Have a look at Tae Kim's grammar guide. It's the only grammar resource I've used and it was useful. I know a lot of people on this site have used it/like it too. Plus it has the massive bonus of being free. Have a look at the table of contents because it says what grammar points are introduced on each page so you should get an idea of whether it's stuff you already know or not.

Last edited by Ash_S (2013 August 18, 5:02 pm)

Is there a way to rip off those flash files?

pen0id wrote:

Is there a way to rip off those flash files?

I've tried, although it seems to be hosted by the server in that it needs an active connection to the host in order to upload the file.

If someone were to be able to successfully rip those flash files for offline use, it would be excellent. They are great as free online resources, but would be even better as fully available offline (for example: my internet connection is very, very unreliable).

That is to say that you can download the flash file itself rather easily through Firefox, without any extensions, however upon opening said files, in either a flash player or web browser, nothing happens. It seems that you have to access the direct page while online and connect to the server in order for it to load the animation. Really wish it wasn't programmed in such a way. Still, an excellent free resource (when I am able to access it).

I highly recommend Japanese The Manga Way. Not free, but cheap compared to Genki and other textbooks aimed at schools. And the most important difference: it's the complete opposite of boring ジョン and アリス conversations; all grammar is demonstrated with fragments of real manga. There are a few other textbooks built around manga but I think this is the only high quality one, with a solid basic grammar coverage and excellent explanations and analyses. Although the transcriptions and explanations are detailed enough so that absolute beginners can understand most of the fragments with enough effort, I think you will get even more out of it if you already have some knowledge of Japanese. It contains many interesting non-crucial notes and vocabulary as well.

This might be obvious, but I also recommend using more than one resource to get explanations written in different perspectives.

Last edited by Savii (2013 August 19, 1:28 pm)

You can download them with
Replay Media Catcher
or
Orbitdownloader
or just copy them from
Temporary Internet Files

Line-by-line audio and parallel texts kanji-spaced hiragana-English
+ explanations in plain English are to be found here:

http://users.bestweb.net/%7Esiom/martian_mountain/JCP/

!GrVJGr.7z.001
!GrVJGr.7z.002
!GrVJGr.7z.003
JCtexts.7z

Last edited by buonaparte (2013 August 19, 2:32 pm)

Thank you for all of the suggestions, I will definitely be checking some of these out.

The flash files are just an implementation of a regular video player. The vast majority of this kind of players (except, sadly for us, youtube, the old megavideo -don't know about the new mega- and a handful of others), as is the case with this one, work by downloading a .flv or .mp4 file into a temporary directory, so it's easy to recover them while the player is still loaded (if you close the browser or the tab it's in, the file vanishes). If you're using a GNU/Linux distribution, you can just skip to the end of this message to find some useful console commands.

In the OSes that allow it, the player *erases* the file as soon as it is created, way before it is completely downloaded. That way it "hides" it somehow, but the flash process still keeps a hold onto them (and occupy you hard drive until the flash process is closed, even if they aren't listed on any directory). The thing is, with a little magic, you can still read them from outside.

Last time I checked on MS Windows you could just simply copy the relevant file from C:\Windows\Temp or some other temporary location in the user profile's directory (it varies with Windows version and configuration, I'll let you the task to find the actual place). I don't really remember if I needed the help of the "unlocker" utility to have read access to the file, but that's possible.

On linux, while you have the flash open, you could use the following commands (YMMV: the "2" in "cut -f 2" may need adjustment):

# To list the relevant "deleted but opened" files:
find /proc/$(pidof plugin-container | cut -f 2 -d ' ')/fd/ -lname '/tmp/*'

# To play them on your player of choice instead of on those brain-dead, cpu-hogger flash players:
find /proc/$(pidof plugin-container | cut -f 2 -d ' ')/fd/ -lname '/tmp/*' -exec mplayer -fs '{}' '+'

# To copy them to your home directory:
find /proc/$(pidof plugin-container | cut -f 2 -d ' ')/fd/ -lname '/tmp/*' -exec cp '{}' ~/ ';'

Hope this helps

Tae Kim's is great and in level terms will probably take you up to around N3 (+ a little bit of N1/2) for grammar.
After Tae Kim's, just look for grammar at higher levels.  So on Anki I use:

-  "スパー合格　JLPT1+2 Grammar"
-  "完全マスター　１級文法問題対策　例文"
-  "Gengo Grammar Alt".

All 3 are searchable decks on anki.  They cover N1+N2 level grammar.

Beyond N1, just cover grammar as you see it (there will no doubt be some not covered by JLPT).

In general I don't like the JLPT system and don't think it's a worthwhile use of time/money unless you need it for a resume/uni application, but it is a good guide to knowing what you should study for grammar.  Like a list of things to tick off.

Last edited by AKITOD (2013 September 06, 8:03 pm)