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Post by chocopie on May 6, 2014 14:35:30 GMT
Here are the books I actually use! Click for a bigger picture! Kanji in Context: I believe I wrote about it somewhere else on the forum. As it says on the cover, it goes over all the kanji but with vocab aimed at intermediate to advanced learners. It comes with two workbooks with exercises and sentences using the vocab in context, but I couldn't be bothered to fit them in the photo. ニュース英語のキーフレーズ8000: Again everything is pretty much on the cover! It comes with two CDs so you can listen to the Japanese and English vocab together and has lots of example sentences. I don't really study it, but it is a very good reference book. 高校入試: I thought that I should be able to pass the senior high school entrance test in Japan so I bought this book. It's a collection of past exam questions.
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Post by 魔 on May 6, 2014 20:48:09 GMT
I took some pictures of my shelf load of books, although I'm not using any at the moment. The top shelf left side is manga, rightside are books. bottom - dvds and dictionaries biggerTextbooks, tour books and other books bigger
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Post by vaiche on May 21, 2014 10:00:59 GMT
This makes me feel bad, hehe... I don't have any books to learn Japanese at all.
I simply use my phone. That's it. Finding anything in Japanese here in suburban Sweden is a feat. I've yet to see anything that even resembles the word "Japanese" ("japanska" in Swedish) here. Being underage, I haven't been able to buy books off the internet either.
(Although, I have made huge process using Tae Kim's grammar guide, and Anki. In just a week, I've learned more Kanji and grammar than I did when I studied for 6 months...)
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Post by LittleGaijin on May 21, 2014 21:01:08 GMT
Thanks for sharing more pictures, guys!! This makes me feel bad, hehe... I don't have any books to learn Japanese at all. I simply use my phone. That's it. Finding anything in Japanese here in suburban Sweden is a feat. I've yet to see anything that even resembles the word "Japanese" ("japanska" in Swedish) here. Being underage, I haven't been able to buy books off the internet either. (Although, I have made huge process using Tae Kim's grammar guide, and Anki. In just a week, I've learned more Kanji and grammar than I did when I studied for 6 months...) Aww haha, don't feel bad! Phone apps and online sites are powerful study tools, just as useful as any textbook. I also like to use Tae Kim's grammar guide. Glad to hear that it's helping you to improve so much, congrats on that huge improvement! That's very impressive; makes me want to study more haha. Gaiwa might do textbook giveaways in the future if there's a demand for it... I'll think about it!
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Post by Jembru on May 22, 2014 10:31:20 GMT
Yeah, didn't Bokusenou learn her Japanese largely online? Well besides her JLPT books (correct me if I'm wrong Rin, I know you did try a course at one point too). And look where she ended up.. passing JLPT N1! I don't have that many textbooks either, and tbh, most of the ones I DO have, I wouldn't recommend to another person (besides Japanese for Busy People, but even then I'd insist they pad them out with online resources, because they only offer a framework). You can spend as much money as you want on studying Japanese.. buying apps, textbooks, manga, videogames, podcast subscriptions... but the truth of the matter is, you can't buy language skill. The only thing that will make you good at Japanese is hard work. Blood, sweat and tears... many, many tears... ^^
What I am saying is, those of us with the means to throw money at our studies, aren't at any greater advantage than you, we just have more clutter on our shelves!
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Post by Jembru on Jan 26, 2015 9:50:43 GMT
w...wh...what??? Have I seriously not posted about my new stationary yet? The very stationary I've been obsessing over and talking about in every other video journal since May last year? Nothing? No seriously, I've gone through my history because I found it THAT unlikely, but besides mentioning the letter I wrote myself last year, in the Study Highlights thread, I actually didn't talk about it or share photos yet! So it all started last May when I stumbled upon a set of notebooks I got off Miyo when she was in Japan. She brought me back a goody-bag of Melody items (and spent way more than I deserve to have spent on me ^^), amongst which was a box-set of decorative notebooks.. This box-set of decorative notebooks to be exact.. Okay, I already told the story in that other thread, so long story short, I wanted to start using these this year, so started ordering other My Melody stationary from Japan. When I got something new, it went in this nice gift bag (along with the letter I wrote to myself, and any My Melody things I already had), not to be opened until January 1st! I wasn't to look at the contents until January, so I was ever so excited. The day finally arrived and I was reunited with my collection, and those lovely, lovely books. My main notebook, and the boxed books aren't in the picture, and I made a Melody desk-organiser, bought a new glasses case and even ordered a My Melody bag for work so that everything matches, my mum even made me a My Melody tissue box (you don't HAVE to have obsessive tendencies to self-teach Japanese, but I think it helps ^^). I've said this many times before, but having special stationary really motivates me to WANT to study! Well, that, and the little cat who sleeps by my side whenever I'm at my desk...
