(Other books in the series are: Intermediate Technical Japanese 1 & 2, Kanji for Comprehending Technical Japanese, Comprehending Technical Japanese, as well as books about biotech, solid-state physics, etc.)
I didn’t include it in the table since it is rather specific. Basic Technical Japanese - If you are in a technical field and will be reading technical papers/resources, the Technical Japanese book series would be helpful to you.I removed it from the table because I don’t have much information about it. Hiyaku: An Intermediate Japanese Course - a new textbook.There are also books that go over reading/writing. Uses lots of romaji unfortunately since it focuses on speaking first. If you want lots of detail on grammar, this series might be good for you. Japanese the Spoken Language - This used to be a very popular textbook series and it does have some good merits, but there are better books out there now.Nakama - not rated highly on Amazon, seems better suited to classroom use with a good teacher, but it may still be a good fit for some people.There are also other books/resources that I did not include because I wouldn’t consider them to be official textbooks, though they may be great resources, and I’ve included them in the list below with a few comments. Here is a list of some books that are not included and why. Because of this, some popular textbooks are not in the list. I have only included textbooks that have pretty good reviews on Amazon and other websites (at least 3 stars). I suggest not buying multiple textbooks unless you want one for supplemental material, otherwise you probably won’t progress very far in either of them, and you will also waste money. You may like one better than another, but if you spend too much time searching for the perfect textbook, you won’t learn any Japanese! So choose one that you think will suit you best, stick with it until you finish, then move onto the next level. In general, all of these textbooks have gotten pretty good reviews (at least 3/5 stars). If you need to practice the kana, try out this website: Tae Kim’s Japanese Grammar Guide: Kana Some of them, however, at least show you the general stroke order in a table. Most of these books assume you already know the Japanese kana (hiragana and katakana writing systems). You can also tell if the book has an appendix and how much work you will have to do to finish each chapter (are you going to have to look up the English definitions of the words yourself? Do you care? Smaller details like this may be important to you). If you want a book that focuses on writing, for instance, you probably don’t want to choose a book that emphasizes speaking. If you can find the introduction to the textbook (the samples provided below often have it, or, or .jp), reading through it can give you a good idea of the structure of the book, its possible strengths/weaknesses, as well as how the authors intended it to be used. To start your research, look at these summaries, read samples, read customer reviews, and visit the book’s website. You probably don’t have the same criteria as me. Think about what’s most important to you and see which books fit most of your criteria (price, kanji w/ stroke order, #vocab, #grammar exercises, reading passage topics, etc.).