If I managed to learn the Kana alphabets would this be a good book:

"Japanese for Busy People: Kana edition"

I found it a a local bookstore. If I managed to learn all the letters in Hiragana and Katakana would it be a good book to use. It has exercises at the end of each chapter and everything Japanese Phrase is written in Hiragana or Katakana. It is split into situations, and the general text is english.

However there is no Kanji, that I can find, it'sn mostly speaking. Would this get me into bad reading/writing habits?

It should be quite good, however you cannot work from one source alone, I use several sources, internet, books, CD's. So if you need to revise the katakana and hiragana then use it, if you don't need to revise them, I would recomend Kanji de manga, which teaches kanji using comic strips.

When I've learned the Kanas I'll use that book to learn useful phrases, and while I do that I'll use Kanji de Manga to learn Kanji. Eventually I'll be able to combine the two, and read and write better sentences. Also, I'll have picked up more vocab. I've sent an e-mail asking about adding a Module in Japanese to my Uni course too, so I'll be learning some of everything. ^_^

No, I don't recommend that book, whatsoever... I know that you are just starting to learn Japanese so I'll tell you as I've told other people what I think is the best way to go about this...

Learn hiragana completely, the book I recommend for this (and katakana) is Remembering the Kana. You'll learn katakana as well, but I feel that you can have a looser grasp of that than is needed for hiragana....

After that chose a situational, staged course material that very quickly introduces the hiragana you've already learned, and ramps up to kanji...

Right now my best recommendations for current literature are for either Minna no Nihongo, or Genki.

I get a lot more use out of Jim Breen's WWWJDIC than I do an actual dictionary at the moment, you really shouldn't concern yourself with a kanji dictionary until you've mastered a good 500 kanji...

In any respect The Kanji Learner's Dictionary comes highly recommended...

Aside from that there are countless amount of books on grammatical points in Japanese, particles, verbs, adjectives, basic grammar... Complex sentence structure, et cetera... A lot of the books you find at your local bookstore will be dross, meant to sell people the "idea of learning Japanese" more than teach them Japanese... read around the forums and you'll find various peoples discussions on books.

If you have a specific question on a certain subject of Japanese grammar, I could recommend a book.

I also highly recommend the following...

Learn Japanese Online with Podcasts - JapanesePod101
http://www.mangajin.com/

& the following books from the magazine, or the magazine's translation editor...

Basic Japanese through Comics I
Basic Japanese through Comics II
Japanese the manga Way

...don't let the subject matter fool you. Manga is an excellent way to learn natural colloquial Japanese, and on top of that, it makes learning fun... which should be important if your going to commit time to learning a language.

"imaginative memory" dosn't that just mean mnemonics?
If so there stuff like that which I use, because I am a beginner aswell, online

Robster said:

"imaginative memory" dosn't that just mean mnemonics?
If so there stuff like that which I use, because I am a beginner aswell, online

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For many reasons, I don't recommend using mnemonics, it's just another layer between yourself and what you are trying to learn--- It's not how people naturally learn a language.

Where possible, it's good to find a system and then understand that system--- but initially this may be difficult to see the 'big picture', sometimes however, your best bet is simply memorization, until you can grasp how all the pieces interconnect...

An example of mneumonics gone too far was examples shown on Japanese Tv (which the Japanese found rather comical) of mnnemonic devices used to memorize hiragana, which took a relatively easy memorization and turned it into a muddled obfuscation.

yukio_michael said:

I don't recommend using mnemonics, ...
An example of mneumonics gone too far was examples shown on Japanese Tv (which the Japanese found rather comical) of mnnemonic devices used to memorize hiragana, which took a relatively easy memorization and turned it into a muddled obfuscation.

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Didn't you just recommend Remembering the Kana by James Heisig 3 posts ago? That book uses mnemonics, and "imaginative memory" is Heisig's central theme. I agree that mnemonics are generally not good for learning vocabulary, but they are well-suited for learning to write in Japanese when they are systematized.

Remembering the Kanji, volume 1 by the same author as above, is the only book I recommend for learning kanji. IMHO anything else is a waste of time.

A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters by Henshall is much better than Remembering the Kanji. It has mneumonics for almost 2000 kanji, and is graded in the order that Japanese themselves learn. I remember going through Remembering the Kanji and having to learn kanji like 'gaul bladder' as one of the first ones.

I strongly disagree.

http://www.kanjiclinic.com/reviewhenshall.htm

From Japanese Kanji Learning - Short-Cuts to Rapid Mastery (Part 1)

In my opinion (and the reason I personally chose Heisig over Henshall for my own study), the academic strength of Henshall's analysis is its biggest weakness as a memorization tool: If you have an excellent memory, or if you already know the kanji anyway and are interested in their etymological roots, then Henshall will give you a depth of knowledge that will impress even your native speaker Japanese friends. However, if you do not have an almost-photographic memory, and mastering kanji in a sensible time period is your priority, you will probably find that this detailed and obscure analysis does not provide the compelling memory "hook" that Heisig's method does.

