A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar and its sequel A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar would be the way to go, I think.  The structures are well explained and there's several example sentences using the grammatical construction. 

They are more reference books than workbooks and so they're pretty thick.  I don't know if I'd be able to work through them entry by entry.

I went through An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese in my class...it was a textbook, so there was vocab lists, readings, grammar sections, etc... so not JUST a grammar book, but I thought it was alright...not the greatest, but looking at it NOW, after using all the grammar so much, I can see how correct the explanations were...I just didn't "get" the context when I went through it the first time.

I have heard a lot of things about the Kanzen Master series, and I do enjoy them myself. I haven't gotten too far, but yeah...
Grammar is grammar, it shouldn't matter if you're learning it "for the test" or not.

I think that UBJG is the best option for me. I tried looking for something after it but I didn't see a book. Do you think it would be best to just get UBJG and then refer to Tae Kim if anything else was needed? I would just need kinda a quick reference or a quick refresher on things.

In the end, a lot of this is based on personal preferences. Everyone has books they like/don't like that click/don't click with them.

The best advice I can give is to find a Japanese teacher/prof who has a pile of these books, and ask to look through them before deciding to buy them. Might as well save your money before you buy a book you wind up hating.

IMO, UBJG is pretty good for the basics, but it has two weak points for me. One weak point is a lack of exercises. I'm big on having exercises to use as fill-in-the-blank cards for Anki. (They're called Cloze deletion cards.) They're good for active recall of info, and help me make sure I actively understand what I'm trying to learn. The other weak point is the overuse of dialogues to illustrate points, which makes it hard to enter them into Anki without busting them up. But that's me. The explanations are otherwise pretty good.

A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar has great explanations with lots of example sentences, so it's useful just for that. That way, if you buy another book with crappy explanations, you can go to the dictionary to fill in what the book leaves out. The downsides are that the dictionary isn't necessarily complete, and it is expensive. I wound up buying the intermediate and advanced dictionaries to cover what the basic dictionary lacks, and I wind up using them enough to justify the cost. But yeah, if you're on a budget, that won't help you.

For review and exercises, I like the Kanzen Master books, even though their explanations are terse at best, and they don't provide a ton of exercises for each new concept. But to be fair, each one covers a ton of new grammar topics.

I also like 短期集中初級日本語文法総まとめ ポイント20 (Short-term beginning Japanese grammar general 20 point cram book), which is full of fill-in-the-blank exercises and short tests, and also has decent explanations, although they're mostly in Japanese, with some English. The explanations are longer than the ones in KM, that's for sure. It also has more exercises per point than KM, but to be fair, KM covers more material.

But I think the best thing would be to try to find copies of the books to check out and look at before buying, either at a university library, big bookstore, or from a Japanese language instructor. (I find out about great practice books by talking to Japanese language profs at the local university here, and they let me look over them. Then again, I'm a former student.)

All else fails, you can always look at Japanese for Everyone. Some people like it, and it's not too expensive. It's a little old and can be hard to read (tiny text, kind of dated and ugly), but the info in there is thorough, with lots of exercises. The audio is hard to find legally, but you're not looking for audio. Another nice bit-- pitch accents abound. I found it second-hand for $20.

Yeah that's a good idea I didn't think about. I can talk to my Japanese Professor tomorrow and see what grammar books that she has. I am thinking about getting UBJG but I should look around more I think. I am on a budget so the dictionary series, even though they sound amazing, would probably be unbuyable for me.


That's a good recommendation yukimine. I was looking it up on amazon. I'll wait until I get the basics down but that looks pretty good. I'll probably post back tomorrow evening or something on what my Japanese teacher has and if you all have heard of them or anything.

I talked to my japanese teacher today and she recommended "A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar."

Since it's a bit expensive I still think I will be going for UBJG.

RisuMiso wrote:

You will definitely want to start saving your yennies for the Dictionary(s) though.  They are invaluable tools.

Would I need the basic dictionary though once I've gone through UBJG? Should I just get the intermediate and advanced?

I know it's not a book, but have you tried www.jgram.org?
It covers grammar for all JLPT levels, which should be good enough for now.

Also, do anyone know any Japanese websites similar to jgram.org (with all the grammar explanations in Japanese)? I don't care so much about whether or not it is JLPT related.

Thanks.

Last edited by chamcham (2010 March 04, 10:56 pm)

I haven't seen that website really. It's not too bad.


So I ordered UBJG and I'll try and work on that and then maybe sometime later I'll try and pick up ABDJG. Thanks for all of the help everyone!