Preface

You are reading the first revision (or if you bought this, also the first print
version!) of the Japanese grammar book that I started writing while I was
still taking classes in Japanese... and consequently failed at (the book, not
the courses). I have to admit, I was a bit overzealous. While I enjoyed
learning and through the process of explaining the things I had learnt to
others via what became http://www.nihongoresources.com, I was still a first year
student with not exactly a lot of weight or experience under my belt. The
first version of my book I offered to my teacher to scrutinise, and scrutinise
he did. In retrospect, it’s a good thing he did, because it took forever to get
from the draft version to an edited final version. Instead, in 2005 I decided
that the information I was offering the world was somewhat out of date,
and needed a rewrite. I also knew that I had to do something with the book

• I had promised many people by now I would finish it and I didn’t like the
  idea of leĴing those people down. As such, I began to write what ended
  up as a permanent draft copy of a grammar book, freely available from the
  nihongoresources.com website, in 2005-2006.

Three years later, the book has certainly proved its popularity. Well
over a hundred thousand downloads later, and with over fifteen thousand
hits on it per week still, the time has finally come to revise it, and give
everyone what they’ve been asking for for some time now: a proper paper
version in addition to the digital copy.

It’s taken close to a year to go from deciding to revise the old gram-
mar book to being able to offer you a restructured, reworked, and more
than half rewriĴen book on the Japanese language, but hopefully the wait
was worth it. I’ve spent as much time on it as I could, in between my nor-
mal job and spending time on vacations in Canada to be with the person
who has helped me tremendously in geĴing this book done and keeping
me motivated to do so, and I hope the result is something you feel was
worth paying money for. Or, if you didn’t buy it but are reading this as a
digital copy, then I hope you might find it good enough to want to have it
siĴing on your shelf as paper copy as well.

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