Top Picks: Best Japanese Learning Textbooks

At around the intermediate level you'll be ready to learn Japanese by doing the things you're interested in, but when you're first starting out, finding the right textbook to learn Japanese is important.

Everybody has different goals, but we think a great Japanese textbook should offer dialogues, vocabulary lists, grammar explanations, exercises, and kanji practice.

In this article, we'll share some textbooks we've reviewed so that beginner Japanese learners can find the best option for them.

Top suggestions at a glance

We'll explore each of these resources in more detail, but here are some recommendations at a glance:

Whichever textbook you choose...

We should address the elephant in the room before we get too far along.

Students around the world study foreign languages in school, but most people don't make meaningful progress in the classroom. I personally took five years of Spanish... but when I graduated, I wasn't able to do much more than conjugate present-tense verbs and ask if I could go to the bathroom.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people with stories like mine.

After living abroad for ten years and passing advanced tests in two foreign languages, here's something I've learned:

You won't learn a language to fluency just by following a textbook.

A textbook's job is simply to help you build the basic skills necessary to begin using your language to do things that you find meaningful or enjoyable. The real learning comes after the textbook stage, when you begin reading books, watching j-dramas, listening to podcasts, and so forth.

That's it. Your textbook doesn't need to be perfect, and you don't need to be a perfect student. We'd love to convince you to sign up for Migaku, but the truth is that people have successfully learned Japanese by using all of the below resources. All of them will work, so long as you put in the work.

Once you make your choice, periodically ask yourself these two questions:

If the answer to #2 is yes, then keep up the good work! If not, take some time to think about what you need to do to align your study efforts with your desired outcomes.

In other words:

Genki: The go-to textbook for beginners

For those starting with Japanese, Genki is a top choice globally. Each chapter starts with a dialogue, and that dialogue contains the key vocabulary words and grammar points you'll learn in the chapter. The content is quite dry and some learners will feel the pace is slow, but the upside to this is that the series generally has a very smooth, comfortable learning curve.

There are two Genki textbooks, and each one comes with a companion workbook designed to give you hands-on practice with a particular chapter's grammar points. The workbooks do not contain answer keys, so if you are learning independently, you'll also need to buy the teacher's edition of the work.

So far as functionality is concerned, the main complaint about Genki is that it doesn't provide a structured format for kanji learning. New characters are introduced in each chapter, and it's on you to figure out how to learn them.

I personally used Genki in college—as did most people who studied Japanese in college—and by the time I finished the second book, I felt ready to begin faceplanting my way through simple Japanese novels.

Some links:

Since Genki is the most popular textbook, here's a quick comparison of how it stands with other well-known textbooks:

Minna no Nihongo: in-depth learning for serious students

Whereas Genki was designed for western audiences, Minna no Nihongo (MNN) is the most popular Japanese textbook in Japan and throughout Asia. It's entirely in Japanese, and broken into four levels:

Immediately evident is that this is a lot of textbooks. Why are there so many?

The series features a unique approach: the main textbook is entirely in Japanese (even the first one), and then there's an optional second book that summarizes each chapter's key ideas and provides grammar notes in English (or several other languages). Adding the supplementary textbooks in, you're left with a comprehensive, structured, and immersive learning experience.

Whether Minna no Nihongo is for you basically boils down to how comfortable you feel with the idea of diving into Japanese. You do eventually need to switch over to Japanese, and proponents of MNN love that it immerses them right into real Japanese conversations. If you're ready for that, you'll love the series. If you want a more gentle introduction to Japanese, you probably won't.

You can purchase the books and see samples of each one at OMG! Japan. The textbooks are about $35.00, and the supplementary workbooks are in the $15.00–$30.00 price range.

Japanese from Zero! (JFZ): A textbook for people who hate textbooks

Japanese from Zero is a top pick for those new to learning on their own—especially those who might have tried and failed to learn Japanese in the past. The series contains five books in total, and they're designed to be enjoyable reads and super accessible.

What does accessible mean?

The first chapter of the first book is entirely in romaji. You learn a few hiragana in each chapter, and the book begins using them as you learn them. As a result, you end up seeing things like "の ru", whereas these other textbooks would instead say "のる" or "乗るのる" . Book two introduces katakana, and you don't see any kanji until book three.

The book also does a good job of recognizing that people who are interested in learning Japanese are also likely interested in Japanese culture. Instead of just teaching you how the language works, there are lots of "Culture Clips" that explain things you'll need/want to know if you end up moving to Japan. Some of these detours are of practical use (do's and don'ts for bowing), others are simply interesting (why Japanese elevators skip floor 4).

Unlike Minna no Nihongo, you don't need to buy five separate books, either. Each of the five books contains an integrated workbook and writing practice section. If you dislike textbooks, you can also opt to learn on the From Zero website ($13.00/mo) instead, which enhances the original textbook with videos, textbooks, and simple games.

Basically: if you want a relaxed learning program that lets you go at your own pace, you'll like JFZ. If you're a more serious learner, you probably won't.

Here's a quick comparison of JFZ vs Genki:

Currently, JFZ offers five textbooks:

Migaku: A flashcard-based course for people who love Japanese media

A fundamental problem shared by every textbook is that they contain the things that somebody else thinks you need to know to learn Japanese, and those things may or may not align with the things you actually need to know based on what's important to you.

This is problematic because words aren't created or used equally. If you're learning Japanese because you want to read shounen manga, some structures and vocabulary words are going to be much more important to you than someone studying Japanese to read academic articles about robotics. In an ideal world, you'd both take a significantly different route through Japanese.

