In order to brush up on my Japanese grammar, I asked my teacher for a book recommendation and she pointed me towards this series:

Japanese Language Patterns Nihongoban - Volume 1.
Anthony Alfonso.
1966. Sofia University L.L. Center of Applied Linguistics, Tokyo. (2 vols, 1988)

But it is nearly impossible to acquire in Europe and also... let´s sugar-coat it... not really as up-to-date anymore as I would wish for.

I´d be immensly grateful if anyone could recommend a good alternative to this book: a stand-alone grammar course suitable for self-study with lots of examples and exercises that has been published in the current century if possible

(I know there are lots of grammar resources on the web that I could use, but to get something done I need a book to sit on top of my desk and lessons I can schedule.)

Thank you in advance!

Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication looks pretty good from the book preview (linked to Amazon.com instead of UK because UK doesn't have a preview, here's the UK link.) and it seems to be what you're looking for, and highly recommended on this forum, though I haven't used it myself (I was already past that level when I discovered it...).

It kind of depends on where you are in terms of ability. That would help inform everyone's advice, I think.

I agree that the Alfonso book is a bit out of date. The language has changed a lot in the last 45 years. There are a lot of solid alternatives, but it really depends on your ability with the language. (Are you comfortable with ひらがな? カタカナ? 漢字? How many kanji, if you know them?)

@Bokusenou
Thanks for your recommendation - actually I have already leafed through that one (due to the very similar name), but I´m not too excited about the look & feel but I will be going with it anyway, if I can´t find something more appealing very soon


@rich_f
I´ve just started my 6th semester, 2 of witch I spent as an exchange-student at a University that didn´t offer Japanese classes - that´s why I have a lot of catching up to do - foremost on grammar. And I *should* be doing the 常用漢字 exam this summer.

What I am looking for is a book that coveres basics as well as more advanced matters, just to be on the safe side. If I know it already, I can skip a few chapters. (This may be wishful thinking on my side - 1 year of hardly doing anything related to Japanise has taken its toll...)

I´d love to hear of some of the "solid alternatives" you were mentioning

Hmm... so if your 漢字 is that solid, and all you need is grammar, then I'd be tempted to recommend some of these:

First, it sounds odd, but it's very good as a reference (very thorough): Japanese the Manga Way. It covers a *lot* of stuff, with examples from manga, so you don't get the boring sentence examples. That way, you also get varying politeness levels, too. (So you don't sound like a "私は。。。私は。。。私は。。。" ロボ-外国人.) Major downside: no exercises. ISBN: 978-1-880656-90-7 US$24.95

Here's another book I like, because it's just mean. 文法が弱いあなたへ。 Lots of tricky grammar, stuff you think you know, but you don't know. It's all in Japanese, and it's mostly a problem/exercise book. Covers a lot of basic stuff-- the stuff you probably should have learned in the first 4 semesters, like てあげる、ている、はず、つもり、と言う、なら、～ば、～くなる, etc. ISBN: 978-4-89358-513-4 1200Yen.

There's a two-book series, whose titles are so long in Japanese, I'm not going to bother typing them in. I call them the "20 Points books" for short. The first book covers 初心者 Japanese, the second book (much thicker) covers 中級 level Japanese. Both cover about 20-odd points of review (more like chapters) that you should know for each level of Japanese, in Japanese for the most part, with some key bits translated in English, with lots of exercises to do. Both books are by 3-A, who makes good books.

Here are the ISBN numbers for each book:
Beginner 20: 978-4-88319-328-8 Cost: 1400 yen.
Intermediate 20: 978-4-88319-457-5 Cost: 2000 Yen.

Finally, I'd also recommend looking at some JLPT prep books. They're useful for refreshing your memory if that's all you need to do, and they tend to introduce a lot of material you just won't find in textbooks. (Plus, lots of exercises.) The old Kanzen Master (完全マスター) 3級 文法 book is a good simple review of grammar at the N4 level. (Old 3級.) ISBN 978-4-88319-354-7 Cost: 1200 Yen. You may have to find it used.

