The Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Dictionary by Jack Halpernis the best kanji dictionary ever written. You can look up kanji in 5 different ways and there are 3 different indexes, so even if you’re a complete beginner you can quickly find the kanji you want.

The Kanji Learner’s Dictionary has a special visual look-up method called SKIP, the System of Kanji Indexing by Patterns. SKIP lets you find a kanji very quickly by using the shape of the kanji.

So many useful kanji are included, and there’s loads of information about each kanji so you can use the book as a way to study kanji, not just as a way to look up kanji when you are reading a Japanese book or manga or magazine.

Every kanji and kanji compound is shown in a variety of examples which means it’s much easier to understand what the kanji really means and how it’s used in real Japanese.

You can get the Kanji Learner’s Dictionary from Amazon and save $13.58!

The Handbook of Japanese Adjectives And Adverbsby Taeko Kamiya is a comprehensive guide on how to use adjectives and adverbs in Japanese. Beginners of Japanese usually only know a handful of adjectives and a couple of adverbs, so by concentrating on these areas it’s possible to make your Japanese sound far more natural.

Kamiya has included hundreds of common Japanese adjectives and adverbs, along with the appropriate sentence patterns required to use them naturally.

Japanese Adjectives And Adverbs is divided into six parts:

• Introduction to adjectives
• Conjugation of adjectives
• Usage of adjectives
• Introduction to adverbs
• Usage of adverbs
• Appendixes

The different kinds of adjectives and their conjugations are clearly explained as are all the uses of Japanese adjectives, some of which are very different to the ways in which English adjectives are used.

The different uses of Japanese adjectives are described in logical groupings:

• Japanese adverbs expressing time
• Japanese adverbs expressing quantity
• Japanese adverbs expressing degree
• Japanese adverbs expressing circumstance
• Japanese adverbs expressing sounds
• Japanese adverbs used with negatives
• Japanese adverbs that have differing positive and negative meanings
• Japanese adverbs used for questions
• Japanese adverbs used for conditionals
• Japanese adverbs expressing desire, conjecture or resemblance

The entries are given in kanji/kana with romanji and the English translation. There are plenty of examples and exercises so it’s a great self-study book.

The handbook is only $25 but you can get it from Amazon for just $18.25, saving you 27% ($6.75)!

Kodansha’s Furigana Japanese Dictionaryis a beginner’s dictionary in which words are given in kana, and English. The kanji (Chinese characters) are included in each definition, with the furigana. What is furigana? It’s the small text written below a kanji that explains how to pronounce the kanji.

For beginners, the best thing about the Furigana Japanese Dictionary is that its entries contain so many examples and phrases. This makes it easy to not only understand the meaning of a word but to also be able to use it.

One feature I particularly like is the detailed levels of usage: Colloquial, Crude, Formal, Honorific, Humble, and Semi-Formal. This is very important in Japan as levels of formality in Japanese are so different.

At 717 pages you obviously won’t be slipping Kodansha’s Furigana Japanese Dictionary into your pocket but it is a excellent desk reference and would be valuable to any beginner or intermediate-level student of Japanese. The dictionary is 60 dollars but you can get it from Amazon for just $31.49 saving you $28.51!

How to Sound Intelligent in Japaneseis a vocabulary textbook aimed at intermediate students who are tired of talking about shopping, hobbies and food.

The book is divided into seven topic areas:

1. Ideas and Theories.
2. Philosophy and Religion
3. Politics and government.
4. The fine arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences.
5. Science and Technology.
6. Law and Justice.
7. Business and Economics.

Each topic starts with a short introduction and contains vocabulary lists written in kanji, romanji and English. Many examples are given but there are no exercises. There is a single index which lists vocabulary in English and romanji. The price is $16 but you can save 35%($5.60) with Amazon

Basic Japanese Sentence Patterns is divided into two parts. The first part contains 17 patterns for noun and adjective sentences. Part two covers 34 patterns for verb sentences.

By studying the 50 sentence patterns, you will cover all the grammar required for levels N5 and N4 of the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test)

A verb conjugation chart, an adjective inflection chart and an index make Basic Japanese Sentence Patterns a valuable reference book, as well as a great Japanese textbook.

If you are teaching Japanese, Basic Japanese Sentence Patterns could be used as a core syllabus.
The price is $22.00 but you can get it from Amazon for just $14.74, saving you 33%($7.26)!

13 Secrets for Speaking Fluent Japanese by Giles Murray explores 13 ways of making your Japanese study more interesting and enjoyable.

The 13 secrets that Murray provides are:

1. Using abbreviations.
2. Learning how to explain words you don’t know.
3. Different readings for the numbers 1-10.
4. Understanding numbers over 10,000.
5. Using If… then statements.
6. Using synonyms.
7. Getting an Japanese girlfriend or boyfriend.
8.  Using adverbs.
9. Children’s word games.
10. Using prefixes and suffixes.
11. Learning from jokes and puns.
12. Using loanwords and Japlish.
13. Learning from manga.

There’s also an appendix on memorizing vocabulary using the association technique. At just $17.00, Murray’s book is a bargin. You can get it even cheaper from Amazon, for $11.05, saving you 35%($5.95)

Building Word Power In Japanese by Timothy Vanceis a guide to using kanji prefixes and kanji suffixes. It was originally part of Kodansha International’s “Power Japanese” series.

The key concept of Building Word Power In Japaneseis that you can add a kanji prefix or a kanji suffix to a Japanese word that you already know in order to create a new word. By memorizing a handful of prefixes and suffixes you can quickly build a massive vocabulary.

Here’s a simple example from the back cover: by learning the prefix “cho-”, meaning super, you can immediately use “cho-omoshiroi”(super interesting), “cho-kantan”(super easy) and “cho-baka”(super stupid).

The book usually costs $15.00 which is great value. With Amazon you save 32% and get it for just $10.20!

 
Making Sense of Japanese by Jay Rubinis a book of essays from Kodansha International that help you to understand how the Japanese language works. The subtitle of Making Sense of Japanese is “What the Textbooks Don’t Tell You”; it is full of detailed explanations of tricky grammar points and also includes examples that illustrate how to avoid common errors when translating to-and-from Japanese.

Jay Rubin is well known for translating Haruki Murakami’s many best-selling novels into English but he’s also professor of Japanese literature at Harvard University. Lots of the essays in Making Sense of Japanesecover topics that his students at Harvard have found particularly difficult such as understanding the difference between the particles “wa” and “ga”.

The retail price of Making Sense of Japanese is $16.00. Get it from Amazon for just $10.88 and save 40%!

All About Particles by Naoko Chino is a reference book for Japanese function words such as “wa”, “ga”, “demo” and “ni”. Within its 149 pages you will find plenty of examples and Japanese sentence patterns that will help you to use Japanese particles accurately and naturally. The examples and Japanese sentence patterns are written in romanji as well as kanji/kana.

The particles in All About Particlesare not in alphabetical order or even a-i-u-e-o order. Instead, they are given in the order of frequency so for example, the first particle discussed is “wa”, followed by “ga” then “mo” etc. The book covers 69 particles and has a dedicated section on particles used to end sentences.

All About Particles is $16.00. You can save $5.12 and get it from Amazon for $10.88.

Read Japanese Todayexplains the origins of the kanji, which helps you to remember them and also helps you to read kanji that you haven’t seen before. It is easy and fun to read because the book shows how many common kanji characters evolved from pictures.

A hiragana table and a katakana table are included, as is a table summarizing the 400 kanji presented in the book, in edition to the index.

At $19.95 it’s probably the best value book on kanji. You can get it

from Amazon for just $13.97!