Japanese Study Resources

Listed in this post are books, gadgets and resources that I have found, or am still finding, either useful or fun for my Japanese study:
Where I can, I have included links to the relevant websites.  This post will get updated from time to time.

Dictionary
I have found the Canon WordTank G55 to be very useful for a beginner-intermediate English-speaking Japanese student.  The kanji lookup tool is easy to use.  From the dictionaries you can quickly jump from the kanji to the reading in hiragana, something that you cannot do with many dictionaries.  A friend of mine has a dictionary where you can draw the kanji you see and get the English meaning, but you can't get the Japanese  reading of the kanji.

Books


Or order from the Japanese site here 
This enabled me to easily remember the hiragana and katakana.  His method of creating stories to remember the characters really worked for me.











Or order from the Japanese site here
I also have this book, but after the first couple of hundred kanji he encourages you to create your own stories, and I haven't been able to devote enough time to doing that consistently yet.  However, once you use this method you are forever trying to make up kanji stories - once you have one you like, you will remember that kanji.

This is a useful website to use alongside the book. http://kanji.koohii.com/









Or order from the Japanese site here
This is a fun book to pick up some useful everyday expressions.












Or order from the Japanese site here
I find this book useful, but a little heavy-going.












Or order from the Japanese site here
This book is ideal for beginners, but I still find it really useful now - probably because my grammar still leaves a lot to be desired...!












 Or order from the Japanese site here
This was great for light relief!  As the crosswords are either Japanese/English or English/Japanese, some of my beginning students have also enjoyed them!










For JLPT Levels 4 and 3, I found the Nihongo Challenge series very useful - see here for an example book
For JLPT Level 2, I am finding the Nihongo Sou Matome (日 本語総まとめ問題集) series very useful - see here

Free websites
http://quizlet.com
http://smart.fm/
http://kanji.koohii.com/

Other resources

• A friend of mine gets me the Asahi Children's newspaper once a week.  Written in kanji, but with furigana, a lot of the kanji get repeated, so it is a fun and interesting way of learning kanji. 
• I've enjoyed reading Doraemon in Japanese.  
• Watching DVDs with English or Japanese subtitles is also a good way of improving listening skills.  I enjoy the Hayao Miyazaki films, but other memorable ones for me were Okuribito which was an academy award-winning film, and a children's film called Kogitsune Helen (which was the first film I enjoyed and followed entirely in Japanese).