If that's too easy, then look at some of the N3 review books, or even some of the N2 or N1 review books. But one caveat for JLPT prep books-- explanations tend to run on the terse side: as in, very short. Same goes for 完全マスター 2級 文法. That one covers a lot of stuff, but explanations are usually one sentence in Japanese. (Sometimes even just a fragment.) You may need something else to look up the grammar points in to get a better explanation.

Thank you so much for your detailed recommendation - I´m going to work through all of the books and then decide which one is most likely to keep me motivated.

Tempting as it may be, I am probably going to pass on the Japanese-only ones (although I like mean) - grammar rules are dodgy little bastards even if presented in a language you have fairly good command of...

OK, good luck! My only comment is that, if you have the vocabulary to handle it, you might want to think twice about passing on Japanese-only resources (and I say this as someone who avoided Japanese-only resources for a long time after I could handle it), as they might explain the nuances of grammar better (maybe not the JLPT ones...). I'm currently reading a book meant for Japanese teachers called 中上級を教える人のための日本語文法ハンドブック and I'm frequently blown away by how good the explanations are. Niwasaboo's guide is good as well, but they both require a certain level of Japanese. Books in Japanese meant for Japanese learners are usually written in simpler Japanese (with lots of furigana) though. Anyway, on an unrelated note, it seems like both of the "20 points" books have Google Books previews.

The 中級 20 Points book only has the translations in the back of the book, so the translations don't get in the way of the Japanese... which is actually something I like.

I'm a fan of mixing it up. I have some JP only books, and some EN/JP books. The JP books sort of force me to use my JP, and to think in terms of JP. The EN books are good in a pinch, but they make me lazy... so I'm trying to use them less often!

Oh, another book I really recommend, because it's pretty easy, and will hold your hand even though it's all in JP, is 読解をはじめるあなてへ , by the same people who did 文法が弱いあなたへ. It starts off with pretty easy reading selections with reading comp questions, and there's a glossary pullout in the back, with EN, KOR, CHN definitions of the harder words in the selections, so you don't need to look stuff up separately. The main content is all in JP, though, so you can polish those JP skills. 23 short chapters. ISBN: 978-4-89358-665-0 Cost: 1200 yen.

If you need a grammar resource, there are the Japan Times Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series (Basic, Intermediate, Advanced), but they're kind of pricey, and they don't cover a lot of stuff you'll see on the JLPT. They do go into great detail about what they *do* cover, though. English. ISBN 4-7890-0454-6 (Basic) 2800 yen; 4-7890-0775-8 (intermediate) 3700 yen; 978-4-7890-1295-9 (advanced) 3800 yen.

The どんな時 dictionary is cheaper, but more terse in its explanations. But, it covers a lot more stuff-- also, it fits everything in one volume. Multilingual. ISBN: 978-4-7574-1235-4 Cost: 2800 yen. I used this with the Japan Times dictionaries to cover about 95% of the stuff on the N2 grammar section. This covers about 95% of the stuff, the Japan Times dictionaries covers about 60%. This doesn't explain as well, but it does offer some sort of explanation, which you need sometimes for the more obscure stuff.

Now I get the feeling it´s going to take longer to review books than reviewing grammar But thank you - I really appreciate your effort.

Don´t be deceived by my mentioning the 常用漢字 exam - in our first lecture they actually told us that they are going to drill 2k chinese charakters into our heads and that they were expecting us to simply learn them by heart - kanji, ON, KUN, German meaning. They said they knew that was exactly how you *shouldn´t* do it, but since we only got 2 years, they couldn´t help it. So even though I recognise lots of characters (and I haven´t been the most diligent student during my 1-year time-out), I can only take a guess at the meaning of compounds, because I don´t have the vocabulary to back up my kanji-recognition skills.

I hope that I got that across in a somewhat comprehensible manner
When I left a year ago we still tackled things like "私の夏休み" and when I came back we were supposed to write essays on random newspaper-articles (last one was a comparison of different prams, delicately describing them down to the last hinges - I felt like crying at least twice before rikai-kun and I had finished it).

edit: terrible spelling was terrible