Japanese in Mangaland: Learning The Basics

I've been studying Japanese for several years, completing 3 years of Japanese in college and even studying and taking the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Tests). However, in most Japanese Language textbooks, you learn formal Japanese which is fine if you are going to be using it for business. If you want to watch Japanese TV programs, anime, read manga or talk to your Japanese friends, you are in for a rude awakening, because they don't speak the same Japanese you just learned out of a textbook. Thank you, thank you for Japanese in Mangaland. Even though I've studied many Japanese textbooks, with this book I was finally able to learn some of the missing pieces of the puzzle of understanding "informal" or conversational Japanese. I don't mean rude or vulger slang that some other gimmicky books might teach you, but real Japanese that the everyday person might use. However, I don't recommend this book as your primary text. Other textbooks like "Genki" or "Japanese for Busy People" have good exercises and audio tapes that go along with the text. Japanese in Mangaland is an excellent suppliment because of it's explanation of informal Japanese. Get it, it is worth every penny.

Learning Japanese through the medium of manga is a no-brainer. Many Japanese learners first interest in the language originally stems from an interest in anime and manga, and want the ability to go beyond English-translated merchandise and be able to pick and choose from the massive ocean of material that is untranslated in Japan. "Japanese in Mangaland: Basic Japanese Course using Manga" accepts this, and builds a solid learning system based on usage and mis-usage in Japanese comics. Originally written in Spanish for Spanish learners of Japanese, it was so successful that the book was re-formatted for English learners, and it works just as well. The book follows the format of introducing a grammar point, then following it up with manga examples taken from real Japanese comics. A serious study aid, it begins with learning the kana, both hiragana and katakana as well as basic kanji, then begins vocabulary building with repetition and increasing difficulty. Each section then concludes with a quiz to test yourself on what you learned. There are also cultural lessons in each chapter that give the necessary background to understand some of the subtleties of Japanese. This approach has been tried before in "Mangajin's Basic Japanese Through Comics," but that book lacked a structured approach to language learning and instead focused on "cool phrases" and was unsuitable for beginners. "Japanese in Mangaland" is much more of an actual study course. The only drawbacks to "Japanese in Mangaland" is that the manga used are not particularly famous, and will probably be unfamiliar to Western audiences. It may not even be their idea of "manga,' as generally only one style is imported to the US. Also, although the emphasis is on kana, romaji is used throughout and it may have been more challenging to slowly eliminate it as the course progressed. As with all language learning, this should not be your only course, as speaking and listening practice is irreplaceable. But, as a fun supplement, it is an excellent book that still managed to teach me a thing or two even after several years of Japanese study.

...is the main goal of this book. To the Western ear, Japanese could be Martian, for all its complexity and strange rules about grammar and pronunciation (you might know that there is no L sound in Japanese, but did you know they don't have a V sound, either?). Mark Bernabe does his best to help the "average", non-collegiate person understand this complicated-yet-simple language by incorporating black-and-white images from various Japanese comics (such as Phan and Lost Youth)into the lessons in a fun and engaging way. First comes the basic ideas, then the image examples (coupled with English pronunciation and Japanese writing), followed by the ways in which the expressions are used, and at the end of each lesson he concludes with one-page "self-tests", using word balloons as answer lines. The most amusing section (to me, anyway) is the lesson regarding profanity, which is widely used in anime and manga but avoided in the rest of the ultra-polite Japanese society; while you could use "chikusho!" or "kuso!" in writing comics, it just might get you kicked out of the local restaurant. A good book to start you on your linguistic journey.

I love manga, and I wanted to read manga in japanese, because there's far less manga in any other language than there is in japanese. So I started looking for good self-study books, because I didn't have not the time, nor the money to go to japanese classes (I'm a university student, not much free time). I decided to buy this one, Japanese in Mangaland, and I'm glad I did. This book is fun, easy to study with, and it works! I really have learned the basics: verbs, grammar, expressions, 160 basic kanji (with 5 kanji compounds for each kanji, that's really useful!), particles... There is no need to know any japanese before studying this book: it starts from the real basics, how to read and write hiragana and katakana. The good thing about this book is that if you study it, you don't learn the standard japanese spoken and learned in class, not too useful when you read manga: you learn real japanese, just the way they really speak and write, with real japanese manga example sentences. So, after studying this book, and using a good dictionary, you can even read and understand easy manga such as Shinchan. I was so happy when I saw that I was able to understand what they were saying... I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn japanese, or anyone looking for something new, amazingly interesting... I'm a japanophile now :) Marc Bernabe, the author, lives and works both in Japan and in Spain, and he's well known and loved here because of his great job as a manga translator: thanks to him, we've read in spanish wonderful manga such as Karekano, Blame!, Saikano, Say hello to Black Jack, Crayon ShinChan and so on. He's translated and adapted "Remembering Kanji" (James W Heisig) to spanish, too. I recommend this book for the basics (grammar, verbs, vocabulary and so on) along with "Remembering Kanji" (James W. Heisig) for learning the writing and meaning of the 2000 basic kanji (if you already understand and know how to write the 2000 basic kanji, it will be far easier for you to understand any text, because everything written in japanese is filled with kanji!!!). For exercises and more practical japanese language learning, Minna no Nihongo is one of the best. Practical, perfect also for self-study, but as the textbook is only in japanese, don't forget to get the translation and grammatical explanation book too! Japanese in Mangaland is the english version of a Spanish book, "Japones en Vinetas", (also by Marc Bernabe, of course) which has been such a success in Spain, that has just been released the 4th edition! And has just been released its second part too, "Japones en Vinetas 2", with lessons 31 to 60. Studying both books, you're ready for the Noken levels 4 and 3. I'm sure that you will soon have "Japanese in Mangaland 2" in english. If you know spanish, it would be great to visit the author's website, www.nipoweb.com , it's very interesting. It speaks about japanese culture, books, movies... And sorry if there's any mistake, I'm just