Learning Japanese

Does this mean it actually has the Japanese written in kana ? All the ones I was looking at were written in romanji, which irritates me to no end...

It was Essential Kanji by P.G. Oneill. And I may be wrong on the price, since I bought it about 6 years ago.

Thought I'd throw in my 2Y here...

The program I literally learned (okay, AM learning) Japanese on is _Power Japanese_. It's released by BayWare and it's won a bunch of awards, and it's been a total lifesaver for me. It also follows a nice systematic way of learning grammar, the kana, etc., and is VERY simple to use.

I recommend it highly!

The problem with manga, as opposed to say, a novel, is that the language they use is often very colloquial and rather fragmented, as it mostly represents speech. Books on the other hand, usually use a lot of whole sentences, which for me makes things much easier to understand!

Having the pictures does help you to understand what the text is talking about, but there's always a temptation to just skip text that's hard (or requires too much dictionary lookup), because you can already see what's happening and want to find out what happens next quickly...

If you've got the money, get an electronic dictionary like a wordtank. They can be somewhat abbreviated compared to a paper dictionary, but in most cases lookup is *much* faster, which reduces the frustration level a lot. [For looking up kanji that you are totally unfamiliar with, a paper dictionary may still be faster though.]

Any recommendation ?

Yeah. I'd like to know where I can find a wordtank that can help me translate all my manga. I just got the newest Bastard manga (#19-21) and I'm just dying to find out what the hell they are actually saying in them. If you can point me in a direction on where to find a wordtank that's located on the net that would be most helpful.. iT NeVEr eNdS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't know what a wordtank is, but I can recommend an electronic J-E & E-J dictionary. I'll only recommend the one I have and use and love, because I have never tried any others. The one I have is from Seiko and is model # IC Dictionary TR-7700. This is about 4-5 years old, so I am assuming there are newer models. When I look up a word, I get all the possible definitions, related phrases, plus 'reibun' or 'example sentences' to see how to use it correctly with the right grammar, etc. I have seen others that have plug-in updates, etc. But for a good one, expect to pay around $300. I suggest you go to a store that carries them and try looking up words in Japanese and English and see which dictionary you like using. You can probably find them at Japanese book stores (ie Kinokuniya), larger office supply stores or electronics stores.

Well, for those who don't have the time to go and actually learn it, I know the perfect solution for you.....if you have the money that is. I found out that seiko has a whole slew of electronic language translators. The best one is this one called 'Quicktionary'. I first saw it on a plane coming back from the Army. It was in one of those airplane gadget catalogs ( man I love them things). What is it and does is that it is in the form of a slightly large pen and you hold it like a pen and scan it across the word ( one word at a time I think) and it will give you all the possible translations for it. It translated english, spanish, JAPANESE, german and some other languages too. It can translate different font types and writing styles too (although I don't think it will translate any really large fonts though) for now the machine cost about 230 dollars , but it worth your money. I know I'm gonna get one real soon. It's alot cheaper than the classes , believe me. iT NeVEr eNdS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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This does sound nice. But anyone looking for an electronic dictionary, remember that you get what you pay for. At $230 and lots of languages, it may not give you the detail needed for actually studying and learning Japanese. If you are serious about learning Japanese you have to know how to read kanji, not depend on a little gadget everytime you come to some kanji.

I use the Seiko I recommended, in conjuntction with flashcards. Any time I see a new kanji I want to learn, I write it down on a list (scratch paper usually). Then, when I get some time I sit down and look up the kanji in my trusty NTC's (see my first post, the root of this thread) and write the kanji on one side of the card and the definition plus all possible

I heard it is one of the best.....

It wasn't too bad when I was just starting out, but as I learned more advanced stuff, it just wasn't enough. It only has about 60% of the kanji used in Japan, the organization wasn't very good, and the information and definition of each kanji wasn't very detailed. But like I said, starting out this dictionary was ok. But after I got the NTC's, this Essent... looked like crap. The NTC has 3587 kanji, is organized very well (by classifier type and stroke number), and has a ton of information (each kanji has a list of compounds that the kanji is used in, making it easy to expand your vocab - learn 1 kanji and find 5, 10, 15, 40, 40, etc new words, expressions and uses. For the money this is way better than the Essential Kanji book. Just make sure you don't waste your money on something that won't take you through your studies as long as you need it to, nut just for a couple of years until you find out you want to know more than is a little dictionary.