![]() ![]() This book will teach you the phrases that native speakers use, so you can make your Japanese sound more natural. If you only translate English in your head into Japanese without understanding how native speakers say them, you might be “doing” mistakes without noticing. It’s why it sounds funny when someone says, “I did a mistake.” We only say make a mistake in English. Getting collocations right is what separates beginner speakers from fluent ones. One thing that hangs up most language learners is the idea of collocations (a fancy word for “words that native speakers always use together”). I first bought this book in 2007, and it’s still not old-in fact, I just lent it to a friend last month. This book will help you make friends, start a relationship (and end one), and understand the everyday Japanese you hear all around you. In fact, I wouldn’t even call it “slang.” It’s a sprawling collection of real-life phrases that people use, but would never show up in any “proper” textbook. ![]() But when you get past that, this book is the very best Japanese slang textbook you’ll find on the market today. If you get only 1 book to improve your Japanese, make it this one. ![]() This book honestly covers everything you would need to say in Japanese at a basic conversational level. If you learn 2 patterns a day, you’ll finish everything in 3 months. Fuji before.” Each chapter breaks down the pattern, teaches you how to use it in real life, and then gives you tons of examples and words to practice with. You learn to say things like “This pen is red and black,” “I’m taller than my sister,” or “I’ve climbed Mt. Inside is a collection of 142 different sentence patterns that make up the bulk of what you would say in any conversation in Japanese. While this book will never win the Most Exciting Title of the Year Award, it did win a place in my heart as the most useful Japanese-learning resource I’ve ever used. Once I got a grasp of the basics, here’s what I turned to next: #1 – Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication I don’t think it matters much which textbook you start out with as a beginner, as long as you get the basic concepts. Genki isn’t necessarily the best textbook. (And I recommend anyone starting out in Japanese to have a teacher at the very beginning.) I finished both volumes with the help of a Japanese teacher. To preface this, I started with an introductory textbook called Genki. But I still credit these books as the #1 resource that bridged the gap between beginner and advanced. It’s been 15 years since that day, and I’ve lived in Japan for over a decade now. It was still awkward and imperfect, but I was actually communicating. What I liked about Japan.Īfter about 20 minutes, I suddenly realized we had been speaking Japanese the whole time! I was finally conversationally fluent. What I thought about President Bush and the Iraq War as an American (great conversation starter, by the way). (It cost $300 for equipment and materials-I did not join.) One of my teachers, who doubled as the Kendo coach, waved me over to chat. I was visiting the Kendo club after school to see if I could join. My breakthrough came at the 6-month mark. And I used my new words and phrases each day in school. I checked off sections in pencil when I finished them. Over the course of 6 months, I did a little bit each day. I picked several of them (mostly based on the covers) and brought them home. I searched through the stacks until I found the Japanese learning books-the one section I could actually read. It was on a middle floor of a big department in “town”-what everyone called the one strip of stores that stretched out from the only train station in the city. Books Save the DayĪs a self-proclaimed book nerd, the first place I turned was the bookstore. I looked at them with wide eyes, smiled, and shrugged. I saw their mouths moving and heard the noise, but it was like mush in my ears. Then a couple of kind girls in my class came over to say hi. I stood up and stuttered out a self-introduction, then went back to my seat. I armed myself with a mustard-yellow pocket dictionary just in caseĪ week later, it was my first day in class. I felt excited to go to school, but secretly, I wondered how I would survive with my rudimentary Japanese pieced together over one year of tutoring. I had just arrived in Asahikawa, Hokkaido for a year-long exchange program, and I was set to start classes the next week. In 2007, on a sweltering August day, I visited my new Japanese high school for the first time. ![]()
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