しあわせ

Basic Kanji 320 Corresponding to JLPT Level 3 Meguro Language Center

Well it does exactly what it says on the cover. The bulk of this book are the 284 kanji needed for JLPT3, plus an extra 36 kanji that might also be tested. (The wording on the MLC site suggested to me that they were prediciting 36 kanji out of the 284 that might appear on this years test. Alas that is not the case. )

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NoteBook 2.1 from Circus Ponies Software

I use my MacBook a lot to learn Japanese. I’ve got so many clippings from websites, stray urls, little notes I’ve written scattered all over my harddrive. I’ve also got loads of barely organised pieces of paper with notes. The solution? NoteBook!

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Skim 0.7

I came across this useful little program for the Mac today. It’s a pdf reader that allows you to add notes and marks to a pdf file.

I carry my laptop much more often than I carry my class notes. So what I do is scan in the handouts I get in class and annotate them so I have a ready reference without carrying large amounts of paper around. (It might be possible to OCR the handouts but I’ve never needed this step.) It’s also possible to make them searchable if you annotate them properly.

The drawbacks (or maybe it’s just a feature) are that the notes and marks are not part of the pdf so other readers won’t be able to display them. So if you want to share a marked up document the other person will need to use Skim as well. I’ve found that notes added in another program won’t open and as yet I’ve had no success with the line/arrow tool.

What I particulary like about this program is it’s layout of panes and the ability to set what font and size you want the notes in. I always found the fixed size in other programs too small to read kanji notes. Best of all it’s free

実力アップ!日本語能力試験3級 文法編 実力アップ! (Unicom Inc)

A challenging book. This is a Japanese Grammar written in Japanese. There are two pages of an English preface but after that you’re on your own. There is an English translation available separately but Part of what interested me was trying to cover the grammar in an immersive manner. It’s a bit slower than using an English book but it might pay off in the long run.

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３級問題種
Komoku Seiri Hyojyun Mondaishu 3kyu　(Bonjinsha)

This is an excellent book for revision. It consists almost solely of questions with no explanations. It’s completely in Japanese but understanding what you have to do is no problem. The useful idea behind the book is a short test you take at the start. Depending on the questions you get wrong it points you toward other sections of the book with the aim of improving your score. If you have already covered the material it would be a good book for the last 4 to 6 weeks of your JLPT study. It will help you focus on your weak points and consolidate your studies. I used an earlier version when I sat JLPT4 and found it very useful.

There are also audio tapes (I don’t think CDs are available) that go with this for the listening questions but they were so expensive I didn’t buy them.