Review of Let's Learn Japanese Picture Dictionary by David Chien

Basically, children's picture dictionary, but very useful if you want to challenge yourself against any kindergartner in Japan who already knows all of these words front and back. (gotta start somewhere right?)

Anyways, 1st Thousand Words covers just about all of the basics - big/small, red/orange/..., numbers, days, shapes, animals, etc., so this book is a VERY good test to see if you really do know the basics!

(ie. if you know these, you can at least get by to a degree --. eg. I'd like that star shaped, brown colored food vs. I'd like that xxxxwhatever the word actually is in Japanesexxx.)

You should take the time to memorize page by page every week, and test yourself to see if you can really name the basics -- eg. what's the living room called? the toilet? the carpet? the bear? the house? etc.

Figure once you've got these 1000 down pat, it's only another 4000+ to understand a newspaper ;) (well, assuming newspapers were written in 'gana and didn't do verb conjugations and were written at the school level....)

You'll only need one of the two, so might as well go for the 1st Thousand Words Dictionary which has a romanji - english summary in the back you can cover and use to test yourself. (gee, what was jyoudan?)

☆ See all reviews by David Chien.