Living Language's "Ultimate Japanese: Basic-Intermediat
If anyone is looking for a good book to learn japanese I suggest you take a look at Living Language's "Ultimate Japanese: Basic-Intermediate" as well as Living Language's English-japanese Japanese-English dictionary.
Ultimate japanese is the equivalent of a 2 year college course in Japanese, and will get you well founded(from what I've seen so far) in Grammar, the Kana, as well as get you started on the Kanji(you learn 147 in the book).
Each chapter has a long list of vocabulary, a dialogue, and excersises as well as the manditory lesson itself ;) some chapters have a paragraph or more, written in kana and kanji(only what youve been taught to thatb point) for reading practice!
Anyways, I've had this book for a long time, and out of all of my language books, it seems to be the friendliest... although, I *did* just begin actually learning from it, and am not following the course as it is layed out(im focusing on memorizing the kana[hiragana and katakana] and being able to write them and recognize them,; before I begin anything but the basic grammar and vocabulary.)
Good luck!
--Plastic-Saint
(( Lets show those Mandarin Chinese people whos who...I mean, c'mon we have giant robots, hot cartoon chics, and the best religion on the entire planet(Shinto)!! ^_^ ))
