I loved Human Japanese – it gives one a quick crash grammar course. After that I moved to Genki textbook but now Wanikani is taking too much time so I don’t have time to study grammar and reading. I watch lots of anime but only pick up few words.
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I have personally found the Genki books totally useless. What I did find useful were ASK Publishing Nihongo Sou Matome books which are geared towards the JLPT course and are more structured for getting you up to speed. They are just levels above Genki but understandable and clear.
Apart from that there is a website called Rocket Japanese which I found invaluable. Apart from that use flash cards. They can be useful for extensive vocabulary learning to help with the text books and other learning sites.
Wanikani is good for Kanji but like all learning sites should not be relied on entirely as learning a language is such an involved and complicated task.
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I’m curious - what were your issues with Genki? Were the explanations bad/insufficient?
No as soon as I looked at the Nihongo Sou Matome books they were just much more superior in terms of the way I take in information which made self study for the JLPT much easier. It was just a case of finding something better.
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Pretty sure this doesn’t appear on mobile, and I’m certain most users use the mobile app.
it actually appears on mobile, I remember using it to learn german
Ah, gotcha. Glad you found something that worked better for you. 
Thanks for answering!
I don’t have a ton to add in the way of other learning services, because I’m still looking myself, but I do think watching subbed anime can help at least a little in combination with your studies. Key words being IN COMBINATION WITH your studies. It can’t replace them. But once you know a few words and phrases, you can start picking them out in the anime you watch, and that will help cement the words in your head (at least it does for me). It also helps me a lot to just hear the language being spoken, and anime is an easy and fun way to get that. Listening to Japanese music can also help, in my opinion.
The other issue I had with the Genki books as the lack of Japanese writing and incorrect spelling for romaji words where as the other books would have it in hiragana. Example spelling がくせい 学生 as gakusee in romaji was totally off putting as it is not correct. It was the lack of Japanese that was the issue for me and I felt it was geared more towards students with a lack of practicality of tour and travel around Japan. For example when I self learn I will learn words that enable me to check into hotels, buy train tickets, make general conversation and build. I feel school texts are geared more towards self describing educational background, future plans for education, family background which are all good to a point but lacking in comparison to the variety offered in other books I mentioned.
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I think they wrote 学生 as gakusee because you can often pronounce えい as ええ. So both gakusei and gakusee are correct ways to pronounce がくせい. I might be wrong though.
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A note on tae Kim’s guide though :
It’s an awesome way to get started but if you like to learn things in a comprehensive way, you have to know you won’t do that with Tae Kim.
Also, I found using plain form really confusing but maybe that’s just me.
To me, Genki is more precise but that’s really about how you wanna learn Japanese and what your short/long term goals are.
I can’t recommend using Kamesame alongside Wanikani enough. It’s Wanikani in reverse, they give you the word or phrase in English and you have to enter the kanji. It’s free too, but he accepts donations.
After I’m done doing all my Wanikani reviews I then go to kamesame and do all the reviews and lessons there, then I go back to Wanikani and do some lessons if time permits.
You can do a search for it in this forum if you want more information about it.
As far as textbooks go I have Genki but I’ve heard good things about Japanese From Zero so you might want to compare those before going with Genki.
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Oof. Big mood. I also found tahat focus on education/family off putting even while I was a student…
This thread is already full of helpful advice. However, I’d like to mention another aspect:
There are tons of learning resource out there, but the day has only 24 hours…
You are currently on Level 2. In a few weeks the daily number of Reviews will increase quite a bit (given that you level up 
) How much time per day do you have? Depending on how fast you are going WK will easily require an hour or more… Every. Single. Day.
I quit twice in the past because I tried to do too much (too soon). My recommendation: build a solid daily WK-routine first. Then slowly add to that according to your Needs.
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Have you really read Genki I? It has a section on Useful expressions, at almost every chapter (asking for directions, using the post office, etc…). In particular, in chapter 11: At The station, pages 248 and 249, there is a long list of vocabulary and phrases related to train stations.
I’ve heard good things about Human Japanese for beginners but don’t have any experience with it.
LingoDeer is fantastic if you want a Duolingo-like experience that actually works for Japanese.
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I’m only advocating writing because it’s immensely easier to look up unfamiliar kanji with it using kanji recognition software than using the dictionaries where you have to select radicals. Learning stroke order doesn’t take that long, and looking up words drawing them on your phone becomes a 10 second process when you know the general rules behind stroke order. This has been immensely important to me as looking up words is something I end up having to do every minute or so when reading any material not on my computer.
Tofugu did a little thing on stroke order that I recommend looking at. Just a quick scan of it should be enough to begin looking up words the easy way.
Genki only uses romaji very briefly (literally just the first chapter from memory) and then it’s kana and Kanji so that’s a strange concern.
I read an interesting discussion on reddit (accidentally bumped into it when I was searching for some grammar point) - apparently Tae Kim’s guide is not entirely accurate in places and it’s also hasn’t been updated for a while despite the controversy about the inaccuracies. But it seems to be beginner friendly and it’s structured conveniently so could be used as a reference to a certain extent. I also prefer Genki when I need to look something up but a lot of people (online) swear by Tae Kim.
I think that’s probably because the more you know about Japanese the more you notice Tae Kim’s limits/inconsistencies.
Great resource if you want a quick grasp on Japanese though.
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