These books have the usual unwieldy titles of so many Japanese books.
1行読んでおぼえる小学生必修1006漢字—低学年500漢字 and 1行読んでおぼえる小学生必修1006漢字—高学年506漢字. The idea behind them is quite simple though. You read one line per kanji to memorise if not all, at least most of its important readings. It’s similar to books written for Japanese second language learners like JLPT3 Kanji by Examples and JLPT2 Kanji by Examples.

The difference here is that the author crams all the readings into a single and maybe quirky sentence rather than the rather dry single use sentences of normal texts. The drawback being that this can use more complex or less common vocabulary and grammar, which is fine for natives but is a bit harder for learners. However as it’s aimed at primary school children, overall the language isn’t difficult.

The books also don’t fully stick to the grade school order. Book 1 is mainly Grades 1 to 3 and Book 2 Grades 4 to 6 but they are presented thematically and so are mixed up. I’d say it’s a bit more of a revision and consolidation tool in this respect. However by grouping them thematically I feel you make more connections and so remember more. Connections are the key. It’s easier to remember a sentence than a string of readings or even a single word. At the very least it should be a good resource for those that like to sentence-mine.

As you can see from the example below, there are five kanji to a page. Five sentences with the target kanji highlighted with a variety of readings. All kanji have furigana. 5 sentences per sitting seems reasonable. Only time will tell what my retention will be like. Maybe I need something like Smart.fm to help me, but while I am transcribing sentences for myself into my kanji notebook project, I don’t think it’s ok to make them public. It’s a very nicely designed book and not too expensive at 1260 円. If you want there’s even pictures to colour in to chart your progress!

The books certainly get rave reviews from parents on Amazon.

Related posts:

1. 漢字練習ノート・小学２年生 • Kanji Practice Notebook Grade 2
2. Basic Japanese Sentence Patterns
3. Kanji Power

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.

It follows the familiar formula of presenting the kanji with a stroke count, radical, onyomi and kunyomi. The readings that are learnt at middle school are marked. There are comprehensive guides to writing the kanji properly. Much more so than would be usual with texts for non-Japanese I think. It’s important to get good habits early on and develop well balanced well written kanji.
There aren’t example sentences but compounds are given for each kanji. I presume these would be the words that would appear on the Kanken test.

The main attractions of the book are the Kanken style tests that are included. In these you give fill in blanks by writing the kanji or it’s reading in short sentences. There are also exercises were you count strokes, or make a kanji from given components. There are also some interesting game like tests that I wouldn’t think would appear on the test. Looking at the pictures accompanying the test scores only a perfect 100 seems acceptable, the rabbit next to the acceptable 80 looks really annoyed and next to 50 positively upset.

Finally you can chart your progress by filling in the date you complete sections and should you feel the need colouring in the wall chart that comes with the book. My schooldays were never like this.

Related posts:

1. 漢字練習ノート・小学２年生 • Kanji Practice Notebook Grade 2
2. Kanji Aptitude Test
3. JLPT Mock Test Level 3

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.

This book is one of a series of six aimed at Japanese primary school students; one for each grade. there is a slight overlap with JLPT kanji. Grade 1 covers a lot of the JLPT4 kanji, with Grade 2 you’ll cover most of the JLPT3 kanji, and Grade 3 goes beyond JLPT3.
This book covers the 160 Grade 2 kanji. Each kanji takes a quarter of a two page spread. Each entry has four sections.

• A breakdown of the kanji. onyomi, kunyomi, stoke count, radical, category.
• How to write the kanji. Stroke order, notes on the type of strokes, kanji broken down into components.
• Kanji Etymology. Diagrams showing how the kanji evolved. The pictorial meaning.
• Fill in the blanks. Practice using the kanji in sentences.

The kanji are presented in order of categories, people, animals, plants, house etc. These are very useful at this stage but as the ideas get more abstract at higher grades I suspect many will fall into the その他　everything else category. Stroke count and radical are needed to use dictionaries properly. They are tested in the Kanken test.

The way the kanji are broken down is quite interesting. You could use the instructions to verbally describe to a Japanese person how to write it, in much the same way as in English you’d tell someone how to spell a word.

The etymology helps you understand the kanji. If you can understand it you are more likely to remember it and recognise components in more complex kanji.

