Read Japanese Today
This excellent book is great value. The kanji (Chinese characters) used in Japanese seem impossible to learn at first (there are thousands of them), but this book gives a glimpse of where they came from and how they can be learned. Spend a few hours reading this book, and you will be able to recognise and know the meaning of a couple of hundred kanji. It shows how fascinating the kanji are, and whets your appetite for the far more detailed (and long) method in “Remembering the Kanji”.
This book has no index, but it would be much more useful if it did have one. I’ve typed up my own Read Japanese Today index; you can share the fruits of my labour. There’s no need to thank me. But it would be nice. It’s nice to be nice.
You can buy this book at Amazon.com. If you’re in Europe, go to Amazon.co.uk.