Let's Learn Katakana: Second Book of Basic Japanese Writing

This is the second book in a series of 3. It's laid out in a similar fashion as Let's Learn Hiragana, and it assumes you've completed the book. Let's Learn Katakana starts you out with a brief explanation on what katakana is and why you'd be interested in learning it. Then it sets you off showing you how to write characters (lessons are in chunks of 15, 15 and 16 characters) and includes stroke-order. Once you learn a chunk of characters, they have you writing words using what you learned, before moving onto the next section. This brings me to one of my 2 complaints about this book:1) Since you're supposed to know hiragana before you learn katakana (according to most methods of learning Japanese,) this book takes very little time to show you how "ga" would be derived from "ka" and so on.2) I've noticed that the book will drill you on words that use characters that you may not have encountered in your studies. For example, they want you to write "hechima" in katakana before you learn how to write "ma."While worth mentioning, I feel the complaints are rather small, and one can work around them with very little effort. Over all, I'd highly recommend this book to anyone trying to learn how to write in Japanese!

For some reason known only in the tween universe, our 11 year old has joined many of her peers in her determination to learn Japanese. Who do you suppose noticed the mistake in Ariana's tattoo? :) When ordering she convinced me that she had already learned what is in Book 1 and needed this Book 2. Seems she was right and this workbook is teaching her more and more the things she needs to learn. It is well done with answers at the back to make sure they understand the exercises. If you also have a beginner, this is a very good workbook for Katakana.

While this is the companion book to Let's Learn Hiragana and suggested as a second, it can be read on its own. It has step-by-step instructions on stroke order.Exercises include:Filling in the kana, writing the romaji word in katakana, writing the katakana word in romaji. It also has other games/exercises that are fun and useful in helping you remember the katakana.I recommend in addition, making your own flash cards with the character on front and a picture, word(s), and the romaji translation on back for easy memorization and recall. Or you can buy flash cards.However you don't NEED flash cards, as this book is very comprehensive and gives you plenty of opportunity to read, write, remember, and speak words written in Katakana.- This has the 46 basic Katakana, the 33 yoon, the 18 dakuon, 5 handakuon, just as the Hiragana book does, but it also includes 25 additional syllables that hiragana does not, meant for foreign words.It introduces you to new words, but there are also some of the same English or Japanese words as the Hiragana book, but obviously you write them differently using the Katakana system.Very helpful. Fun. There's nothing difficult or boring about it. No teacher needed, just this wonderful book for individual study!

It took me 12 years to write a review on this amazing book. The only thing wrong with it was it was writing in the inside.

I have purchased this book and Let's Learn Hiragana because I kept seeing the both of them pop up as a 'must haves' on various websites. Turns out they came highly recommended for good reason! The instructions are very clear and straightforward, and I really like the fact that they after each set of kana taught, they provide you with exercises that gives you a chance to not only practice what you learned, but to start getting a feel for some vocabulary at the same time. I was able to learn all the Hiragana in about a week, and I have been in the process of learning Katakana while keeping myself refreshed on the Hiragana. I would definitely recommend this book series to anyone who is just starting out with Japanese.

Simple book that goes by the process of introducing the writing, and then goes on with giving you words and making you write them a couple times over for you to remember them. The words are later used in sentences were it makes you refresh on what the word means and is used for. I should say this is only for true beginners, as it doesn't necessarily go into too much depth about the writing. I loved it, but only wish it went a little bit more deeper.

I really find this book very useful and also the Katakana edition( blue cover) as well.Cons: super instructions great exercises very fun (for me)pros: the practice book is very thin. I would say about 2/4 inch in thickness. I would to be great if thicker it was and longer exercise.At age 22, I wanted to learn a third language. I study Chines at first but it got very hard so I went for Japanese. I have master all Hiragana and half katakana. What scares me the most is the kanji which my Japanese professor believes an estimate of 50,000 plus. Don't worry all you need for japan is about 2,000+ but that still is a lot.Reason for learning Japanese: I) I love anime 2) culture fanatic 3) great women 4) beautiful country 5) great history and more

Wouldn't be my first choice if I knew what I do now. That said it WAS in fact my first exposure to Katakana. It tends to go with the idea that you should write them a quite a few times to learn them, that gives you practice reading and writing. Were I in a position to give suggestions to a new learner I'd simply tell them to skip any books that are completely about the kana and try and find some pictographs online for them. You can easily find vocab lists online that are written in kana which will give you more practice that going through this books drills will. That said I'd also warn that katakana will have much less exposure than hiragana, so it will probably take more time to build a solid memory of them.The book Kanji pict-o-graphixs has a table of katakana and hiragana with picture mnemonics to help learning them.

This is a great follow up book from Mitamura's first book "Lets Learn Hiragana". This teaches the Katakana writing system in the same way the fisrt book taught Hiragana. That considered if you liked the first book then you will like this one too. The book is slightly thicker than the first and truth be told it didnt need be. Once i was Three Quarters through the book i had already mastered Katakana. However this book also teaches the uses of katakana (onomatapeia,telegrams,foriegn words etc.) which is also very important.

Bought this after the Hiragana book . Its the same set up, but a bit faster in pace. Very helpful to go through the same writing exercises as you know what to expect. But I found I needed some of the online apps you can get to 'picture' what each letter should look like - to stop me confusing the two letter sets in my mind.Im still very much a beginner and would recommend this.

Follows on from the Hiragana textbook and is similarly excellent at teaching you the symbols and their meaning as well as how they're used in words and sentences. This book is written from the assumption that you've read and completed the Hiragana textbook so moves a little bit quicker than the Hiragana book, but I think this is a good thing because it doesn't go through things so fast you can't follow, but it doesn't treat you as if you know nothing about Japanese writing. Altogether an excellent pair of books, I highly recommend them.

I've never managed to get my head round katakana though I have been learning Japanese for three years! Finally a nice, readable book that has (mostly) LARGE PRINT and BIG SPACING! It's not just a workbook, there are explanations for useage and new words to learn. It's a big book, not a little one, as the picture suggests. Great!!

Great way to improve your memory skills, as with the sister book on Hiragana the characters are introduced in groups along with hints on pronunciation and writing the script.Essential reading for those people who want to get to grips with the Japanese language as it is written, then there is the Kanji, another story!Plenty to get your head around.