The Top 500 Japanese Words: Ranked by how often they appear on the Internet

On the first few pages I learned that joho = news and kiji = article and doga = animation. Very useful vocabulary that wasnt covered in my intermediate JP classes or through self-study. Sample sentences are different than what you'd find in a standard textbook:"Dinner will be served on board the plane.""That animation is also broadcast in other countries.""Display Twitter keywords by ranking.""The stock market tumbled.""Please input your PIN number."There's also an appendix of the next most common 200 words but these entries dont have kanji. The index in the back is organized by romaji only so if you see an unfamiliar word and don't know the pronunciation it's hard to look up. This is a good niche book ... something to thumb through while on the train or while waiting at the dentist office.

In the introduction, the author, Mark Smith, mentions that when he described the idea for this book to people, they either loved it or hated it. I must admit I was on the cynical side of that fence. A list of the most commonly used words on the internet? People have already made these lists before. Why do I want them in a book?So, Mark will be relieved to hear that I was pleasantly surprised, and I really like this book. The 500 words are all useful and crop up in real daily Japanese. Each entry shows the word in romaji and kanji, with a definition in English. Then an example usage, given in Japanese script, with romaji for pronunciation, and the English translation. The order they are in is novel, showing the internet roots of the research, but that is fine. The book is peppered with cute illustrations.For me it was the examples that really brought this book alive, as they make this quite a versatile book. For the student just starting to learn kanji, the head word of each entry is ideal study. It is a great first 500 words to learn. But then you can come through the book again and learn the example sentences, which are all realistic. In fact even a student studying for JLPT N1 or N2 will get a lot from that study. On the other side, the Japanese people I've shown this book to have also found the example sentences useful.I can recommend this book to all Japanese learners, especially if your study goal is to able to read Japanese web pages, or to write Japanese emails to friends.Disclaimer: I received a free review copy.

Love the book! It does make learning the most common words easy and fun. While I am not at the level to speak Japanese smoothly at a conversation level just yet, I like that I can learn the words and test myself as I go about my day.My son and I are learning Japanese using the author's other book along with some CDs. We are only doing this for fun, but I have found using all three together is very useful. I can use the other book, "Learning Japanese" to improve my conversation, use this book to quickly identify common words, and the cds help us feel confident we are saying the words correctly.Highly recommended.

For a while now I've been working on building up my Japanese vocabulary by reading text books, web sites and computer tutorials. This is the old and proven method, but you would agree that this is a hard & long process.Now thanks to this book 'The Top 500 Japanese Words', I have been able to fast-track my Japanese abilities by focusing on the 'most frequently' used words and having a short list of the most common words we are likely to come across in daily interactions.Even though the book contains the Top 500, I found if you have studied and memorized the top 100, then you are well on your way to having broadened your vocabulary immensely.fyi: I have purchased another book from this author and I find his methodology to be quite innovative and fresh. Very useful book!

I was surprised how many of the words I didn't know, like "keijiban" (bulletin board) and "kakudai" (magnify/enlarge).Each word has an example sentence, and they had me constantly nodding my head. They really are common words and phrases.eg. "shiyou" (use) - "Yoku futte kara shiyou shite kudasai" (Shake before using)Everything is in Romaji, hiragana/kanji and English.And I love the illustrations!

I am Japanese and my feedback of this book is... it's not only the vocabularies, the sentences of practice are also very useful. even just reading all there will be a good exercise, I guess.I think this should be for the people who want to learn and obtain Japanese language, but not sure which text book to take at first. I recommend it.

This book provides an interesting way to expand your Japanese vocabulary with the words most commonly used on web pages. A good book to grab when you have a spare 5 mins here and there. Also worth checking out is "Real Japanese" by the same author.