"Japanese the Manga Way" has lots of in-depth English explanations, but it won't carry you all the way to N1. N3 definitely. N2? No... but it will give you in-depth basic grammar info.

Kodansha puts out a ton of books on various subjects, like the above-mentioned  "A Dictionary of Japanese Particles." They have books on verbs, idioms, adjectives, core words and phrases, and collocations. And their "How to tell the difference between Japanese Particles" is pretty good, too. As is "Japanese Particle Workbook" (by another publisher.)

But, honestly, it will really help you figure this stuff out faster the sooner you get used to learning about Japanese grammar in Japanese. I understand it's faster to do it in English now, but down the road, it really will get you to where you want to go faster.

The best grammar practice books I know are all in Japanese, with a little bit of EN in them (with exceptions), but it's not the main language of the books:

文法が弱いあなたへ (No EN help at all. And this will show every flaw in your beginner grammar.)
読解をはじめるあなたへ (No EN either, and not grammar, but great for beginners wanting to work on reading comprehension.)
短期集中初級日本語文法総まとめポイント20 (great review of what you *should* know, but maybe don't know.)
中級日本語文法要点整理ポイント20
初級から中級への日本語ドリル文法 (it doesn't cover a lot, but what it covers, it covers in depth.)
にほんご500問中級 (lots of grammar and vocab questions. N2-N3 level.)
にほんご500問上級 (N1 level.)
anything in the ドリル&ドリル日本語能力試験 series. N2 or N1: grammar, reading, listening, or vocab. (Do they do N3 now, too?)
anything in the Kanzen Master series. Old or New. Both are good, but slightly different.

rich_f wrote:

The best grammar practice books I know are all in Japanese, with a little bit of EN in them (with exceptions), but it's not the main language of the books:

文法が弱いあなたへ (No EN help at all. And this will show every flaw in your beginner grammar.)
読解をはじめるあなたへ (No EN either, and not grammar, but great for beginners wanting to work on reading comprehension.)
短期集中初級日本語文法総まとめポイント20 (great review of what you *should* know, but maybe don't know.)
中級日本語文法要点整理ポイント20
初級から中級への日本語ドリル文法 (it doesn't cover a lot, but what it covers, it covers in depth.)
にほんご500問中級 (lots of grammar and vocab questions. N2-N3 level.)
にほんご500問上級 (N1 level.)
anything in the ドリル&ドリル日本語能力試験 series. N2 or N1: grammar, reading, listening, or vocab. (Do they do N3 now, too?)
anything in the Kanzen Master series. Old or New. Both are good, but slightly different.

Interesting! What's the intended audience for these Japanese-language Japanese grammar books?
And where would you recommend importing those from? Things like manga, I can find pretty well at the local Book-Off or buy online from Kinokuniya, but for unorthodox books like 文法が弱いあなたへ the only option seems to be to buy off amazon.jp and do that fake shipping address thing, which gets really expensive really quickly...(not to hijack the discussion! just curious)

The books I like:

Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication (sometimes people call it JSPEC in these forums)
Link: http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Sentence … munication

All About Particle (my advice is to read the book, circle every particle you see when reading something, and try to map its meaning to one of the book's explanations).
Link: http://www.amazon.com/All-About-Particl … +particles

As for the Japanese grammar books in Japanese, there's  a lower level 200 grammar points book and then there's the more famous (and advanced) 500 grammar points book.

200 grammar points (どんなときどう使う 日本語表現文型200):
http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E6%94%B9%E8%A8 … y_b_text_z

500 gramar points (どんなときどう使う日本語表現文型500):
http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E6%94%B9%E8%A8 … y_b_text_z

Last edited by chamcham (October 09, 7:37 pm)

jessem wrote:

Interesting! What's the intended audience for these Japanese-language Japanese grammar books?
And where would you recommend importing those from? Things like manga, I can find pretty well at the local Book-Off or buy online from Kinokuniya, but for unorthodox books like 文法が弱いあなたへ the only option seems to be to buy off amazon.jp and do that fake shipping address thing, which gets really expensive really quickly...(not to hijack the discussion! just curious)

Pardon the wall of text.

The intended audience is anyone learning Japanese, no matter what their native language is. I've been in classrooms where most of the people didn't have the same native language, so communication in Japanese was more efficient, with the added effect of immersion training. All of the textbooks were in Japanese, too. (Texts like Minna no Nihongo do this. You can get a translation in your native language if you can't handle the Japanese, but it's an extra book you have to buy.)

