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

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.

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.

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!

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!

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 book was a true blessing for me to start off learning the Japanese language, as I've already have quite a large understanding of the words, just not knowing how to use and write them down. It is quite a bargain compared to some other products. This, along with "Let's Learn Hiragana" is a fast and productive way to learn the language. Even though it is the second book, I think it should be learned first, so that it would be easier with Hiragana later on. Some people might still have problems reading Katakana after they have finished the book, and if you do, just redo some of the many exercises this book provides you with :) All in all, great value for money.

This book, along with a sister volume on hiragana, are excellent ways to learn to read and write Japanese. Katakana, as well as hiragana, constitute kana, which (along with adopted Chinese characters, or kanji) form the Japanese writing system. To learn hiragana and katakana, it is essential to apply it to actual words. This book does that. It is not just rote memorization. You learn to write sentences in Japanese. It is probably one of the best, most practical, books to learn it.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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 book was a true blessing for me to start off learning the Japanese language, as I've already have quite a large understanding of the words, just not knowing how to use and write them down. It is quite a bargain compared to some other products. This, along with "Let's Learn Hiragana" is a fast and productive way to learn the language. Even though it is the second book, I think it should be learned first, so that it would be easier with Hiragana later on. Some people might still have problems reading Katakana after they have finished the book, and if you do, just redo some of the many exercises this book provides you with :) All in all, great value for money.

This book, along with a sister volume on hiragana, are excellent ways to learn to read and write Japanese. Katakana, as well as hiragana, constitute kana, which (along with adopted Chinese characters, or kanji) form the Japanese writing system. To learn hiragana and katakana, it is essential to apply it to actual words. This book does that. It is not just rote memorization. You learn to write sentences in Japanese. It is probably one of the best, most practical, books to learn it.

This workbook is decent for trying to learn kana, but much of it focuses on building vocabulary and starting to learn the Japanese language, which can be done better from textbooks or other sources. I recommend printing off sheets of squares (not sure what they're called, kinda like this [...] and stroke order guides and just using those, it's really just as easy, and I think it works better than this book. Textfugu is a great (online) textbook which I recommend, I got an old Japanese for Everyone book for like $4 but if you really want to learn Japanese get Textfugu rather than taking a class.

The set up on this and the introduction seem like it will make learning pretty easy. I had to wait a long time to receive it from Amazon, I don't know if that will change in the future. The book itself is set up to learn the characters in groups of 15, and has plenty of exercises to reinforce what you learn. I like the looks of it.

Katakana, being something I needed to learn, meant I needed a book capable of teaching it in a way that doesn't become repetitive.This book succeeds in that respect and beyond. Not only is it an efficient way to learn katakana but if you get the hiragana then you can learn them both competently.Buy it if you want to learn it in a worthwhile way.

I bought this book as I had bought the Hiragana book by the same author and had found that book incredibly helpful in learning Hiragana. The Katakana book is just as good. It has a good introduction to Katakana, shows you how to form the kana correctly and then provides lots of practise. If you want to learn katakana quickly and easily, I would recommend this book very highly.

This is a great way for individuals looking to start learning Japanese to become acquainted with the katakana alphabet.

My daughter loves this book. It is the first of a series of books for learning Japanese. Start here and then order Let's Learn Hiragana and Let's Learn Kanji - in that order.

good beginner book for learning japanese. My child loves it.

Bought this book to learn Katakana, but was somewhat disappointed......Look Around!

basic , easy

Great book and shipped quickly

I have pretty much the same comments on this as the first book in the series: It's a great resource for self-study. I'd suggest that you work your way through "Let's Learn Hiragana" first, although you could probably take the two books in either order.

With it's partner, the first book of JP Writing, this book is great. You've got to find different sources for learning how to speak however but these are excellent at getting through literacy.

it is excellent. if i had known how good this series was i would have got this authors hiragana book.

Excellent way to learn how to write Katakana - very practical and handy! This is the best book I've seen.

This book is the next step in learning the Japanese charters and it has helped me to advance my language.

Purchased for my Grandson taking Japanese in college. He said it helped him a lot.

The best book for mastering Katakana.

👍

Would recommend to anyone who is interested in learning Katakana. My order came promptly and in perfect condition.

This product was in very good condition and arrived within a week of ordering it.

