Hello, everyone. I am new here. This also seems to be the only active forum I could find besides reddit. I have been researching all week and seeing what might be good resources for me to pick up Japanese again. There’s a tour being planned that will go to Japan in November so hopefully I can be decent by then!
Background: I learned katakana and hiragana fairly easily on my own 22 years ago so I am expert at that. It’s really fun sounding things out in katakana and figuring out what the word is since my native language is English so I will usually recognise it. I took 2 years of Japanese 20 years ago with a crummy textbook called Nakama, so I didn’t learn much and forgot a lot, but I still remember some N5 Kanji and a little grammar. Surely wouldn’t be able to pass N5.
Hopefully this isn’t blasphemous to say on these forums (haha) but after researching the Kodansha Kanji course and trying out Wanikani, I think I might settle with cracking open my Heisig books from 10 years ago (got up to 500 but I forgot just about all of it by now). I ordered over 3000 flashcards off amazon! I’ve tried anki but I the reviews get overwhelming, and you are looking at a screen the whole time. Writing might not help a ton but it has to help some since it is another way to practice Japanese, especially kanji, even if I don’t end up writing much.
When (hopefully) I finish that, I could not decide on where to go next. I want to self-study, and since I have a masters in math and I am currently studying Latin from Collins (which is heavy on grammar), I think I am more than capable to handle a very challenging textbook. Like, if a textbook says that の is the genitive particle I’ll like that a lot haha. Since Minna no Nihongo is considered tougher than Genki and there’s a book with translation and lots of exercises I was leaning towards that. Without the translation book I would have compared it to Lingua Latina and passed on it! However there are other resources I am curious about.
Tobira (the old intermediate one) or another intermediate book. If it jumps into intermediate Japanese or has too much classroom type stuff or has too much fluff or very boring dialogues, then I won’t. However if it is challenging and just does the N5 stuff at an accelerated rate, then maybe.
Dictionaries of Japanese Grammar: Unfortunately it is a dictionary, and I presume there are no practice exercises? I really need lots of practice exercises and stuff to practice and slowly build up.
Kodansha’s Handbooks of Verbs and Adjectives & Adverbs: Since they are more of a reference book I was disappointed. But I happened to notice on the description just now that they have exercises. Could I use them as textbooks? And what about their Kanji Usage and Synonyms Guide?