There are textbooks for grammar, vocabulary, kanji, and even culture, so you can be sure that you’re getting a well-rounded education in all aspects of the language.

Now that we have reviewed all of the components for both series, we are left with our initial question: which one is the best for self-studying? In any event I don’t think it’s going to make or break your studies, so I wouldn’t worry about having made the “right” or “wrong” choice. Es un buen libro y al ser todo en japonés con Katakana, Kanji, Hiragana con Furigana te ayuda bastante a mejorar el hábito de la lectura de los caracteres, haciendo que con el tiempo distingas mejor y por consiguiente leas más rápido. I don’t have Minna, but my understanding is that it has less romanization and is more heavily written in Japanese. Like most textbooks, it starts with polite language (which makes sense, since it’s meant for language schools in Japan, and the learners are likely to need to use this stuff quickly, and politely).If you’re having trouble understanding the material or doing the exercises, you can do a few things. With illustrations, easy-to-understand charts, and diagrams, the book is visually stimulating, allowing the learner to more easily learn and reinforce beginner-level Japanese. In the end, everything comes down to preference so you should at least give this textbook here a proper look.

But I’m curious how the levels compare… How do the Minna no Nihongo books compare level-wise to the Genki books? The books are comprehensive and cover a wide range of topics, so you can be sure that you’re getting a well-rounded education in the language.My Anki deck has the verbs in plain form as well as the ます form from the textbook so that I can learn to associate the meaning of the words with both forms (otherwise, I have a hard time recognizing WK verbs, for example, if I hear them spoken in ます form and not plain form, since we only learn the plain form here and never practice any other conjugation).

haha - I always remember the weird part of the instruction sequence where it tells you to do the part A and B exercises before reading the example sentences and conversation, which I always thought was weird. Personally, I think it’s better to have the double textbook because it’s harder to fall back to English as a crutch, so I like the separate volume. Overall, the Minna no Nihongo series is an excellent resource for anyone who wants to learn Japanese. I’m sure there’s plenty of stuff that I’ll get less practice on in the textbook, but I’m eventually going to read other books besides that one. I appreciate this article for explaining the differences and I have enjoyed my experience with MNN so far.I have a question for those of you who have studied with Minna no Nihongo, and especially for those who have also used Genki and/or Japanese for Busy People. There is also a Tokini Andy discord channel so if you’re interested in doing some of the practice exercises from the book you can do them there, and he also makes Patreon content with listening exercises (although I’ve found the free content to be plenty!