This is the second istalment in a three-volume series about Japanese writing. While the first one

not many to offer

I bought this book after finishing "Let's Learn Hiragana". This one has a similar layout, but introduces symbols at a faster pace than the Hiragana book. It gives 15 symbols at a time rather than the 8 or 10 that the Hiragana book throws at you. I wish it didn't go so fast. I had to do more supplemental exercises to get the symbols memorized. I feel that it doesn't have enough practice after each group of symbols and has excessive practice after you learn all the symbols. I didn't even work through the last 1/3 of the book because I wanted to get going on my grammar book. If you're quick to learn new symbols then the pace may be just right for you. Otherwise expect to have to do supplemental exercises. I used the words from the Hiragana book and wrote them out in Katakana. All in all though it's a great book. It shows you stroke order and explains many things about Katakana. After using it for maybe 2 weeks I felt that I knew the symbols well enough and felt ready to move on to learning grammar.

While this book is almost 20 years old, it still proves to be a useful tool in helping english speakers master the basics of Japanese language. I also have the

This book along with its companion Let's learn Hiragana(which must be previously studied before moving into this one) is surely a great step to mastering Japanese writing and reading. Within a month I could read and write perfectly. At first I thought I would not make it, but Yasuko paved me the way. Now I'm buying Let's learn Kanji and Let's learn more Kanji both from the same series. The book is not a 5-star because it is sold as being a book for self students but it doesn't have all the answers on the answer key. For [$$$] you get both Japanese writings quick and painlessly.

these books were great and easy to use

I spent a couple of days working through the basic (46) characters in this book before a recent holiday in Tokyo. By the time I arrived I could read the beer ads on the train. Using the later chapters to understand how to write words, combined with the constant exposure of reading as much as I could every day on the train, I left being able to read and write pretty much any Katakana that I'd need to; including the tricker Y[oo]on used to write foreign sounds. My only gripe would be the authour does assume you've read the companion book Let's Learn Hiragana in a few places. Its not really a bar to understanding, but it means a few terms here and there aren't defined.

Although I'm following the Japanese for Busy people approach to learning Japanese, the Let's Learn Hiragana and Katakana books are very good. Both books break down the Kana into groups. Stroke (or brush) order and direction are detailed, which if you want to be accurate with your written work, this is a must! Additional information about the Kana, how it is used and combined are all explained in simple to understand English. The books are designed for self-learning (no teacher), and I believe they are simple enough to do this.

This book is a must have for Katakana learners. The book teaches Katakana alphabet in a clear and easy way.

If you are foolish enough to decide to learn the Japanese writing system then this series of books is just excellent. 6 stars. But consider: Japanese is really quite an easy language to learn in its spoken form. Pronunciation for example presents almost no difficulties for speakers of English and much of the grammar is way simpler than English or any other European language (though some isn't of course!) But the writing system is a killer. If you're thinking of buying this book then you already know that all Japanese words CAN be written using just hiragana and katakana scripts (only two alphabets to learn, with only 50 letters in each - how kind!) BUT, BUT, BUT, any Japanse document you will come across will use these two alphabets and also the Chinese-derived ideogram characters called kanji. So to read anything but kindergaten story books you MUST LEARN ABOUT A THOUSAND CHARACTERS. I'm sure that would be a fascinating project in itself but since most Japanese people will be able to read 'romaji' (japanese written out in our roman script) learning the two kanas without also learning the kanji is kind of pointless. That was the conclusion I came to anyway. Life is too short and I'm not an academic. But don't let me put you off buying the book. It's a really good way to learn katakana, and learning a bit of Japanese script is enlightening. For example it helped me to realise that the smallest unit in a Japanese word is not a letter sound but an open syllable sound, and that this is why Japanese (and Chinese) words always end in either a vowel or a soft 'n' or 'm'. Great book. 6 stars.

Questo volumetto è il secondo di una serie dedicata alla scrittura del giapponese. Laddove il primo volume

Bought for my daughter who decided during Lockdown to teach herself Japanese.

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.

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.

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.

Best way is NOT writing on the book but using photocopies or a notebook so the book remains nice and untarnished.

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!!

Ho acquistato questo manuale durante il mio corso di giapponese, per esercitarmi nella scrittura del sillabario katakana ed ho trovato quello che cercavo: un libro semplice, senza troppe pretese, ricco di esercizi e utile allo scopo che si prefigge. Il fatto che sia scritto in inglese non ne rende difficile la comprensione: gli esercizi sono molto intuitivi.

This book is really great for learning how to draw Katakana characters, it reminds me of when you'd get letter sheets in school as a kid which taught you how to draw out the letters and pronounce them. Would recommend.

i had already bought the hiragana book and that was really helpful so i brought this one, really helps learning them. also the words that they use so you can practice them helps build my knowledge of Japanese vocab

Follows the formula of the 'Let's Learn Hiragana' book. Simple, easy to use and excellent for memorizing Katakana. My advice: Get both!

Very clear layout and approach to Katakana; found the exercises really useful for practising and memorising. Along with "Let's Learn Hiragana", best starting point for Japanese I've used.

Great book! One must have it if wanting to learn katakana well.

great

ok