My First Book of Japanese Words is a beautifully illustrated book that introduces young children to Japanese language and culture through everyday words. The words profiled in this book are all commonly used in the Japanese language and are both informative and fun for English-speaking children to learn. The goals of My First Book of Japanese Words are multiple: to familiarize children with the sounds and structure of Japanese speech, to introduce core elements of Japanese culture, to illustrate the ways in which languages differ in their treatment of everyday sounds and to show how, through cultural importation, a single word can be shared between languages. Both teachers and parents will welcome the book's cultural and linguistic notes and appreciate how the book is organized in a familiar ABC structure. Each word is presented in Kanji (when applicable), Kana, and Romanized form (Romaji). With the help of this book, we hope more children (and adults) will soon be a part of the 125 million people worldwide that speak Japanese!

Kanji ABCsimplifies the task of memorizing the 1,945 Joyo Kanji using a unique method that reveals the structure and the pictures that make up the kanji by dividing complex kanji into graphemes.

This massive text is the ultimate authoritative book on learning Japanese Kanji. The Kanji Handbook presents an ingenious and tested method to learn the 1,945 kanji characters taught in all Japanese language schools. Through the use of "KanjiHybrids"--a concept invented by the author--learners of Kanji and taught to link the characters mentally with English words to form one integral and indivisible unit. This innovative mnemonic device has been proven to train the learner to retain each kanji in the memory much better than simple repetition of the kanji alone--as well as enabling users to differentiate similar-looking kanji characters. Specific learning strategies also enable users to progress quickly from the beginner to advanced level kanji, with stroke orders shown clearly for each kanji character. Eight different indexes-including the highly useful Flip-it Index--form the last part of this unique handbook. Contains the complete list of all 1,945 kanji characters taught in Japanese schools. Presents a new KanjiHybrids system linking kanji characters with English words to aid memorization. Innovative learning strategies guide learners at all levels from beginner to advanced.

This is the first book devoted to exploring issues of learning written Japanese, focusing on the challenges the writing system poses for the second language learner. It weaves together previous research on Japanese second language acquisition and kanji learning with original studies on self-regulation and kanji learning strategies. It provides the most comprehensive overview of the Japanese writing system and kanji learning to date; helps further our understanding of second language writing acquisition and offers new directions for research in the wider fields of language learning strategies, motivation and self-regulation. Each chapter concludes with a brief discussion of the implications of the content of the chapter for the Japanese language learner, instructor and researcher. It will appeal to researchers of the teaching and learning of Japanese as a foreign/second language, the Japanese writing system and second language acquisition, as well as to instructors and learners of Japanese who are struggling with the teaching and learning of kanji.