Fill in the blanks is useful in giving you example sentences but you don’t even have to guess what you have to write. A longer test page would be more useful.

I think this is a good little book. It only costs 500 yen. I think you could use it as a starting point in learning kanji, before using more comprehensive books aimed at adult second language learners such as JLPT3 Kanji by Examples or Basic Kanji Book vol 1 and 2.

Related posts:

1. 漢字学習ステップ８級 • Kanji Study Step Level 8
2. JLPT 3 Grammar Exercises
3. Japanese Childrens Kanji Book

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)

The Japanese Leaving Cert syllabus is quite interesting and practical. It seems to concentrate on modern real world situations and on communication. Much different than when I did French in Ireland oh so long ago.

I’d actually like to sit this exam. If you live in Ireland I’d recommend giving it a go. If you are at school talk to your tutors, if you’re a mature learner contact your VEC to see about taking the exam. You can apply online but you need permission of a school principal to use an examination centre apparently. The hardest thing might be finding an exam centre offering Japanese. Try Gorey Community School and Loreto in Wexford where the author of Kantan Nihongo teaches. And St. Caimins Community School in Claire. The Japanese embassy might keep a list of schools offering Japanese. The Japan Foundation has a list of schools that offered Japanese in 2006. This year the written and aural are on the 20th June and the oral sometime between April 7th and 18th. The deadline for applications is 1st February. and the fee is 62euro for a single subject.

Even if you are not in Ireland the syllabus is interesting reading and could form a basis for self study. The exam papers provide interesting practice as well. Many of the tasks are based about reading web sites or writing blogs. It’s hard to link directly to the pdfs of the papers but here is the starting point for finding them. It is also possible to read the examiners reports and see the marking schemes. Unfortunately they don’t make the audio material available. And here is the Higher 2007 written paper.

Nihongo Kantan is the first Japanese textbook written in Ireland. It covers the Irish Leaving Cert syllabus. I feel this is at a level a little over JLPT4. But the Leaving Cert exam is slightly more demanding in that you would have to write a short essay, give written answers instead of multiple choice, and there is an oral exam as well. Also the exam covers Japanese culture, and this is a large component of this textbook.

I think this is an interesting textbook and would be very good for a complete beginner. It covers all the basics in 12 units. A dedicated student might be able to cover it in 6 months to a year. I’d presume it covers 2 years of classroom study.
I like that it uses kanji from the very beginning. All kanji have furigana, unless the purpose of the passage is to read unaided. Romaji is only used in the first 3 units, after that hiragana should have been mastered. Each unit introduces about 10 thematically related kanji in a style that’d be very familiar to anyone that has tried to learn kanji by traditional means.

It’s unusual to see a language text printed in full colour throughout. It also departs slightly from the usual format of dialogue, grammar point, exercises model. The dialogues feel much more a part of the exercises.
It has two CDs of audio material.

As always I have some reservations.
The title. It just doesn’t make sense to me. Kantanna Nihongo, or Nihongo kantan da, fine but Nihongo Kantan seems like the dodgey English you see in Japan. However there is a book printed in Japan called Nihongo Kantan as well so maybe it’s a more common construction than I think.
While I like the full colour printing, I think the graphic design could be more restrained. But it is similar to many secondary school texts I’ve seen so maybe it’s what’s needed to keep teenagers interested.
There are some things I’d class as “lies to children” but I’m usually in favour of them when the actual facts just complicate matters.
I think it’d be better if na adjectives and verb classifications were marked in the vocabulary lists.
I prefer native speakers as a model rather than gaijin accented Japanese which is usually fairly flat (mine included I’m sure) in comparison to native speech.
I think it would be helpful to include a page on stroke order in kanji. It could also be a mistake to indicate the okurigana for kunyomi with a dash – it’s too like the long vowel for katakana that is sometimes found in hiragana as well.

This textbook would probably be hard to find as it’s aimed at a fairly limited market. Modern Languages bookstore in Dublin was where I found a copy. It’s not on their web site but I’m sure they’d respond to an email. (That they misspell Japanese on their site doesn’t help in finding Japanese texts in their database. Good bookstore, not so good web site.)
Authentik is another Irish bookstore where you can order this book online. (through a slightly unique ordering system; I don’t know why they don’t use a simpler cart system like everyone else.)

-update Jan 29-
And it is now also available at JP Books in the Mitsukoshi store in London.

