Small Thing Number Four: Get Books!

I know we have the whole internet to look up stuff but sometimes you just have to get old fashioned.

Grab your shoes folks because we are going shopping again! These were bought at a normal book store as well as my school bookstore and there is a bookstore at the local Asian grocery store so I may pick up books from there as well. I'll update this post as I acquire more books.

Thus far, I have these books:

Cool Japan Guide by Abby Denson - I picked this up at the local bookstore while looking through Japanese travel books because if there is a comic version of a book, always get the comic version! (that's my opinion, anyway) In addition to being a fun comic, it has a lot of useful information. This book goes beyond the basic eat this go here and delves into stuff that is really important but not necessarily something you would think of. For example, bathrooms in Japan are different from bathrooms in the US and so are toilets and how you bathe so all those are really important to understand. The book also goes into detail about transport and cool places to visit, including some really nerdy ones (nerds unite!). The book is 127 pages long and has a ton of really useful information in a very accessible format. HIGHLY recommend this book.

Point-and-Speak Phrasebook Japan by Toshiya Enomoto - I ended up with this book because it was part of the optional books for my Japanese class (I'll do a blog on that later). The author has a good sense of humor and does an awesome job explaining everything. In addition to the words being translated, there are often pictures associated with the translation bit and a collection of cultural notes in the back to help you better understand Japanese culture. Something interesting about this book is on the back there is a place where you can have people write stuff down for you. This is very interesting and I can only imagine how helpful having essentially a whiteboard with you could be.

5/27/2017 EDIT
I have acquired another book! One of my lovely friends gave it to me. It is called Japanese At A Glance published by Barron's. The particular edition I have is the fourth but I'm sure the other additions are nice too.

It's a fairly small book, only 4 by 6 inches/9.5 by 15cm, but there is a ton of information in there. It has tons of words and phrases organized by place or situation. It has decent dictionaries for both English to Japanese and Japanese to English. It's definitely small enough for me to easily carry around to either study or figure out how to say stuff. It isn't exactly easy to find stuff in quickly like the point and speak book is, but it has a ton of information in a small space.