionary that covers a little more than the jouyou kanji (2,230 kanji to be exact).

My school doesn't offer Japanese classes so I'm not entirely sure where to start. If you can give me any advice or recommend some books that would be very helpful.

I would start with this.

http://www.amazon.com/GENKI-Integrated- ... 986&sr=8-4

Just for reference do you know what JLPT level the Genki series goes up to (if I work through Genki 1 and Genki 2)? On the Genki website they recommend An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese, do you have any experience with that book?

I've never done the Genki series but used the Intermediate Japanese and liked it.

I did JLPT 2 kyu way back when. They've changed the levels a lot but I wouldn't worry about it. Work through the Genki series, the Intermediate, and then grab some JLPT handbooks to guess what you can pass.

Okay sounds good. Thank you.

I would strongly recommend that you get your hands on a few Japanese movies or TV shows (maybe you already have a favorite) and watch them over and over again. Try alternating subtitles-off with subtitles-on.

The idea is that if you, like most people, spend a fair amount of time watching TV/movies/cats on YouTube/whatever, you can replace that with Japanese material without cutting into actual study/work time. After enough hours, it will give you a visceral sense for the rhythms of the language that you would never get from studying books on your own.

Integrated approach to intermediate japanese is a very good book, but be aware that you need a solid grounding in the language before reading it (it's called intermediate for a reason)

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"There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level." -- Bruce Lee

Do you know if there is a website with Japanese Go tv shows like the Korean Baduk TV stream?

I do have some Akira Kurosawa movies that I really like but maybe they're kind of old to learn from. Do you have any recommendations of good modern Japanese movies?

@Jedo - I wouldn't be going through the Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese until after going through Genki 1 and 2. I think at that point it would probably be at the right level since that's what the publisher recommends.

I'd recommend 'minano nihongo' as text book.
http://www.amazon.com/Minna-Nihongo-Boo ... 250&sr=8-1

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Minna no nihongo, sounds familiar. I think we used something from this series when I was starting to study japanese at the university. All the material we had was pretty good, so I guess I'd recommend it too. ^^

I do have some Akira Kurosawa movies that I really like but maybe they're kind of old to learn from. Do you have any recommendations of good modern Japanese movies?.[/quote]

If you enjoy watching them, I don't see any reason they'd be too old to learn from...

If you enjoy watching them, I don't see any reason they'd be too old to learn from...[/quote]


I don't know about that, most of the old kurosawa movies use some pretty funky old japanese. You should still watch them though

_________________
"There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level." -- Bruce Lee

when I was trying to learn Japanese, I was working in chinatowm/japantown and I would just walk across the street to the video store and buy a Japanese movie on sale. Or some Japanese gentleman on the bus might recommend a current (back then) title, such as "Shall we Dance" or "Ringu". Otherwise my video picks were hit and miss, but it least it was in Japanese.

"Tokyo Story" is a good one. A little old, but very easy to understand Japanese.

What about anime? "Hikaru no Go" is a good choice, killing two birds with one stone

One of my friends is fluent in German... but mainly as a result of spending his days up to his eyeballs in Kant. Germans think he's awesome.

Note that you shouldn't try to emulate any Japanese found in anime, as anime language tends to be very colloquial and informal.

Check out http://www.ajatt.com


and

Bullshit.

If you're speaking with a Japanese person you don't know well, speaking like most anime characters will be quite rude.

I think the issue that you're identifying is that the characters are mostly kids speaking to peers, no? Most people would be lucky just to speak a language fluently enough to be thought rude (or conversely, stiff and formal). Getting the social nuances of a language is step two. Phonemes first.

Unfortunately in the case of Japanese it's more than social nuance. Dialogue in anime is almost all in what we call "direct style", something to only be used with people of equal or lower status with whom you are close.

Using this to a stranger or older person is considered very rude. This is why almost all classes will teach the more polite "distal" style first.

That being said, anime can still be very useful for picking up vocab in the beginning, and becomes more helpful once you are comfortable between switching between both styles.

_________________
"There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level." -- Bruce Lee

I've watched Hikaru no Go and I have a few volumes of the manga in Japanese. I can pick out some words when I watch it and I recognize most if not all of the Go terms. My vocabulary isn't very good though so I have to look words up a lot. It's much easier to look up words when reading than when listening though.