A follow-up to Learn Japanese with Manga VOLUME 1, helping the student progress from beginner to intermediate level. A previous 3-volume series by this author with 3 workbooks but no audio recordings was published by Japan Publications Trading between 2004 and 2006 and sold well (see Comps list below for details). Some old copies are still available on Amazon. The manga previously appeared in the workbooks whereas in the new Tuttle editions they are integrated into the textbooks (and there are 2 volumes, not 6). The Tuttle version is 2 volumes with audio recordings and manga interspersed through the books. Manga comic strips are used extensively; similar books with manga have sold extremely well (see comps). An exciting manga story, Kage, runs through Volume 2, centering on Spanish journalist Nuria, who is sent to Tokyo to research a news story, where she keeps encountering a mysterious "shadow" or kage. A step-by-step approach teaches the language systematically step-by-step covering all the key grammar points, illustrated with manga excerpts showing how Japanese is used in real-life dialogues.

Introduces 200 essential kanji. Reinforces the hiragana and katakana scripts introduced in Volume 1 by using no romanization, thus forcing the student to engage with authentic Japanese text without relying on romaji. Free online audio recordings provide native-speaker pronunciations for all the Japanese texts in the book. Hundreds of drills and exercises suitable for self-study or classroom use with a teacher are included. The focus is on informal, everyday language by young people in Japan today rather than on formal language. Plentiful practice exercises and regular review sections are included throughout the books. Answer keys for the exercises and an extensive bidirectional dictionary.