しあわせ

漢字学習ステップ８級 published by: 日本漢宇能力検定協会

Another book to prepare for the kanken test. This time it is an official book published by the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation. It is a textbook for Japanese people, completely in Japanese and requiring a vocabulary beyond that which the kanji might suggest. Maybe it’s for grade school children but I’m certain parts of it are intended for their parents.
Read the rest of this entry »

漢字練習ノート・小学２年生　author: 下村昇 published by: 偕成社

Inspired by the upcoming Kanken test in June I went looking for some Kanji texts in JP Books yesterday. This workbook is one of the two books I bought. It is a companion volume to a more comprehensive yet small book 漢字の本2年生

As I wanted to use it more for revision I decided to skip the main book and just use the workbook. Also the main text being entirely in Japanese (as is the workbook by the way) needed more concentration than I really wanted to give to it. However I think once you reach a certain level it’s very useful and satisfying to work in an all Japanese environment.

Read the rest of this entry »

Nihongo Kantan Ursula Zimmerman Department of Science and Education Ireland 2007

Japanese is a fairly new subject on the Leaving Certificate exam syllabus in Ireland. However in 2007 only 90 students sat the exam (36 getting an A1 grade 28 of them girls) and as far as I’m aware it is usually only on the timetable for the transition year in some schools. (The transition year is a year between doing the Junior Certificate and starting the 2 year program for the Leaving Certificate. They didn’t have it when I was a kid. I think besides extending secondary school by a year, it allows the opportunity to do things off the more formal academic program, like work experience or learning new languages)
Read the rest of this entry »

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. )

Read the rest of this entry »

どんどん読めるいろいろな話　著者: 秋元美晴、糸川優、寺島ミチ子、(ISBN4-8386-0368-1)

Part of my ongoing 100万字 project. Slightly daunting at first as it is completely Japanese. But I found I could understand most of the introduction so I bought it. There are 11 stories in it. I reckon the level is about post JLPT3 in terms of grammar but maybe a little higher in terms of vocabulary. It has the story 「注文の多い料理店」which I have previously read in the レベル別日本語多読ラブリー series. This version is a little harder overall but still doable at my reading level so I’m pretty confident in reading the rest of the stories. I’m looking forward to reading an excert from Souseki’s “I am a Cat”「我輩は猫である」

Everything has furigana which is useful. There is even a little plastic sheet you can put over the page that will block out the furigana so you can test your ability to read without them. Unlike the NPO books there are footnotes. These explain unknown words either by using pictures or by explaining the word in simpler Japanese or very rarely by giving the English.

My only complaints about the book are quite minor. It would be nice if the illustrations were either colour or line drawings. And the typeface the book is set in is slightly small; for beginners a larger size would be easier. However it does seem to be the standard size Japanese novels are set in, so maybe it’s good to get used to it.