Hello,
Really dumb question.
a friend of mine just gave me two books
but im really confused on how to use them.
Has anyone used them and if so could you please guide on what to do.
Thanks !
I think, after not getting confused because the instructions in the first book are presented in Chinese and Vietnamese (as well as English), …you buy yourself a kanji practice notebook (the ones with pages that look like graph paper), and you work through writing all the kanji the book lists for N5 as many times as the book suggests, taking note of stroke order (if that’s what you want to do!).
The second book looks made for someone who already understands Japanese and is about how to pass N5. I find it so odd that the exposition in the book describing how to use it is in Japanese, however if your studying for N5 you normally wouldn’t be at that level of Japanese yet!
I just got ‘Nihongo so matome N5’ to start my studies, at least it’s key instructions are in English (As well as Vietnamese ¯_(ツ)_/¯)
Anyway, that’s just my opinion. I may be wrong. 
Those appear to be JLPT prep books. The JLPT is the official standardized test for measuring Japanese ability, with N5 being the lowest level. These books are meant to help you review in preparation for the exam. Some people like to treat JLPT prep books like textbooks and use them as their main study material, but personally I think this is not a great idea, especially at the beginner level. Basically because these books are meant for review their explanations are pretty sparse and they don’t have too many practice exercises. I would recommend instead starting with a textbook series (Genki being the most popular) and then use these books to review later
Thank you for this reply. I hadn’t realized that these were review books, but after 2 days in the one I mentioned, I’ve realized it’s not a primary study resource. I need to make a decision on which textbook to buy.
Yeah it can be confusing since there are wayyy more exam prep books in the market than there are actual Japanese textbooks. As a general rule, anything with “JLPT” or “N#” in the title is probably a test prep book. Textbooks tend to use “beginner” “intermediate” “advanced” language when talking about language level
Bear in mind that most of these books are designed for an international audience – although many readers may know English, a lot will not, or won’t know it too well. Some books provide multi-language text, and a few (eg Minna no Nihongo) are sold in enough numbers to have companion explanation books in several languages, but “everything in Japanese” isn’t uncommon. (Language school classes where the whole class is taught exclusively in Japanese are also not uncommon.)
There’s also the Japanese speaking teacher selecting books for students" reader; sometimes an introductory page or two is clearly aimed at them.
The website for that N5 book has a PDF with the intro text (under the はじめに link), so I had a look at it. It does give the text in English, but if you don’t speak English I think an N5 learner with a dictionary (or a learner with a slightly more advanced friend) can probably make a stab at it assuming they’ve already done some study via a textbook and are using this as revision/exam prep. They’re deliberately using full furigana and simple Japanese (for instance the English text says “numerous practice problems” but the Japanese uses たくさんあります rather than a word at the same kind of formality level as ‘numerous’).