Joined: Sep 2008
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On Google Chrome there's a button to the right of the address bar to "Control the current page." If you click it then go down the menu to "encoding" you'll be able to change the document encoding to Japanese (Shift_JIS). On Firefox it's View->Character Encoding.
This is normally not a problem because website authors can specify the encoding their pages use within the document; however, when they leave out this information your browser resorts to its default setting.
Joined: May 2009
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What I've seen of Genki is alright. The only problem is when people resort to it as the no 1 japanese learning material and often make it out to be harder than it really is - I've read comments from students who made it through Genki 1+2 in two years. WHILE IN JAPAN. Lolsaywut. You should definitely be able to work your way through book 1 in two months if you're clever about it, using flashcards, japanese environment and not limiting yourself to the pace of the class. A recommendation is to read through the whole main book quickly, then read through the grammar explanations thoroughly and finally go through the whole thing, making sentence flashcards as you go. If your teacher is always (or mostly, if you're a beginner) speaking Japanese as they should, you will get an even greater boost. Don't worry about not focusing enough on the points that your class is currently at, in due time that will just seem way easy anyhow. If you find, after a time, you're so ahead you don't gain much from the current class you should be allowed to move up unless the school is dumb. In which case you should leave it.
As for other books, I hear manga is good. Speaking of which, "Japanese the Manga way", is the best language learning book I've seen for any language. Could be above your level, but you should try it out and if it's too early, come back to it later. Way, way better than "japanese in manga land" which is laughably bad and, in my opinion, boring.
Edited: 2009-09-26, 3:37 am
Joined: Mar 2007
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I think the large amount of hate for Genki partly comes from the fact that it's so widespread, and used in crappy slow-paced courses. Naysayers, please keep in mind that even Volume 2 is a basic level text. It isn't Genki's fault that the course its used in moves slowly.
The "proper" speed for the Genki series is one semester per book. That is still slow in terms of self study, but those classes should be doing a lot of stuff other than just the textbook too.
For reference, this is the schedule that 関西外大 (the school that made Genki) uses:
1st semester: Genki 1
2nd semester: Genki 2
3rd semester: Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese
4th semester: <unpublished course packet>
5th semester: 中級から上級への日本語
6th semester: <unpublished course packet>
7th semester: individual guidance while you take courses with Japanese students
Textbook work consists of less than half of the stuff done in Japanese class. Japanese classes consist of 1/2-1/4 (depending on number of courses taken) of the course load.
Edited: 2009-09-26, 5:33 am
Joined: Dec 2008
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I don't get the Genki bashing. It is a well written textbook, and unless you like spending every waking minute infront of your computer, it's good to take a break from the screen and read real text.
There seems to be a fair bit of distain for textbooks - regardless of how well written they are, the grammar explanations and sample sentences they contain - just because they are educational as opposed to recreational (e.g. movies, manga, etc.).
For someone starting Japanese, Genki and the like can make the first few miles a whole lot smoother by explaining some of those little points.
Joined: Mar 2007
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b0ng0: indeed, I think textbooks are great, especially for raw beginners. They can also (amazingly) be used alongside other more entertaining material like manga. It's not either-or.
