JapanNewbie

Learn with Real Japanese

Posted on 25. Jun, 2008 @ 6:16 pm by harvey in Books, Language

Have you ever felt that no matter how many example sentences you read from your Japanese textbook, that when you try to read Japanese websites, newspapers, or magazines, it seems like they’re using a completely different language?

Well, this is a problem that most people who study Japanese will run into at some point, and it can only really be resolved by including some “real” Japanese material into your study plan in addition to textbooks.

For those people looking to make the leap but need a little more guidance than just accessing the editorial section of Yomiuri Shimbun and diving right in, there is the Read Real Japanese series of textbooks.

These textbooks use real Japanese short stories from famous authors such as Murakami Haruki and Yoshimoto Banana, and supplement them with tons of notes explaining what is going on.

This stuff is for intermediate students who have a good grasp on basic Japanese sentence structure. To be sure that this series is the right thing for you, click on the cover image on The Japan Shop title page to see some scanned images of the inside of the textbook. I would recommend this series to people who have studied Japanese for at least a couple of years and are willing to slog through some real reading with dictionary at hand!

がんばれ!

- Harvey