I figure there's a few people on this forum that are either in Japan or know Japanese, so here might be worth asking.
I studied it in secondary school for a bit (although never to a qualification), and I've got a few books and notes lying around that I've been re-reading recently. I've gotten all the Hiragana memorised, and am working my way through the Katakana now. But beyond just using that to "translate" anything I read to romanji without actually knowing what it means, most of the stuff I have is useless without a teacher explaining all the exercises and whatnot (being schoolbooks, they have a lot of reliance on "listen to the tape at part a now", or "what is your teacher doing now?" and the like). So what books and stuff would any of you recommend for learning the various aspects of written and spoken Japanese? Audio stuff in particular would be great, as I'm slowly getting the hang of written stuff, but spoken is still completely beyond me.
Any and all help is appreciated.
I studied it in secondary school for a bit (although never to a qualification), and I've got a few books and notes lying around that I've been re-reading recently. I've gotten all the Hiragana memorised, and am working my way through the Katakana now. But beyond just using that to "translate" anything I read to romanji without actually knowing what it means, most of the stuff I have is useless without a teacher explaining all the exercises and whatnot (being schoolbooks, they have a lot of reliance on "listen to the tape at part a now", or "what is your teacher doing now?" and the like). So what books and stuff would any of you recommend for learning the various aspects of written and spoken Japanese? Audio stuff in particular would be great, as I'm slowly getting the hang of written stuff, but spoken is still completely beyond me.
Any and all help is appreciated.
