Basic Japanese (Routledge Grammar Workbooks)

I'm an advanced Japanese speaker and professional translator, and I initially purchased this book to supplement grammatical explanations I was giving to friends to whom I was teaching Japanese. It was extremely helpful and I couldn't recommend it more.This is a grammar book for someone who is really interested in how the Japanese language works and loves the language. I think it would be the perfect supplement to a more general sort of catch-all textbook. Also, this isn't only a book for people just starting Japanese; this is a book that I, as an advanced speaker, found was a great way to revisit the fundamentals of the language and deepen my own understanding.It's true that the use of romaji can be a bit distracting until you train yourself to ignore it and focus on the kana/kanji (which is also provided). But I think this is a) an issue that most beginner books have for non-beginners who try to read them and b) a compromise made to make the book more useful to linguistics students who want to study Japanese grammar but who don't have time to learn the writing system, as well as beginners to are still very slow at reading kana and for whom trying to read the kana would detract from learning the grammar. I don't think that the book suffers from its use of romaji at all. The point of this book is not reading practice; it's grammar comprehension, and that's where it really excels.For an elementary grammar book, this text offers an excellent amount of detail on some topics that are glossed over (or never mentioned at all) in most beginning books. Some examples:-A very interesting treatment of the distinctions between not just concrete uses of kore/sore/are, but how to properly choose the right modifier for abstract references, as well.-An informative and comprehensive discussion of differences between using "no" and "koto" to nominalize verbs and adjectives-A better discussion of counting words than I've seen in any other beginner book-Very comprehensive and easy-to-understand explanations of differences between itadaku/morau/ageru/kureru/kudasaru-An entire section on the grammar of "apologizing and thanking," which is something any Japanese speaker is going to find themselves doing a lot :)Something that I really like about this grammar book is that it's dense and precise with information, but in a very readable way. It doesn't water down explanations, but it gets them *right* rather than a hand-wavy "sometimes this means this but don't worry about the times when it doesn't" sort of explanation.I couldn't recommend this book more as a way to get a more solid grasp of the fundamentals of the language. The intermediate book is great too:  Intermediate Japanese: A Grammar and Workbook (Grammar Workbooks)

The Routledge series of language book delivers again. Provides clear and concise explanations for all language points without introducing modern conversational elements, great book for studying the fundamentals.

I love everything by Shoko Hamano. She (and her co-author) writes clearly without complex linguistic explanations, making the text understandable and approachable. The exercises in the back of each chapter are nice, too. The text isn't exhaustive, but the coverage is germane to advanced beginners with a bit of kanji knowledge. I will be getting her intermediate book as soon as I have finished this one.

too expensive, too much grammar based. i want more conversational skills.my friend who teaches Japanese said it is poorly written -- get another book.

Great product at a great price.

I am teaching myself Japanese. I have many books to help me on this journey. As an adult learner who likes the big grammatical picture, this is my favorite book. It is the best organized book that I have found. I like information in tabular form. This book is filled with tables. When learning grammar, I want explanations in English, not kana primarily; you may say this is a crutch, but I think it is natural that one would like grammar explanations in your strongest language. This book is not a Japanese reader, it also is not filled with practice drills - but along with romaji it does have kanji/kana for all of their examples and brief very useful exercises at the end of each chapter. In summary, great beginning grammar book, the best organization I have found, filled with clear explanations & great tables!

I just received this item as a gift, and although I haven't yet had time to go over it in detail, I did notice an important aspect of it that the description doesn't mention: romanization. If this were just at the beginning, I wouldn't be commenting on it, but from start to finish, this book is full of it. I bought a copy of  Basic Korean: A Grammar and Workbook (Grammar Workbooks)  for my brother, which did not have romanization included, so this came as a surprise to me.While it does appear to cover a large amount of material and, most importantly for me, contains exercises, the use of romanization is distracting. Skimming through it, I've tried to focus just on the hiragana, katakana, and kanji, but the romanization is between the original text and the translation so this is almost impossible. This isn't enough for me to want to return the book, but it is enough for me to leave a review for anyone else considering buying the book.I'm also using and would highly recommend  Japanese the Manga Way: An Illustrated Guide to Grammar and Structure . Although it also includes romanization, but it does it in a way that is easy to ignore - the original manga strips are included and it's easy to cover the separate sections including the romanization when you want to review.