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Post by Princess on Jan 29, 2015 4:44:30 GMT
LOL I'm proof that more books don't equal more knowledge! Look at all these books and I'm still only a beginner! Not shown: The actual textbook I use now that I'm in a class, Japanese for Busy People (kana) and a couple overdue library books haha. I don't even have Genki, what's up with that? The papers are JLPT study guides my teacher had typed up for a short summer class. Also I have a bunch of notebooks that have a few pages of Japanese in them and then empty, cuz I apparently skip notebooks a bunch.
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Post by Jembru on Feb 8, 2015 2:07:55 GMT
Also I have a bunch of notebooks that have a few pages of Japanese in them and then empty, cuz I apparently skip notebooks a bunch. Wha... wha... you mean... you don't fill each end every blank page with notes, pretty boarders drawn in colour-coded ink, decorated with stickers of butterflies, cats or sanrio characters.. you don't take your current notebook out with you (especially if you'll be gone over night), and sit fondling its pages, looking lovingly at those pretty notes you wrote, reviewing the content at your leisure? You don't do that then? ^^
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Post by Princess on Feb 9, 2015 2:44:37 GMT
Also I have a bunch of notebooks that have a few pages of Japanese in them and then empty, cuz I apparently skip notebooks a bunch. Wha... wha... you mean... you don't fill each end every blank page with notes, pretty boarders drawn in colour-coded ink, decorated with stickers of butterflies, cats or sanrio characters.. you don't take your current notebook out with you (especially if you'll be gone over night), and sit fondling its pages, looking lovingly at those pretty notes you wrote, reviewing the content at your leisure? You don't do that then? ^^ LOL oh gosh, honestly maybe if I wasn't quite so lazy with things like that hahha. Unfortunately for me I both love organizing/cleanliness AND being lazy so I'll try making a page all pretty and perfect and then I'll mess up and abandon it <-----sooo many pages in sooo many notebooks like this! Stickers sound lovely, I have quite a few anime and Hello Kitty stickers around here:3:3 I just never want to use them xD but being surrounded by them in Japan might change that!
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Post by Jembru on Feb 14, 2015 15:57:16 GMT
I'm so happy right now! I just sat and typed this out in Japanese, then changed my mind and decided to put this here ^^ Ah, well.. I'll save it and use it on lang-8 later. So, there's a Japanese academy (that is.. a school for Japanese speaking kids), in Washington and Miyo invited me to go there with her today because there was a Japanese book fair on. I was like a kid in a candy store! I actually took £100 with me because I couldn't let the chance to buy Japanese books pass me by. You won't believe this but.. I spent less than £10!! Some kokugo books were free somehow (all of the middle row: there were more free titles, but I couldn't carry much more by the time I discovered they were free), so for my £10 I got all of this... Most books were 50p, besides the pokemon activity books (that each came with a sheet of stickers!!), which were £1.20 each. The vocabulary books were £1 each I think. The snacks at the bottom are sakura mochi by the way. This book fair is held twice a year, so we're going back in October! I'm sticking to children's stuff for now, but they sold plenty for adults too. I had been nagging JP to take me to London so I could buy more Japanese books, but now I have these, I don't mind if we go or not.
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Post by Bokusenou on Feb 14, 2015 21:17:36 GMT
Jembru That's great! Looks like they had a lot of great stuff! Do you remember what kinds of things they had for adults? There's a school for Japanese kids that's kind of far from me, but they also have book fairs once in a while. I have plenty of books I bought online which I haven't finished yet, but after I'm done with those, I've always wondered if making the trek all the way there to check out their book fairs would be worth it for me, since the money spent on gas for the trip would likely negate any savings I would get by buying there.
