donniesf
What is a good book (beginner/intermediate) for people learning Japanese. like an actual book that a person that is more on the intermediate side could finish and get the jist of what the book was about.
Jun 23, 2010 5:19 AM
Comments · 3

Oh, sorry. You meant something for reading, right?

You might want to take a look at this list:
http://www.kumon.ne.jp/dokusho/pdf/suisen.pdf

These are books recommended by くもん for Japanese students. 5A-2A is Kidgarden level, A is 1st year level, B is 2nd year level and so on. But don't get fooled by the level, even children books all written in hiragana have lots of vocabulary most Japanese as foreigner language don't cover. You could try first some at A level, and if you find it too hard, try easier books at 2A or so.

June 22, 2011

As an intermediate level textbook, I recommend you "文化中級日本語" ("Bunka Chuukyuu Nihongo"). It's a little bit expensive and all in Japanese, but recordings are great and it covers a lot of vocabulary/grammar patterns.

If you are like half-way to Intermediate level, there some 初中級 level books like "日本語中級J301 ―基礎から中級へ―", which are meant to cover gaps in-between the two levels, and advance from there to an intermediate level. It also covers a good amount of Intermediate stuff, and if I'm not mistaken, there's an edition with English translations.

June 22, 2011
I would say Japanese manga might be a good place to start since a lot of them also provide small furigana next to the kanji and pictures :). You can get scanlations easily online just search "<name of manga> raw scanlations."

Otherwise, start with children's books.

I don't have any specific examples as I am not advanced enough to even attempt to read Japanese novels XP. 
July 4, 2010