There are courses that focus on speaking/listening for quite a while before writing is introduced at all.  I originally used the textbook Japanese: The Spoken Language, which is still fairly widely used across the US, and it uses this method.

People on this forum knock classes a lot, but it was the best part of my Japanese learning experience (Now I'm a good seven years into learning Japanese.  I did those textbooks for the first two).

By the way, the official daily-use kanji list doesn't really matter at all, so don't worry about those 400 kanji so much.

Last edited by Tzadeck (2012 March 07, 9:20 pm)

I never did RTK. I learned about 400-500 kanji gradually as they showed up in my textbooks (I never used Genki in class, but I've read it and I can confirm it's good) and after that mostly just learned vocabulary that happened to contain kanji. Later I did a couple of months of very basic kanji recognition in Anki just to cover a few of the rarer Joyo kanji plus to differentiate some of the similar-looking pairs of kanji that I could recognize in context but not necessarily in isolation (like 薄・簿).

I don't know exactly which kanji KanjiDamage covers, but if you want to do that I think 1700 is perfectly adequate to cover most of what you're going to see when you read. Some of those joyo kanji are really specific to certain contexts (璽　for 'imperial seal,' 朕　for 'imperial "we"') and you can read a ton of material without encountering them; others are just somewhat uncommon and you can pick them up as you need them.

I think focusing on speaking and listening at the beginning is a fine way to learn a language (but not so practical if you're not in classes; I think it's hard to get enough just from CDs); I think using a traditional textbook like Genki that lets you learn a small number of kanji gradually is a fine way to learn a language. And either way, you could add KanjiDamage or RTK later if you wanted to, once you had some actual vocabulary to contextualize it better.

You don't mean visual novels, do you?

killazys wrote:

Hm. I'm definitely planning on taking Japanese courses when the new semester comes. But other than that, are there any good textbooks out there? Having been a devout follower of AJATT until recently, I'm wary of them, but I hear that Genki is pretty good.

Genki is as good a textbook as any in my opinion. I've been self-learning with both those books, before I started studying the Kanji with RTK. If money is an issue for you, you had better buy Japanese for Everyone, dirt cheap but chok-full of content. It will only cost you around $25 to $28, the Audio on cassette-tapes go extra, if they are available at all. I had to rely on, let's just say, not so official sources to obtain the audio for this one. This book also has a Workbook and one for Kanji learning, I don't own them, so I can't comment on them. While Japanese for Everyone is more targeted at self-learners, Genki is for those who are taking classes, as there are many activities that are prepared for use in a classroom setting. But you can act out the dialogues on your own, or with a partner, if you can find one.

The story in Japanese for Everyone revolves around a couple who is going to stay in Japan for a year. So you are going to learn some practical Japanese as the story unfolds. In Genki the story revolves around メアリーさん、たけし、美智子、スーさん and some other exchange students.

Genki, where you have to buy everything extra, meaning the workbooks and the answer key, in case you are planning to study with those books on your own. This will cost you around $95.26 for book 1, Workbook $28,50, book 2 $61,99, Workbook 2 $31,99 and the Answer Key which is the cheapest for $22,99. I strongly advice you to get the Workbooks, because they are containing most of the exercises, such as conjugation practice, writing sentences, and so on. Of course the books do contain some exercises, but many of them are classroom and group exercises. On the pro side of Genki, you can find exercises Online since it is a widely used textbook series, as well as videos for each lesson. If that alone is worth the high price is up to you, though.

Another textbook series you could consider buying is Minna no Nihongo, Japanese from day 1, and as an extra translations in English and some other languages. Which you would have to buy seperately. It is also one of the more expensive textbook series, where you can easily dash out the better half of $300 for Reading, Listening, Kanji and all the other books 3A offers. I bought some of this series, good books, many grammar items, clear and concise explanations, and lots of vocabulary items.

Not much liked by some, centered around work and office, coming in a Kana and Romaji version is Japanese for Busy People, 3 books, and workbooks. You can get the whole series for maybe $60 coming with Audio. Just watch out to get the Revised Edition if you are planning to buy it.

Last but not least there is enough free materials out there to cover the basics, and opens you a way to the intermediate stage, which again could be covered by books, or more free material such as Anki decks for instance. Or supplement what you find Online with Dictionaries of Basic, Intermediate, Advanced series of books at the very least. A decent intermediate textbook is 飛躍 (spelled Hiyaku) Hiyaku: An Intermediate Japanese Course, and An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese to name two. But this is nothing you should worry about right now, just mentioning some that you might want to keep in mind for later on. Depending on the way you choose to learn, textbook, or courses, free material meaning decks such as Tae Kims Grammar Guide, or other books that I am currently not aware of.