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Post by Jembru on Feb 14, 2015 22:19:56 GMT
Jembru That's great! Looks like they had a lot of great stuff! Do you remember what kinds of things they had for adults? There's a school for Japanese kids that's kind of far from me, but they also have book fairs once in a while. I have plenty of books I bought online which I haven't finished yet, but after I'm done with those, I've always wondered if making the trek all the way there to check out their book fairs would be worth it for me, since the money spent on gas for the trip would likely negate any savings I would get by buying there. Hmm.. I'm afraid I don't remember much about titles or anything, seeing as I didn't really pay much attention, but there was a fair amount. in the photo I posted you can only see half of the room. The table at the back against the wall was all novels as far as I could tell. There was another table to the right of that, that had a mixture of fiction and non-fiction. I was mostly looking at the non-fiction. I have a story about it in fact.. Miyo picked up a thick book of baby names and something crazy happened.. She told her husband what the book was, and he jokingly opened it at a random page and pointed to a name saying 'lets call our kid that'. Miyo was really surprised and handed the book over, keeping her finger on the name. She said, 'Jemma, read out the katakana please', so I did.. 'serena'. They both looked horrified and then explained that this was the name Miyo had said she'd call a girl when they decide to start a family. The book contained thousands of names.. it was like a phonebook.. but this is exactly what happened! It got slightly weirder.. I'd been attracted to a boxset of books but when I read the cover realised it was a set of 4 guides on raising a baby to toddler. I had been holding it before Miyo asked me to read from the baby name book. So I jokingly picked it back up and said, 'I think you might need this!' ^^ Okay, so story over.. besides baby books, as far as I could see it was mainly cook books, some English textbooks, and pets/fashion/hobbycraft. Basically, it was all typical 'housewife' stuffl. Oh there was a guide on how to use facebook too! There were quite a few magazines -a whole table in fact and some as recent as December 2014. Again, these were mainly fashion (and there's also a magazine about facebook... what is it about facebook? And a whole magazine? Monthly? Really? What do they write about?). I was willing to pay £300-£400 to get JP and I down to London for a few days, just for the pleasure of buying secondhand Japanese books (and we're probably still going to go anyway, even if the books ARE more expensive down there), so I would probably gladly pay for the gas if I were in your position, but I AM compulsive by nature. Honestly though, I'd suggest talking to some of the people you've met in your conversation groups, and see if any of them fancy doing a car pool one day, splitting the cost between you. Unless you're planning on starting a family or baking cakes any time soon, you might be disappointed.
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Post by Bokusenou on Feb 15, 2015 3:03:51 GMT
Hmm, I might go one day to check out the fiction section then. Right now my unread Japanese book pile is big enough that I don't need to add more to it yet, but it's good to know what kinds of books they typically have at these sorts of things!
Woah, that baby book story's kind of erie! I mean, what are the chances?
Oh Facebook, you would think there wouldn't be enough to write a magazine on it...maybe it's super popular among Japanese expats or something? I think LINE and Twitter are more popular in Japan, but Facebook's more popular among the Japanese people I know here who chose to settle down and live in the US permanently.
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Post by Jembru on Feb 15, 2015 12:41:22 GMT
I know what you mean about piles of books! In my case though, it's more that I'm just not ready for reading novels. I'm planing on starting to dip into them once I've got through RTK though.
These books are amazing. I can't get over the quality of the kokugo books. I got 5 titles in total, and each is fully illustrated in colour with glossy paper (which is why I couldn't carry much more). They're packed with interesting short stories, writing and grammar tips, follow-up exercises and interesting articles. They're so much more eye-catching and readable than I remember English textbooks being at school (maybe I just didn't appreciate them back then though). I'm hoping that this will get me over my anxiety at seeing large blocks of text!
I'm going to work through these books for now and put the N2 book on hold for a while. I really like the layout and style of nihongo soumatome, but I just feel that the kokugo books are more supportive of my 'Japanese in context' approach.
I'm starting with 2nd grade to ease myself in because it's written in simple, clear Japanese, but already I'm like 'give me more kanji dammit!!'.
Oh I have a question actually. Does the 下 and 上 refer to the half of the year the book is meant to be used in? I have both 三下 and 三上, but only 二下 and 四下. I guess these will only use half the characters for that grade then? 五 isn't split over 2 volumes. It's much thicker though, and uses smaller text, so maybe this is meant to be used for the full year?
I didn't read the pokemon kanji practice ones properly either, so only have one term from each year, and it's completely random as to which I picked up!
Still, I at least have plenty of new study material to be getting on with, so I shouldn't moan.
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Post by chocopie on Feb 15, 2015 22:46:37 GMT
That looks like a good haul! Lucky you! Oh I have a question actually. Does the 下 and 上 refer to the half of the year the book is meant to be used in? I have both 三下 and 三上, but only 二下 and 四下. I guess these will only use half the characters for that grade then? When larger books are split into two, the first book is 上 and the second book is 下. If it´s split into three, then the order of books is 上中下. I have some Kumon kokugo books and they are very fun! I don´t remember having anything like them at school at all. I remember learning a lot of nature and fishing vocabulary as well!
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