At first it's hard to do it this way, and things don't make any sense. But as time goes on, you'll get better at learning from the Japanese, and your Japanese will improve quite a bit. I'd say try to understand it in Japanese first. If you just can't do it, then go to your native language resources. It's work, but it will really improve your Japanese.

Book-Off doesn't really do Japanese books for foreign students of Japanese. No idea why. I never could find any decent books on that there. But I got a ton of LNs and manga there for dirt cheap, as well as a few books on business etiquette and Keigo/Kenjougo.

Amazon.co.jp will ship books and CDs outside of Japan, but pretty much anything else needs to be shipped via Tenso, and that gets expensive, fast.

Looks like Amazon has revamped their shipping to North America: https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/help/custom … =201213190

So it's only 800 yen per shipment (down from 2700!), and it's 400 yen per book, and 300 yen per CD/DVD/Blu-ray. Not bad! "Other" is still pretty scary. 800 per shipment, and 1000 per item. Yikes.

But doing some quick math, 4 books is 600 yen shipping per book, 8 is 500 per book, 16 is 450 per book... ah, it tails off at that point. 20 is 440 per book. Same goes for CDs: 4 is 500 yen per CD, 8 is 400 yen per CD, 16 is 350 per CD, 20 is 340 per CD. You'll never get to 400 or 300 yen per book/CD. Even at 100 items, it's still 408/308 per item. Math, it's fun!

It's pretty cleverly calculated.  Still the more you can afford to buy, the less the overall shipping per item will be. I'd imagine that honto.jp is cheaper until you hit the 6-8 book mark, since honto calculates by weight, and not by number.

honto.jp will ship overseas via SAL, which is a lot slower, but also somewhat cheaper. They'll also ship via air mail, which is a little bit cheaper than EMS, but not by much. Their site is all in Japanese, though. You'll need Rikai to navigate it. Think of it as a learning exercise.

You could also check the Rakuten global market. They'll only ship EMS though, so it won't be very cheap.

Also, there's always eBay, White Rabbit Press, JBOX/JList, and yesasia.com, although I've never used yesasia. No idea how good they are.

Get the ISBN number from Amazon, and look it up in as many places as you can. That might be faster.

Last edited by rich_f (October 09, 9:56 pm)

Yeah, that makes sense. I just thought it was odd that the Okazaki Book-Off, which is just down the road from a Japanese language school, never had any of those kinds of books. I'd love to unload my N2 stuff there.

Meanwhile the Maruzen, Junkudou, and Sanseido in Nagoya all had good selections of JLPT prep books, though, but those were all new. (Maruzen in Sakae has the best selection-- it's on the third floor.)

vix86 wrote:

You need to understand that Book-Off is a used bookstore. They only sell books which people bring in and trade for store credit. The reason why there aren't a lot of Japanese books for foreign students is because a lot of people simply don't bring them in. This is why there are a lot of books on Keigo there; people buy them at Kinokuniya or Book1st and then sell them back to Book-Off after they are done. Ditto on manga/LNs/magazines/etc.

Another thing is that I'd try to sell my books/manga online or give them away before I took them to Book-Off, since it's about as good as giving them away. I usually take stuff I want to get rid of there, like the ¥105 manga that I buy there. I sold most of my English-language books for more than I paid for them on Amazon.

Wow! Thanks everyone so much for your replies and recommendations. A lot of these books look promising and I'll be looking into most of them.

Keep those recommendations coming if you have any!

Kay

rich_f wrote:

@gaiaslastlaugh Glad it was useful for you. I'm a big fan of drill books, especially that series. Here's another one I like for 聴解 for developing a way to avoid that "WTF did I just hear?"sensation, which I get a lot on the JLPT, and almost nowhere else (except maybe when elderly people talk in dialect on the news...):

耳から覚える日本語能力試験聴解トレーニング N1 (ISBN 978-4-7574-2002-1)
Not sure if they do an N2, but they might? At any rate, the exercises are pretty good, in that they get you used to the listening section of the N1.
They also have books + audio CDs for grammar and vocab, but I'm not exactly sure how useful those are.

Why do you think the N1 passages in the JLPT seem more difficult?  Is it because of their length compared to the normal dialog on a TV show?  I've been listening to N! test passages as practice and a lot of times I have to listen to them 2 or 3 times to get everything.  When I was just using anime for listening practice it seemed somewhat easier.  I'm not very experienced when it comes to listening so I thought it was just me.

Rich, I think you hit the points I was thinking of.  I think the main benefit of video is that you get visual cues and such.  I'm also finding that I keep my attention up during the first half of the passage and then it trails off.  I like your description of the types of questions that appear on the test.  That made me laugh.