Hello from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada!

Konnichiwa!/Ohayou gozaimasu!/Komban wa! Watashi no namae wa, Greg Komarniski desu (user name: skanthan)

I live in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and am very interested in learning about the countries, cultures, languages and religions of the Far East (South Asia, South East Asia and East Asia). I have learned some Japanese (Would like to learn more so that I can carry on a conversation in Japanese), I can read hiragana and katakana as well as a few kanji, can read more if I have the small furigana which are placed to the right of the kanji in vertical writing and above the kanji in horizontal writing.

I had found this forum when i was looking for some Japanese forums. I would like to get a hold of a book that teaches kanji. Not the kanji dictionary, but a lesson book that clearly shows how to use kanji and what pronunciation to use in different sentences and also some furigana books. I hope someone can help me out.

Doumo arigatou!

Hi Greg, welcome to the forum!

Just browse through the language section, most kanji-related questions have already been asked and possibly answered. Here's a few for a starter:

JREF Kanji search

Japanese Language Learning Resource List

When to start learning Kanji? +stroke order advice

Kanji Odyssey might suit you. Example of the format. On the off-chance that you own a Nintendo DS of some sort, there is some good software for kanji learning there (aimed at native speakers though).

If by "furigana books" you mean fiction etc. with loads of furigana on, then some light novels/manga will have a lot of furigana but it varies. For things like that best to start just looking at what's freely available (i.e. j-comi which is ad-supported and legit for older manga/4コミ/light novels).

Another option is to get one of the bilingual books like "Breaking into Japanese Literature".

Konnichi wa, Nekojita san!

I checked out the Kanji Odyssey webpage and I found it seemed like it would be helpful for me. As for the furigana books, I have read a few books which have lots of furigana in them and found those quite helpful for me in reading kanji. At the same time, i have found some furigana books will not have furigana for all of the kanji in them and when I stumble on kanji which do not have the furigana helps attached to them, I am at a loss as to what that kanji says!

Also, I have seen some Japanese learning books which start teaching kanji after the first few lessins and will introduce new kanji every lesson or every other lesson there after.

Back in 1990-1991, I had a teacher who was of Japanese descent and she taught me some Japanese. Unfortunately, in the summer of 1991, she moved away and after that, I was all alone in learning Japanese as there was no one else available to teach me. I did try learning it by myself, but due to the large amount of grammar, honorifics, homophones and the large amount of Kanji one is required to learn and not having a teacher or anyone to practice with or all the proper resources, I just stopped. I was living in a small town outside of Edmonton at that time.

There are various ways to deal with unknown kanji. Try learning to use a multi-radical kanji search like the WWWJDIC . This is probably one of the easiest methods as you don't have to recognise which is the dictionary radical.

For many compounds, you can also make a guess at the on-reading by using phonetic components - i.e. 長 is read ちょう and so are 張・帳・脹. With a computer with the Japanese IME, I often just check by typing in what I think the reading is into a search bar and seeing if it converts properly.

Ok, I will try that. Doumo arigatou gozaimasu!