Three manga to learn kanji, katakana and old Japanese as recommended by a Japanese teacher

Good news for Japanese learners!

Kadokawa Corporation has published three new books about the Japanese language. The three books are part of the のびーる国語 nobīru kokugo (stretch your Japanese language skills) series, which is popular among elementary school students in Japan.

The books are for studying, but in manga style!

These are the recurring characters in this book series. Studying with them must be fun!

However, the series isn’t only good because of these these manga-style characters. The contents are inspected by elementary school teachers and professors, which enables readers to study enjoyably and effectively. Judging from the sample pictures in the press release, I’m sure that these books are very useful for Japanese learners at intermediate to advanced levels and even for professional translators.

As a writer who has a Japanese teacher certification, I’d like to introduce these books!

Kanji book

If you want to study kanji compounds, I strongly recommend this kanji book. The official title is 角川まんが学習シリーズ のびーる国語 使い分け漢字 同音異義語・反対語・類義語他 kadokawa manga gakushū shirīzu nobīru kokugo tsukaiwake kanji dō’on’igigo hantaigo ruigigo hoka, an approximate translation of which is “Kadokawa manga learning series – stretch your Japanese language skills: proper use of kanji, homonyms, antonyms, and synonyms, etc.”

If you have already started studying Japanese, you may know that many Japanese kanji compounds have the same pronunciation, but can express different meanings depending on the kanji used. With this book, you can make learning such very confusing kanji compounds fun!

Look at the sample above. This page explains the word kyōsō. There are two kinds of kanji compounds, 競走 (kyōsō) and 競争 (kyōsō).

競走 (kyōsō) means “to race and compete/compare speed over a certain distance.” It would be the compound to use if you want to say “Let’s see who can run 50 meters faster.” …continue reading