The Kanzen master series?
And Dictionary of Intermediate Grammar. Not really a textbook, but the best book for grammar.

Last edited by Zgarbas (2012 February 06, 12:25 pm)

From what I've been told the N3 book is pretty good, but best paired with something like the Dictionaries of grammar since the explanations tend to be pretty sparse.

That's what I plan to do, anyways. Currently doing Japanese the manga way, plan to do N3 as a review, and then start on N2 grammar.

What about:
- Read Real Japanese
- Do{B,I,A}JG
- Kanji in Kontext

You could opt for KO but you may find grammar of sentences there to easy (good for vocabulary build up though).

Note: There seems to be a shortage in intermediate level books - my suggestions are what I did/do/will do alongside Minna no Nihongo.

The Nihongo Chukyu J301 and the Intermediate Japanese Reading Skill Builder by ALC are good reads I think. Here is some other ALC stuff if you are interested...

http://www.alc-pubrights.com/?page_id=40

Last edited by Shinichirou (2012 February 06, 3:52 pm)

I recommend "Japanese Speaking Patterns for Effective Communication".
Sometimes we call it JSPEC on this site.

It is a great bridge from basic to intermediate level conversation.

Btw, if you haven't finished RTK1, you should.

Last edited by chamcham (2012 February 06, 5:11 pm)

I will add another recommendation for Tobira. I prefer it to Integrated Approach as it  covers quite a lot more grammar and for most of the book the reading exercises are longer, more varied and better structured in my opinion. I just enjoyed reading them more (though I'll note that I haven't finished Tobira yet and don't know if that will be true all the way through).

I found Integrated Approach became more interesting once it starts using real Japanese newspaper article and book samples as the reading exercises, but that's only in the last few chapters.

Tobira is a really good book. There's lots of extra online material, such as audio recordings, grammar and kanji tests, and a section where you can record yourself speaking and compare it with a video. The book also contains a lot of practice conversations, in both polite and casual speech.
The best part (for me) is that it doesn't focus on business or school life, but rather covers different aspects of Japanese culture, such as geography, food, sports, holidays, etc.