When you’re just starting out, it can be overwhelming trying to choose which resources to use on your learning journey. みんなのにほんご? Genki? “Japanese For Busy People?” and on and on. Not the mention the thousands of blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels and other social media sources. There is an ocean of material to select from and it can be confusing, but fear not, I have thoughts. 😄
Fewer Is Better
It’s tempting to amass a collection of textbooks, grammar books, instructional manga, etc. etc. etc. but all that does is create decision fatigue and analysis paralysis once you finally sit down to study. Your studies will be more effective if you know exactly what to use as well as where and when (remember “implementation intention?”).
My recommendation is to select one primary resource for learning the Japanese language, one for grammar, and the special case in Japanese of one for learning kana and kanji. Then, build your study plan (remember “process and product goals?”) around those.
An inside joke from a polyglot community I’m in: try not to yell “squirrel” and buy or subscribe to the next shiny new thing that distracts you in your target language. Stick to your plan.
What To Look For
A good beginner’s Japanese resource should meet the following criteria:
- Primarily based on dialogs of the sort you’d find in the real world;
- High quality audio, performed at native speed;
- Transcripts in both Japanese and English;
- Organized around ‘can-do’ themes, such as “making introductions,” “ordering at a restaurant.” “buying train tickets,” and so on.
As for how to use your resource, in the most basic form, you’ll want to study the dialogs, analyzing the sentence structure, vocabulary used and spoken cadence and intonation. At first simultaneously reference the English translations, so that you understand what the Japanese means – everything starts with understanding. Do this using both the written Japanese and the audio tracks. As you absorb the meaning, phase out the English and study just the Japanese, written and audio together, then separately.
Japanese Language Recommendation
One of best beginner’s resources, IMHO, is JapanesePod101.com. I used this myself for several years and found it so valuable that I ultimately purchased a Lifetime Premium subscription.
Why am I such a fanboy? It meets all the criteria above and also includes a number of other features that are useful for beginners, including quizzes, full transcripts not just of the dialogs but all the explanations from the episode hosts, word and kanji “banks” where you can note items you want to review later, a built-in flashcard system if you’re into SRS, and much more.
The production value is high and the dialogs are both entertaining and informative. I learned Japanese that I used daily in-country that I had never seen in any of the textbooks I’d studied in the preceding decade. I’ll provide a full review later, but this is as close to a one-stop shop for Japanese that you will find. Not to mention, the target audience goes from Absolute Beginner all the way to Advanced, so you can get a lot of mileage out of this single resource.
Full transparency: I promote the product because I truly love it (I’m using ItalianPod101.com right now to get started with italiano) but I am also an affiliate for them. If you use the link below to explore and eventually purchase, I get a few dollars from them, so thank you in advance should you do so.
JapanesePod101.com – Learn Japanese with Free Daily Podcasts
Grammar Recommendation
It’s very helpful to have a quality grammar reference handy so that you can decode new sentence constructions you come across but never forget: the purpose of grammar is to facilitate understanding. Don’t look at grammar like a bunch of rules you need to memorize to pass a test (unless you’re into that sort of thing).
When starting out, I highly recommend “Tai Kim’s Grammar Guide.” This has been around the interwebs forever and is a very clear distillation of the most common constructs you’ll need as a beginner. The explanations are very clear, focused on how to make sense of the grammar not from English but from a Japanese point of view, and come with lots of examples.
Kana/Kanji Recommendation
James Heisig literally wrote the book on how to learn kana and kanji. If you refer back to this blog post, you’ll see my recommendation for his kana book. Similarly, his book “Remembering The Kanji,” is the gold standard on how to get started. Kanji as a topic is such a beast that I’ll soon be writing a separate post dedicated to that alone – stay tuned! Just know that Heisig is your best friend.
Summary
I have other resources that I’ll introduce at a later time that help round out the learning experience, but once more, as you start out it’s best to just stick with the minimum required until you’ve built up a good study routine.
P.S. If you already have some resources that you love, please send me a note and let me know that they are.