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From RTK introduction

So fascinating is this story that many have encouraged the study of etymology as a way to remember the kanji. Unfortunately, the student quickly learns the many disadvantages of such an approach. As charming as it is to see the ancient drawing of a woman etched behind its respective kanji, or to discover the rudimentary form of a hand or a tree or a house, when the character itself is removed, the clear visual memory of the familiar object is precious little help for recalling how to write it. Proper etymological studies are most helpful after one has learned the general-use kanji. Before that, they only add to one's memory problems. We need a still more radical departure from visual memory.
...
More often than not, the order in which Japan's Ministry of Education has determined children should learn the kanji from primary through middle school, is the main guide. Obviously, learning the writing is far more important than being certified to have passed some course or other. And just as obviously, one needs to know all the general-use kanji for them to be of any use for the literate adult. When it comes to reading basic materials, such as newspapers, it is little consolation to know half or even three-quarters of them. The crucial question for pedagogy, therefore, is not what is the best way to qualify at some intermediate level of proficiency, but simply how to learn all the kanji in the most efficient and reliable manner possible. For this, the traditional ﾂ"levelsﾂ" of kanji proficiency are simply irrelevant. The answer, I am convinced, lies in self-study, following an order based on learning all the kanji.

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These are just a few reasons why Heisig is superior.

JimmySeal said:

Didn't you just recommend Remembering the Kana by James Heisig 3 posts ago? That book uses mnemonics, and "imaginative memory" is Heisig's central theme.

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I don't necessarily think that books that give you mnemonic devices are bad books in themselves, I like books that go beyond the basic, here are the characters, memorize them... I do like understanding that idea of a radical or a character being a simplified pictograph of something more concrete--- but I don't use it to remember the character. I think Remembering the Kana gives you a good idea of how the kana are formed, and that goes a long way to understanding the writing system.

Bucko said:

A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters by Henshall is much better than Remembering the Kanji.

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I own this book, and I found it interesting but not very usefull... I mean, I did in fact skip over the mnemonic devices, but found the history of each character gave me a bit of intimacy with it beyond simple memorization... I think its a little bit too much of a book full of characters and examples, and not as engaging... Of all the books we've spoken about this one specifically has menmonics... phrases that assist you in understanding what a character particularly means... I didn't see that in the books I mentioned specifically...

I'll have to take a better look at Remembering the Kanji by Heisig. I think you can ignore mnemonics and still learn from a good book.

yukio_michael said:

I'll have to take a better look at Remembering the Kanji by Heisig. I think you can ignore mnemonics and still learn from a good book.

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Plenty of people (including most of the Japanese population) are evidence that you can learn kanji without mnemonics, but going the non-mnemonic route requires a lot more time and frustration, and ends in a much less stable end result. Essentially, there is no benefit to learning without mnemonics. Those who do will only have a shakier grasp of the characters.

Please do check out the book (again). It only makes sense if you read through the whole introduction and the Note to the 4th Edition.

Here ya go:
RTK PDF (prefaces and first section of the book)

The only problem I have found is that I cannot remember a character off the top of my head, however I can almost always put a Kana to a romanji or vice-versa, is this he mnenomics or just me ?

For learning Kana, I suggest East Kana Workbook. When I bought it, I already knew Hiragana, but I hardly knew any Katakana. It teaches the stroke order for each character and let you write it many time below where it sows you how. Than, it has 5 MILLION exercises to practice. I mastered the Hiragana side (I didn't know a few Hiragana, such as "ne", "mu", and "fu), and I completely master Katakana in two days. It helped me A LOT! I really suggest this.

As for learning Japanese, I would suggest Japanese in Mangaland. I have Japanese in Mangaland, Japanese in Mangaland 2, and Japanese in Mangaland Workbook 1. I will soon get Japanese in Mangaland 3, and when they come out in English, I will but the workbooks for the other two books. When you finish the 3rd bok, you should be up to a intermidiate level in Japanese. After that, I'll try to find some book to help me become advanced! I hope this help you.

-Tommy

Where can I get the East Kana Workbook in england?

JimmySeal said:

Plenty of people (including most of the Japanese population) are evidence that you can learn kanji without mnemonics, but going the non-mnemonic route requires a lot more time and frustration, and ends in a much less stable end result.

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Thanks for the link, and perhaps our ideas of mnemonic devices are different... A good example of a book that uses verbal mnemonics is the aforementioned A guide to remembering Japanese Characters which uses the sort "Remember, finger pointing to the sky is covered by clouds..." type of mnemonic, rather than the association of one piece of information to help you understand another...

I do think that I was mistaken however... I've found that I've already bookmarked Remembering the Kanji, and enjoy it's presentation... what I'm trying to avoid is what is prevalent in AGTRJC (above) which contains actual verbal mnemonics... like "Every good boy does fine..." except more obtuse...

Recommended by it on Amazon is Kanji Pictograph, which is something I don't think I could recommend either... it's good to understand WHY a kanji is written as it is, but I don't think it's good to to look at a kanji and see strictly an ideograph... That's like teaching kanji from ancient times...

I see. Then it looks like we're on the same page. I've never seen AGTRJC, but from what I've heard about it, it seems that the mnemonics are not integrated into a coherent system (the way RTK is), but instead are 2000 disconnected phrases that stick too closely to the original etymologies without being altogether faithful to them.

I also agree that Kanji Pict-O-Graphix isn't worth the paper it's printed on. It might be interesting to look at (albeit not as study material) if so many of the pictures weren't so disturbing.