Mukashi mukashi the little Oxford Dictionary I was using was fine, but I need something much better now. I've heard some electronic dictionaries are good, but for now I just want to upgrade to a good printed one.

Any ideas?

Side note: just curious who here has studied Japanese. Certainly isn't the easiest language in the world to learn!

I've never had any experience with any of the electronic dictionaries, but I had a classmate in Japanese that had one and it worked great for them.

Are you looking for a dictionary that does kanji->english or kana->english? I've got a few different ones that I use depending upon the situation. But my friend recently has been Mac OSX dictionary

I took a couple of japanese college courses a couple of years back and I'm currently studying to take the JLPT lvl. 3 this December.

It certainly isn't very easy, that's for sure. The kanji are a HUGE hurdle to get over for most people, myself included. However, I think that the grammer is incredibly easy, so it kind of counters the difficulty of the kanji. The fact that you dont have subject-verb agreement makes forming sentences 1000x easier.

I took 4 semesters of Russian as an undergrad, I'll take Japanese any day of the week

Thanks for the great post.

It's funny how folks look at languages differently. Having studied Chinese, I find kanji the easiest part of Japanese (along with the pronunciation). The only confounding thing about kanji in Japanese is the way it can be pronounced differently according to usage/context. There are a few "po yin" characters in Chinese with more than one way of being pronounced, but they're exceptions. Actually, all things considered (besides having to learn 2-3,000 characters) Chinese is a cake walk compared to Japanese.

But yeah I would want a dictionary that allows for kanji look up as well as kana. The one I have is all kana, which is fine as long as you know how the kanji is pronounced. There's a lot of help in that department with young children's literature, but as one progresses to, say, books for teens, the crutch disappears bit by bit. Are there dictionaries that combine both kanji and kana search methods?

In terms of grammar, I don't find the basic sentence structure of Japanese too tough (I actually find the particle inversion (relative to English) and S + O + V constructions kind of fun!), but it's the multiple levels of politeness and all the conjugations that go with that (though true - no S/V agreement fortunately!) which are none too fun. Take an easy language like Spanish or French - you've got your 10 or so basic forms, a few verb ending types, and that's it. There are so many permutations in Japanese I don't want to add them all up!

I've heard that coming from Chinese->Japanese that the Kanji barrier isnt as high. In fact, James Heisig wrote a couple of books on that method, but I've heard that it leaves much to be desired.

Multiple readings for kanji completely sucks, I couldn't agree with you more. Something as innocent looking as 上 can have 8+ different readings, all for a relatively simple idea. I just go with the 'on' reading approach when in a compound and the 'kun' reading when by itself. It seems to be pretty effective...but there are still times when it has multiple 'on' readings, or the other 40% of the time when there is an exception.

As far as dictionaries go, I'm at work right now, so I dont have any of them handy. I know for a fact that I have the 'furigana' dictionary, which is awesome when you are just starting out, but it's defintely hard to use when you get into heavy kanji. When i get in I'll see what I got and if it's any good for what you are looking for

2 that I really like:

http://www.amazon.com/Kodansha-Kanji-Le ... 4770023359

http://www.amazon.com/Learners-Japanese ... 321&sr=8-4

If forced to choose one, I'd have to go with the Kodansha.

I've been taking Japanese on and off for the last 18 years, but my kanji skills are pretty poor. I've found that without practical application (ie. everyday use), it's quite difficult to become anywhere near fluent.

How would I begin learning Japanese by myself?

I'd say the first step is to learn the kana (Hiragana and Katakana) backwards and forwards. The less you have to rely on romanji the better.

I would start off the kana with Hiragana first, as I personally feel that the characters are more easily distinguished from each other making them a little easier to remember. Katakana (used for loan words) has several characters that all use a similar shape and sometimes it can get confusing when you're starting out. Once you get Hiragana down, Katakana will be easier to learn, as it's the same sounds just with different characters.

I wouldnt look at kanji for a while...the sheer number alone will turn you away

I'd agree with that. Memorize those kanas and the pronunciation (get a CD to help with that) to get the ball rolling. To that I'd add getting a textbook to learn the basic sentence structure. You'll need something to tell you why "I go to the store tomorrow" in English reads "I tomorrow store to go" in Japanese.

I started by taking a basic course around 8 years ago. I'm kind of like hillsy - studying on and off over a really long period. But after that 4 month course, I just didn't want to take any more formal courses (at least not in Taiwan) so last year I started a language exchange with a Japanese ex-pat. Maybe you can set up something like that in CA? College students often need help with their English, so that might be an area to check out.

We started with simple daily conversation. Now we're using children's stories as coursebooks. I find it's a great way to get exposure to the more common sentence patterns while doing something fun and interesting. Plus the kanji is usually marked in kana, making it easy to look up.

Thanks again for the rec's guys. This thread is already a great resource!

Thanks for the info.
Is there a particular textbook or something that someone can recommend?

I use this application in my kanji studying and I've found that it helps me a ton!

http://www.mnemosyne-proj.org/index.php

Basically it's like an advanced flash card engine. You enter in all the stuff you want to learn, then as it tests you, you grade yourself on how well you've remembered something, and it then reschedules that card to show up again at a later date. The better you remember it, the farther off it schedules it. It's incredibly handy.

There's a series called "Japanese for Busy People" that is pretty good to use if you're learning on your own. There's a kana and a romaaji (romanized) version. I would learn the kana, then buy that copy. Hiragana and katakana are super easy to learn. A couple days of intense memorization, and you should be able to pick it up. Also, a series called "Genki" is decent.