Japanese language study - help?

[winter]

A plea for help for the large portion of the flist who have studied Japanese at one point or another:

One of the things I'd like to tackle this year is Japanese, because it's ridiculous that it's been over a decade since I acquired my first words of it, with two years of quasi-formal study of it thrown in, and yet my grasp of grammar is nil, some of the simplest words trip me, and let's not talk about my kanji knowledge, plzkthx. (On the other hand, my pronunciation's decent, understanding's getting better, and I am somehow getting some grasp on appropriate levels of keigo.)

I'd like to start by self-study, with textbooks. Can anyone recommend textbooks for the following?

- General textbook with exercises and lessons to work through
- Grammar, from beginner to intermediate, with a focus on how people actually speak
- Kanji (I'm eyeing Remembering the Kanji, but would it be better to buy volumes 1 and 2 at the same time, or will 1 suffice for now?)

Comments

[chenka.livejournal.com]

Minna no Nihongo is a great method to get you started. By the end of the second book you will have a firm grasp of the grammar and if you are serious about studying the words your vocabulary will also be great :)
Personally for vocabulary however I recommed you use Anki, a flashcard program. It would probably be ideal to find lists of JLPT vocabulary, starting at level 5 (you'll be done with that in no time), going to level 4 etc. You can download them through the program or online somewhere. If you use Anki for 10-15 minutes a day you'll get really far really quick, trust me.

Do not buy Remembering the Kanji. I know a lot of people swear by it but I think it's a nonsense method and a waste of money. The question is what you want to achieve. Do you want to be able to read and recognise kanji? Or also write them?
If you also want to write them, I had a great method for learning kanji that made sense, but unfortunately I can't find it for sale anymore. If you'd like to give it a try anyway, it's called Kanji Master. Point is, frankly it's still tedious to study kanji. But with this book, the kanji are sorted by theme and radical, and it makes a lot of sense. It's the first method I ever used that made me actually remember kanji. (But you still have to sit down every day and repeat repeat repeat).
If you just want to recognise kanji, I recommend you just use Anki and learn kanji by studying words/compounds.

Hope this helps a little! If you have any questions, do let me know :) I'm very enthusiastic about this topic.

[winter]

I'm afraid I hate flashcards - they never worked for me as a study method. I tend to pick up language by context + reading/writing a lot. That's why I think a formal textbook may be of the most help at this level.

And thanks for the warning on Remembering the Kanji. It does look very confusing re: separate books for meanings and pronunciation (WTH?) and not using the established system of radicals that I'm already fairly proficient with via looking things up in a kanji dictionary.