TYJ58: Teach Yourself Japanese by CJ Dunn and S Yanada (English Universities Press, 1958)

This was the first Japanese textbook that I ever owned, and I have a copy (not the same copy) in front of me now.  Over the last few months I've made a few attempts at completing it, with my current personal best being 7 chapters done out of 30.  There's a review of it here.  It's in that lovely small-hardback format that the EUP used to use.  It covers pretty much the whole of the spoken language, using the kunrei-siki romanization; it moves at quite a pace and there are lots of exercises.  For most of my adult life I've had a great aversion to Doing The Exercises in a textbook, and each time I have a go at this book I find that my heart sinks at another set of dozens of the damned things at the end of every lesson.  (Translate into Japanese: As an individual he is all right, but he is no good as a Prime Minister.  I'm going with a friend who has become blind, so I may be a little late.  I no longer take any pleasure in working in the garden because there are a lot of caterpillars.  And so on.  None of this 'Hello Mr Tanaka, I am Mr Smith from the British Government' rubbish; and the grammar is rigorous, which is how I like it).

If I had started this Japanese-learning project properly a few months ago, as I had intended to, I would have spent quite a long time on romanized textbooks right at the start; but if I'm targeting the December JLPT—now five months away—I can't really afford to use romanized text as a crutch.  I can use it to pick up vocabulary, but I can't count myself as properly knowing the vocabulary until I know how to write it.

I do like the old EUP language textbooks; they're of their era—very few theoretical worries about the best way to introduce someone to a language; start with simple stuff and drill and drill and drill the reader at every opportunity.  Well-behaved post-war language students, I am led to suppose, did do all the exercises and presumably it did them a power of good, but I'm from a more slack generation.

Have been looking again at the first 200–300 kanji in Heisig; this is stuff that I've looked at before and I'm in the annoying position of almost but not quite knowing it properly.  I can't quite dash onwards immediately but I've nearly got them mastered.  This almost-thereness goes against the spirit of Heisig, which is to spend more time than you might think necessary on each of the kanji and really learn each one of them so that you'll never forget them.  Again this might show slackness on my part, or perhaps my mind has just been addled by reading about Spaced Repitition Systems, which don't expect you to learn things completely right from the start.