Having come to Japan with the admittedly vague goal of one day being able to read Japanese literature, I still find it difficult to find relevant-seeming texts written at or near my Japanese ability level. Adding to that the often daunting chore of looking up all the unfamiliar kanji and vocabulary in the dictionary as I read, more often than not, I find that I am talking myself out of practicing reading the few interesting Japanese texts that I do find. One remedy I have found is reading online with the aid of Rikaichan (previously reviewed). But for longer trips away from the computer, or when I would just prefer not to stare at a monitor, one solution I’ve found is Kodansha’s Read Real Japanese Essays collection.

Flashcards are a fantastic device, particularly for those students who find themselves in the tactile/kinesthetic spectrum of learning styles. And the basic structure of flashcards—decks and stacks of linked information— is not only useful for learning, it is also a very efficient, mid-tech model of data organization, which finds expression in much more complex systems like the Internet

While this phrasebook’s 14 chapters and introduction offer a whole array of useful phrases organized thematically from “Chapter 1: What’s Up?” to “Chapter 8: Curses and Insults,” to “Chapter 13: Lovers’ Language,” it is often necessary to thumb through several pages of phrases you don’t need in order to find the one you are looking for. There is no index, and the chapter headings are fairly vague, such that, to find a fairly common phrase like すけべ (vulgar, lewd) you might have to search through the chapter on insults, and possibly “Chapter 4: Say What?” before finding it in the chapter on street fighting. (Yes, there is a chapter dedicated to street fighting.) With all of the above criticism in mind, however, I would strongly urge that the next phrasebook you purchase be from the Making Out In… series.

Sometimes you just have to trick yourself into studying Japanese. And if you check your email fairly compulsively (as many of us do), signing up for one of the Yookoso! Kanji-a-Day or Grammar-a-Day mailing lists could be just what you need to boost your study time.

In early May, CLAIR will be sending out the Course Guidebook for the 2010-2011 JET Programme Language Courses. Wondering whether to sign up for the course? Here’s Jonathan Fisher’s take on the quality of the 2009-2010 course.

With the growing popularity of handhelds like the iPhone with convenient interfaces, the proliferation of free translation and dictionary software applications, and ready Internet access almost everywhere, highly specialized technology like Canon’s line of electronic dictionaries seems likely to go the way of the laser disc sooner rather than later.

You know those notices you see in National AJET email updates advertising intensive Japanese courses offered by AMICA in Tokyo? For 30,000 yen? Who does that sort of thing anyway? That would be Fish. He gives us the lowdown.

If you love to study Japanese, yet hate having to carry around a bag full of study materials, you might want to think about trading all that in for an iPad.

I think it’s time to take a look at a well established website that is full of reviews like this one, as well as advice and a variety of other original methods for Japanese self-study: Khatzumoto’s blog, “All Japanese All the Time.”

Learning kanji is one of the most challenging aspects of gaining fluency in Japanese because a certain amount of kanji learning must be achieved through rote memorization. It is only through extended, focused contact with the kanji that they will become an intelligible, useful, and interesting part of your life in Japan. Indeed, once kanji are mastered to a certain extent, they can enlighten your study of other aspects of Japanese, especially vocabulary. It is with such an understanding of the central importance of kanji to Japanese language learning that James Heisig set out to craft a succinct method for memorizing the meaning and writing of all of the kanji. Volume 1 deals exclusively with those kanji known as joyo, or general-use kanji. Heisig’s method is more than impressive, it’s elegant. And it works.