-update Feb 20-
The Japan Foundation lists 52 Secondary Schools in Ireland offering Japanese. Interestingly there are no only 15 native teachers. Presumably because of the Irish language requirement for teachers. I don’t know if it’s a good idea to learn from a non-Japanese.

Trinity, UCD and DU are listed as having Japanese programs at 3rd level.

And 7 institutions with what I’d class as extramural studies.

the 2006 survey has 1500 secondary students and 230 3rd level students of Japanese in Ireland. (which makes it odd that only 90 sat the Leaving Cert)

PDF listing of institutes offering Japanese according to Japan Foundation survey 2006
Newspaper review of Nihongo Kantan

Related posts:

1. Leaving Certificate Japanese
2. Basic Japanese Through Comics (parts 1 and 2)
3. New JLPT – more information

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. )

The kanji are laid out in what is now a very predicable pattern. The kanji with stroke order, onyomi, kunyomi, English meaning, compounds that appear in JLPT3 and an example sentence.
Maybe it’s the only way it can be done but it’s hardly innovative. You end up with a list to be learnt by heart which is fairly difficult.

I can’t quite figure out the logic of the arrangement of kanji. I don’t think it’s even a case of 1 to 120 being Level4 plus MLCs extras with the last 36 kanji of the 320 being the extra ones. It would have been nice if the kanji were actually marked as to official JLPT level. There is an index of onyomi and kunyomi; I’m not sure how useful it is but it’s good that it’s there.

As a separate item you get 31 test sheets of 20 questions. The “writing” test is the usual multiple choice but the reading is harder as you have to give a correct reading rather than just choose one and more than one kanji is tested per sentence.
You score yourself by deducting 1 for each mistake rather than adding up correct answers. I’m unsure how accurate a picture this gives; a better scoring method would be 5 marks per question so you can see if you are actually getting over 60% correct. Unfortunately these tests are on groups of kanji; albeit increasingly larger groups are tested. I think to bring it all together a couple of full tests would have been good.

Lastly there is a sheet of the kanji tested in past exams. This can be downloaded from MLC’s site however and again I don’t know how useful this information is.

The book is self-published by MLC so in effect it’s a bound photocopy. This is ok except were there is black text on a dark grey background. I don’t think the method of denoting stroke order by using numbers on a single character is a good way of doing this. It would be beter to have a stroke by stroke series of diagrams or omit it entirely. Stroke order isn’t necessary for JLPT.

The other issue is it’s very hard to buy unless you are resident in Japan. They will only take payment as a bank transfer and only deliver to a Japanese address. I got a friend of mine to buy it for me. I think it would be better as a paid for pdf which can be paid for by credit card. Maybe they are concerned with piracy but there’s nothing to stop anyone scanning and uploading the paper version.

All in all I don’t think I’d recommend this. The kanji listing you can get at sites such as the JLPT Kanji project or the JLPT Study Page. The test sheets are the best feature but finding mock tests elsewhere isn’t too difficult.

If you are looking for a book to learn JLPT3 kanji I think JLPT3 Kanji by Examples is much better.

Related posts:

1. JLPT 3 Kanji and Vocabulary Tests
2. 漢字練習ノート・小学２年生 • Kanji Practice Notebook Grade 2
3. JLPT3 Kanji by Examples

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 excerpt 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.

Related posts:

1. 100万字を読みたい！
2. JLPT Mock Test Level 3
3. 55 Reading Comprehension Tests for JLPT3

北嶋千鶴子（著者）North Island Company

I actually bought this as part of my 100万字 challenge. (At time of writing not at all on target at about 2.5万字）Finding suitable texts is quite a challenge. This one seemed to kill two birds with one stone. I could have reading practice and at the same time have reading comprehension practice for JLPT. The easier and quicker I can read the easier the JLPT will be I think.

The book wasn’t specifically written for JLPT but the author felt it was at such a level to be useful. There are 15 short 25 medium and 15 long passages. Nothing is longer than a single page. There are more kanji used than there are in JLPT test papers I think. None of the kanji have furigana but that’s actually quite useful. Each passage has between 1 and 4 short JLPT style multiple choice questions. The reason for any correct or incorrect answers is left as an exercise for the student.

