Japanese is a challenging language for most who didn't learn it as children. On these pages, I present some of the basic principles of grammar and usage in a way that probably doesn't resemble your textbook.
Most Japanese tutorials and textbooks I've seen make no attempt to explain the fundamentals of Japanese grammar. They simply present the language as a series of patterns to be memorized. "When you want to say such-and-such, you use the expression so-and-so." This is a practical approach, but hardly satisfying in the long run. Who enjoys just memorizing new patterns with no sense of the overall structure?
http://www.mindspring.com/~kimall/Japanese/ A gaijin's first journey to JapanA virtual treasure trove of possibly unintended chuckles for the FG.
That evening, I caught a rerun of "Sesame Street" in Japanese. Now that was a trip! It also explains why Japanese kids pick up English so easily; "Sesame Street" had a few segments in English sprinkled among the Japanese portions.
