Review: Japanese Cheat Sheets are a good way to refresh your memory

I bought a lot of study materials over the past few years. When I started to learn Japanese back in 2011 I didn’t really know much about it. All this talk about Japanese being one of the most difficult languages to learn was a little discouraging, to say the least. I browsed the App store and just picked one which seemed alright. Back then the market was not as huge digitally as it is today. There weren’t that many alternatives to choose from. When you don’t have a guide or anything to go buy you just end up buying a lot of different stuff. The point is to stick with the purchases you made and not instantly put them away when it doesn’t seem as easy as or efficient as you thought it would be. Unfortunately, I wasn’t aware of this fact when I started my Japanese journey and was always questioning the methods and materials I used.

Get the big picture.

What I missed was a big overview of all the different conjugations, suffixes and so on. Something which collected all the information in a very short and easy to look up way. Of course I could’ve just written up a transcript of everything I learned and in fact, I even did that. But I was always missing some stuff and it didn’t look exactly neat. Not to mention that it was a damn hassle. Recently I discovered a great book which tries to give you the big picture on Japanese grammar. And they really did a splendid job on explaining the basics in an approachable format where it’s easy to look up a certain tense or a special sentence structure you want to express in Japanese (more on that book soon!). But, here comes the downside, it’s only for the very basics. Maybe about the content that Genki I is teaching.

I don’t remember exactly how I came across the cheat-sheets from NihonShock but these were exactly what I had been looking for. All the important information in one place, easy to look up and nicely formatted.

The content.

The different sheets are all dedicated to different “levels” of Japanese beginning with the basics through Spoken Japanese to Keigo (the humble forms). I love these sheets and even had a time when I plastered my walls with them. The only downside to this was the sheets are printed on both sides so I had to change from time to time. Before I studied dentistry I was working as a dental technician. On my workplace, right before my eyes, I hung three of those sheets so I was always able to catch a little peek once in a while. And we all know repetition is king if you’re trying to learn something.

• Buy the Japanese Cheat Sheet Pack from WhiteRabbitJapan
  If you buy the sheets through my link I’ll get a small referral fee which will help to support the site and get more awesome stuff for review as well. Thank you for your support!

The explanation what these Japanese grammar cheat sheets are all about. Basically to give you a quick overview of the grammatical quirks of Japanese. When I once learned English and French I had something like this as well (from Pons) and loved the grammar sheets. They were always fantastic for a quick repetition and that’s exactly what the Japanese grammar cheat sheets are made for as well.

That’s how you receive these Japanese grammar cheat sheets, neatly bundled. If some of the English native speakers could tell me how you call the plastic thing where the sheets are collected in, I would be really grateful. Bought some of these in the Pokemon center (yeah, with 16bit Pokemon on them) and would love to get some more but don’t really know the search term. Thanks.

You may have noticed it, I didn’t use the classic review format with a score I usually use. These Japanese grammar cheat sheets are amazing no doubt but because they are not books it would be difficult to fit into my usual rating system. I think you’ve probably seen enough to judge for yourself if you like these or not. That’s why I’m always trying to take some decent pictures for you guys.

As always, let me know what you think about buying some cheat sheets with the essential information or just doing one for yourself continuously while studying.

• Buy the Japanese Cheat Sheet Pack from WhiteRabbitJapan
  If you buy the sheets through my link I’ll get a small referral fee which will help to support the site and get more awesome stuff for review as well. Thank you for your support!