Migaku, more or less, is our attempt to create that ideal world. We're built around:

This approach ensures that you learn the things that you need to enjoy the books, j-dramas, anime, and content you are interested in, whatever that happens to be.

Marugoto: A textbook for people in Japan now

Most textbook series are designed for high school or college students taking a semester-long Japanese course. As such, topics focus on student life, there's a sequential progression from chapter to chapter, and the books are written around the assumption that a professor will be explaining things.

Marugoto does things differently in several ways:

The downside to Marugoto's approach is that the books assume you'll be practicing the content in groups (or in daily life). Several chapters cover things that are important to know if you're living in Japan but may not be so important if you primarily care about consuming Japanese media abroad.

Currently, Marugoto offers 6 levels:

Some honorable mentions

Japanese is a hard language—we talked about what makes it difficult in another post—but it's also unique in that there are tons of unique and useful resources created by and for Japanese learners.

Analysis paralysis is a thing, so we really wanted to keep this post to five resources... but, since we're already here, here's a few other things that almost made it into the blog post. We won't cover them in as much detail, so if they look interesting to you, please feel free to explore them in further detail.

Tae Kim, a free Japanese textbook

It's hard to complain about Tae Kim: it's 350 pages long, covers dozens of grammar points, and is chock full of practical example sentences. There have even been some Anki decks built to complement it.

I found the deck difficult to follow when I tried it because the learning curve is kind of jagged: each new unit dumps a lot of new vocabulary words, so you'll have your work cut out for you keeping up. Nevertheless, if you're just beginning to think about studying Japanese and aren't sure you want to drop money on this whole foreign language thing yet, you can't go wrong with Tae Kim.

You can check out the textbook here.

Imabi, a free online grammar dictionary

As a writer myself, I have major respect for the creator of Imabi. His website is over 450 pages of textbook-style entries. It starts from hiragana and the basics of pronunciation, covers everything worth covering about grammar, and then finishes with 30 pages of material introducing classical Japanese.

The website is thorough (perhaps too thorough at times) and doesn't try to sell you anything. It's simply an excellent resource. You probably won't be able to learn Japanese sheerly by following Imabi, but if you ever find yourself struggling with any aspect of Japanese grammar, you can probably find an answer on Imabi.

Tobira, a textbook for those struggling with the intermediate hurdle

At Migaku, we feel strongly that learners should seek to graduate from textbooks as soon as possible. The real learning happens when you use Japanese to consume content you enjoy: to entertain yourself in Japanese, and have learning happen as a happy byproduct of spending hundreds of hours in Japanese.

But maybe you don't feel that way.

If you've finished Genki but don't quite feel ready to jump into native content, look into these three resources:

QUARTET is the easiest, the next one holds your hand a little less, and Tobira is more of a pre-advanced textbook than an intermediate one. Nevertheless, they're all structured similarly: each chapter contains readings and dialogues, you read them, and then explore the grammar they contain.

Cure Dolly, grammar lessons for people who hate textbooks

Cure Dolly is a YouTube channel that claims to teach Japanese in a more "organic" way than textbooks. There are YouTube videos for a variety of concepts, and they're all narrated by an animated figure that I personally find off-putting.

What Cure Dolly does right, though, is point out something important: English linguistics and Japanese linguistics don't always look at things the same way, and some problems get created for learners when we try to force an English perspective onto Japanese.

If you're frustrated with traditional textbooks, or if there's a grammar point you just can't wrap your head around, check to see if Cure Dolly has a video on it. You just might get a "fresh" perspective that helps connect dots you didn't realize you were missing.

Read Real Japanese, for people who want to read books in Japanese

This series contains two books:

And each of them is worth their weight in gold.

Both of them are laid out in similar fashion:

If you want to read things in Japanese, but you're lacking a bit of self confidence, you'll love these books. (And if you love these books, know that Migaku lets you put any reading material into a very similar format).

JLPT test-prep books

There are quite a few book series that aim to help learners prepare for specific levels of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT). While not exactly a textbook, these books can fulfill a similar purpose in that they organize grammar points of similar difficulty/rarity and put them in one place.

My favorites are:

I have mixed feelings about these sorts of resources. I loved them, but I think that I loved them because I spent a few years focusing just on just consuming Japanese, and then I went through these sorts of prep books casually, doing whatever I could do in the 10 minutes after returning to my desk from lunch. They helped me consolidate a lot of things that I understood, in theory, but couldn't put my finger on or clearly articulate if pressed.

Nihongo no Mori

Nihongo no Mori is a YouTube channel that covers all of the grammar you need to know to pass the JLPT N3, N2, and N1. The videos are made by college students studying to become Japanese teachers. They're quirky, entirely in Japanese, and helpful.

If you've tried watching j-dramas or listening to podcasts in the past but found those things to be a bit too difficult, give these a shot. You'll be impressed by how much you can understand. They're personally the first things I binge watched in Japanese—it's a really exciting feeling to realize that you're consuming something in another language, even if the content itself is kind of dry.

Conclusion

Picking the right textbook is the first step to learning Japanese... but it's only the first step. Any of the resources we've listed above contain the basic information you need to get your feet under you in Japanese—and if none of them sound great, you can also cobble a learning path together by yourself.

Whatever you end up choosing, remember these two things:

... and on the off chance that you've already gone through a few textbooks and are feeling like you're ready to start easing into real Japanese content, Migaku can help you with that.