A reccomendation for those who want to Learn Japanese
 

For those of you wanting to do some Japanese self study I would recommend a set of 2 books put out by the Japan Times one of Japans leading English language newspapers called Genki, they are set up well in my opinion and are in good English, they also have writing lessons as well as reading and as the lessons progress kanji from your writing lessons are slowly included. In addition its also widely used by many Japanese language teaching schools in Japan. Please note I do not work for them nor do I make anything from mentioning this.

link,

Genki Online

Thank you for this link. I'm working on learning Japanese all on my own.

Your timing is wonderful.
Thanks!

These are the textbooks that I used to start learning Japanese myself. I would definitely recommend them. Keep in mind that this is elementary Japanese, so GENKI will only lay down the foundations for you to build the rest of Japanese on top of it. When you finish GENKI II, you should be at a JLPT 3 level, which is far from fluency. The Japan Times has also put out some intermediate level books that look very helpful. They are a bit pricey, so I have not managed to get my hands on them quite yet.

What level is considered fluent?

JLPT 1

4 - beginner
3 - intermediate
2 - advanced
1 - fluent

More about it here.

i do want to learn japanese but i dont know where to start could you help me:ywave:

Thank you, very much. :)

haha that was kinda the whole point of the thread. Yes Genki, won't get you to fluency but after 1 and 2 you can get around pretty well.

do you think this would be a good textbook to sort of couple with pimsleur?
I'm gonna try to rent or borrow pimsleur for japanese, cause there's no way I'm gonna buy it (the price is insane!).
I thought that I'd get genki 1 and pimsleur 1, and then go through both of them, getting the second textbook and second/third pimsleur set as I go. Figured that would get me to where I could figure where to go from there.
Any other recommendations, while I'm opening my wallet?

EDIT: I'm learning the hiragana, but other than that, I'm completely new to the language other than what I've heard from anime/j-music.

EDIT: and also, would you recommend getting the genki workbook, answer key, and/or cd? Sorry to ask so many questions. I'm really new to all this.

What about like Japanese for Rosetta Stone? is that any good?

I am not a big fan of things like Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur (and others). If anyone is really, truly serious about learning Japanese, they should seek out a class or a tutor. A class or tutor can be expensive, maybe a little bit more than those Pimsleur sets, but you get so, so much more out of being in a class or with a tutor who knows the language.

But, I will say that I used the Genki books a few years back when I first started learning Japanese. They're pretty good, and teach some standard, practical Japanese. I used it with a class, so your results may vary if you use the book by yourself, but you should be able to learn from them if you're diligent. I would definitely recommend getting the workbook.

ok hatredcopter what about passport to 35 languages for pc i find it better ten books.

Thank you for the advise. I guess I'll get the workbooks too. Is it worth it to get the answer keys and cds?
As for the classes.. basically, to start out, I'm going to do self study, if only to save money. I'm taking this year off of school (I graduate from high school in like 2 weeks), but once I go to college, I plan to take japanese classes there. My brother's best friend is taking those classes at the college I plan to attend (he's going into japanese 301) and he says that they're good. But until then I think I'm just going to do self study, and maybe get some help from my brother's friend. I guess we'll see how it goes.