The material isn’t exactly exciting but is reasonably interesting, including many Japanese related topics. There are also a number of graphs and picture questions that could be useful practice for the type of questions that come up on the listening section of the JLPT test.

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1. Unicom Preparatory Course For JLPT3
2. JLPT3 Grammar Mock Test Papers
3. JLPT 3 Kanji and Vocabulary Tests

日本語能力試験　直前対策　文法 ３級 (国書刊行会）

This is a companion volume to JLPT3 Kanji and Vocabulary Cram Session.

Again there are 15 mock tests interspersed with short sections of grammar. Again it is all in Japanese so the grammar explanations require a bit of work. There are also explanations for all the answers. However, as they are all in Japanese, they might not be simple to understand; although the extra practice might be useful.

The book is from before the changes made to the test 2 years ago. However the nature of the grammar questions haven’t changed. The only difference I can see is that section IV has an extra question. What the book doesn’t have is any questions for the 読解 reading comprehension part of the third paper.

As usual try to do these tests against the clock. Suggested times are: Section I ー13分; Section II ー14分; Section III ー8分; Section IV ー5分 . 40分 in total, leaving 30分 for the last two reading comprehension sections.

Related posts:

1. JLPT Mock Test Level 3
2. JLPT 3 Grammar Exercises
3. Unicom Preparatory Course For JLPT3

3級編　例文で学ぶ漢字と言葉 – 西口 光一 (著)　（スリーエーネットワーク）

These books could do with snappier titles. What we have here is another learn to read and write kanji book. The difference is this is the first one I’ve found that specifically covers kanji for JLPT and the vocabulary for JLPT. And it does this through reading passages. That’s what really inticed me to buy it.

It’s different from how I’ve usually seen kanji books.
In each unit, first there is about a page long passage to read. In this the kanji will have furigana and the vocabulary and grammar are at a suitable level. Then there is the usual practice sheet giving stroke order and a model kanji to copy. However instead of giving on-yomi and kun-yomi it uses words from the reading passage and those specific readings. It doesn’t give the English here. Then there are brief notes in Japanese about the vocabulary. Each unit also has a worksheet of reading and writing exercises. It has pleasant illustrations and is very nicely designed and laid out. Kanji not from JLPT3 are marked as such.

Lastly there is a full index of JLPT kanji with English meanings, on-yomi, kun-yomi and JLPT3 vocabulary that uses those kanji. Finally I have a definitive list I can put into my flashcard program. And there are also several tests at the end of the book.

This isn’t really a book to learn japanese from scratch. The book specifically recommends that you have finished an elementary course of study or are halfway through one. I suppose otherwise you won’t have the grammar or an understanding of the kana vocabulary.

The first two sections cover the 284 JLPT3 kanji which includes the JLPT4 kanji. They also cover 508 kanji words using these kanji. Most of the reading is in section 2 following the story of I-san and her friends in Japan. The last section introduces 131 JLPT2 kanji; probably because they are necessary to use some words properly. I suspect if JLPT3 is your goal you could probably skip Section 3 for now.

I bought this on Amazon.jp. but I’ve since seen this at JP Books in London.

It’s probably at least a days work to cover a unit. Even if you have more time I doubt it would be useful to do more than one unit in a day. I estimate the JLPT3 part of the book would require at least 24 hours work over 2 months　in order to learn to read the characters consistently. Writing would need more practice and review and take longer. Unfortunately the publishers didn’t include stroke order information but they made an accompanying web site with animated stroke orders.

Time to get started!

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1. JLPT3 Grammar Mock Test Papers
2. 55 Reading Comprehension Tests for JLPT3
3. Unicom Preparatory Course For JLPT3

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.

Of particular interest are Section 2 40 Important Points (重要語４０のポイント）, and Section 3 Confusing Words（まちがいやすい言葉）One dealing with difficult words that have a high probability of appearing on the test and the other with expressions using similar words but having different meanings.

There are also 2 CDs with this book. These are recordings of the sample sentences, each indexed to a page in the book. These can help with providing extra listening practice and possibly allowing some study on the move with an iPod. Although listening to all of them one after another is just a bit too intense. Maybe making your own translation recordings and adding some extra notes and headings and you’d have a useful recision tool. Lots of work though.

Related posts:

1. JLPT3 Grammar Mock Test Papers
2. JLPT3 Kanji by Examples
3. JLPT 3 Grammar Exercises