KANJI LOOK AND LEARN Workbook

My go-to recommendation to anyone between N5 and N3 (including book)

This workbook is a great way to learn Kanji (when you combine with the book as well ofc) when you begin, and even to make up for words and phrases when you're already in but not too deep.

It includes writing exercises, reading exercises, different readings and counting exercises, vocab exercises and etc. Some of the content is also very cute and practical, like reading off a menu and answering accordingly. Another one of the things that may seem small but I remember thinking very highly of them for adding it were actually road signs, such as 止まれ and 閉.

Unlike a lot of Japanese learning books, Genki books in general don't focus on JLPT or any other exam level, but rather on how commonly used is a word or how well known a phrase is for use in conversation and etc. They do however combine this focus factor of theirs into JLPT levels just to take into consideration difficulty as well make it easier for the learner to identify and find things in line with their own learning journey.

This is more so true in this Kanji focused book+workbook combo. You can see from early on that they go through N5 Kanji with a combination of N4 and sometimes N3+ above, slowly into N2-N1 Kanji, but don't go through all of them, just commonly used ones. In this sense, you learn very commonly used N2/N1 Kanji very early into the material sometimes.

They also make the chapter content into kanji you can make logical connections between through the vocabulary you learn, which makes memorizing easier both for vocab as well as the learned kanji.

Please note though that there is no much point into getting just the workbook unless you have a good dictionary on you to replace the book that goes in it. They purposely rely on you being as immersed as possible into the languages when you do the exercises and by the time you reach Part 2, even stop translating instructions to English to a lot of the exercises.

If you're N5 and only starting to learn Hiragana/Katakana, I still recommend giving it a go and starting to do this book in parallel! It's a great way to exercise your kana learning as well as get you used to using it without relying on Romaji too much. Plus, the content heavily relies on you learning and memorizing Kanji, and hence you don't need to understand much grammar unless you answer the unseen questions (which are very specific and can frankly be answered using the question as the basis grammar-wise, if you look at the answer key and compare with the questions you will get what I'm talking about)