Chinese resources for learning Japanese

I have seen some posts here in the past asking for Chinese resources on learning Japanese or asking whether English or Chinese resources are better, and I have commented to those posts before. But I think it may help more fellow Chinese speakers if I make a new post about Chinese resources. There is a huge variety of Chinese resources, and some cater to specific areas of Japanese language. Relative to the good Chinese resources, I have found that English resources tend to be too slow, and they don’t explain grammar as well.

Some background: I’m a native Cantonese speaker. I took a year of Japanese class at a US college years ago. 2 and a half years ago, I restarted on learning Japanese . I ordered self-learning books that cover essential or trickier grammar points from a Taiwanese online bookstore, www.books.com.tw. Each of them took about a few hours to read, and I spent no more than 3 hours a week, usually less than 2 hours, reading them. After reading the first grammar book, I was able to read raw manga while looking up every word that I didnt know. 6 months after I restarted learning Japanese and 2 more grammar books later (and 2 other crappy ones), I started reading web novels. I have read at least 50 light novels (mostly fantasy, and a majority on syosetsu) in the 2 years since then. I still look up every unknown word. My vocabulary is expanded almost exclusively through repeated exposure from reading novels, and I have never spent even a second on specifically memorizing words throughout this 2 years and a half. I also look up any frequently appearing kanji for their reading, even if I already know what they mean. I have become pretty good at guessing their onyomi readings based on their Cantonese pronunciation.

**Here are the grammar books that I recommend.** They are listed in the order that I read them:

* 日語大跳級 (super helpful, it’s really all you need after learning hiragana and katakana to start reading native Japanese text, given you also have a decent Chinese vocabulary. The drawback of this book is that it doesn’t have any furigana to any kanji)
* 王可樂的日文超圖解 (it explains a lot of subtle grammar points and word nuances)
* 日語助詞王 (it covers the fundamental use cases of all the particles. It helped me to learn, or even deduce, their more specific use cases in advanced grammar points later down the road)
* 林老師日語診所 (it focuses on tricky grammar points from N3 and N2. I had been reading web novels when I started reading this book. In retrospect, I think I would have had a much easier time in the beginning of reading novels had I read this book beforehand)
* 你以為你懂，但你其實不懂的日語Q&A (explains even more subtle grammar points, but it’s a bit on the dry side。A majority of the contents are covered in 穩紮穩打！新日本語能力試驗 N4 and n3 (explain below) though, since they are written by the same author)
* 穩紮穩打！新日本語能力試驗 series (I’m reading the N2 of this series and highly recommend them. They are more comprehensive and detailed than the above grammar books. But it will take a lot longer to finish each book in this series than just reading the quick grammar books. FYI: I don’t have the book 長句構造解析 in the series because I’m already used to reading long-ass sentences in web novels by authors who seem to sometimes forget what comma is, so I don’t know how good that particular book is. Edit: I also didn’t buy the N5 one. And according to a comment below, N4 is pretty much a repeat of N5……)

**Here are the books that I have bought but have only flipped through or read partially, and still feel positive about.** You can sample all of them on www.books.com.tw

* 核心日本語：擬聲‧擬態語 (it groups the onomatopoeia by their general meanings, and has illustrations for each of them. It definitely doesn’t cover all of the onomatopoeia but still most of the common ones are in it)
* 日語接續詞大全 (it was originally written in Japanese for people who want to have a smoother writing style. It covers 400+ connecting words. I have read about a third of the book. I am amazed by how many connecting words for each general meaning are and how specific each of their use case can be, eg, for “A but B”, there could be a couple dozens of words that mean “but.”, but some of them can only be used if A is positive or another can only be used if B is unexpected, etc.
* 你以為簡單，但其實不簡單的日語文法Q&A (It’s by the same author of the 穩紮穩打 series. And the title is apt. I read the chapter about ね which I thought I had a pretty good grasp of, and then I learned something new about it)
* 日語一字多義快記詞典 (it covers 94 common words that have multiple meanings but, to my surprise, it doesn’t cover 気, which I guess would take up half the pages if it’s covered in full)
* 史上最強日本語類義表現 (this tome groups multiple words or phrases with similar meaning and gives a detailed comparison among them along with a table to give you a quick breakdown of the differences)

**Books that I DO NOT recommend:**

* 大家學標準日本語：日語結構解密 (it covers a wide ranging basic Japanese grammars, but only superficially. For anything that needs more detailed explanation, the author just added a footnote saying further details will be covered in his soon-to-be released book, which still hasn’t been released yet 6 years since this book was first published. Out of the entire book, there is only one chart that shows the proper order of multiple conjugations that I find useful)
* 用日本人的思維學日語 (it mostly explains “nuances” between different words or grammar points but the differences are either really obvious if you look them up in dictionary and/or the words are not commonly used. And the explanations are usually not that great)
* 慣用日語句型上手書 published By 寂天 (it’s actually a mishmash of common phrases and grammar points but the explanations are too brief)
* 日本和食献立100品：Nippon所藏日語嚴選講座 (it’s a collection of essays and recipes in both Chinese and Japanese on traditional Japanese food. The content is not bad but the essays were mostly written in Chinese first and then translated to Japanese, so the Japanese versions often feel unnatural, like all the words are written in kanjis whenever possible, even for words that are usually written in kana. I suspect other books in the same series have similar issues)
* 王可樂日語中高級直達車、王可樂日語高級直達車 (even though I recommend 王可樂’s 3 other books, these 2 are just crap for self-learners. Mostly just a very short explanation and a couple examples for each grammar point. I suspect he wrote these as textbooks for teaching his Japanese classes)

I also watch Haru Sensei’s YouTube videos from time to time: https://youtube.com/@HarusJapaneseCafe

In addition, I read novels on my iPad with the iOS Japanese-Chinese, Japanese and Japanese-English dictionaries, since some words may have definitions in one but not the others. Usually the Chinese definition (and the Japanese one, of course) is better at capturing the nuance.

**TLDR:** if you want to quickly reach reading proficiency, learn hiragana and katakana, and get the books on my recommendation list. Read the first 4 of them to learn the major and more complicated grammars from N5 – N2 (the rest of the grammars can be looked up and easily understood when you encounter them). Then start reading web novels on syosetsu right away, while continue to read the rest of the grammar books. Don’t even bother with manga because novels have way more variety of vocabulary and grammar, and they are often used more repetitively within the same works.