what easy japanese textbook do you recommend for beginners? Context: i did one semester of japanese so i have an elementary grasp of sentence structure and minimal kanji knowledge.
Hi! There are a few tried-and-true textbooks out there for beginners. If you've already had some in-classroom learning, these might start out a bit low level for you, but most of them should catch up to you pretty fast.
Genki - The most popular beginner textbook. This is the one I would recommend starting with. There's a lot of info out there on Genki, and although I've only taught from it, I know that it is also good for self-paced studying. There are even people who go through the Genki textbook page-by-page on YouTube, and if you search a bit you'll be inundated with Genki-associated resources.
Japanese From Zero - I have also heard good things about Japanese From Zero, although I've never personally used it. Book 1 says it teaches 800 new words and expressions plus hiragana, Book 2 says it teaches 800 more new words and expressions plus katakana, and Book 3 says it finally introduces kanji - so I would look around and see if you can find reviews or samples to figure out where you would be in this book. Again, it's "from zero" so it might start off a little bit lower level but will likely catch up to you around book 2 or 3.
Minna no Nihongo - I haven't used this textbook, but I have heard some good things about it. The only catch is that it's entirely in Japanese, from what I understand. I don't know much about it but since it keeps coming up, you might check it out (or wait until you are a bit higher level and try to tackle it).
I hope this helps!
