Good grammar / Kanji book

Since I'll be wrapping up my school in a few weeks I'm currently looking into a good book for both grammar and kanji. I've completed level 3 JLPT and would like to be able to continue studying in my free time with both the kanji and the grammar. What I'm looking for in a grammar book is one that gives clear explanations, the rules for usage and examples. I prefer one with some English as I'm fairly certain that just Japanese will be too difficult of an explanation for me at this level.

As for the kanji, I would prefer a book that would contain the yoji kanji. The book I currently have only covers all the kanji needed for JLPT level 3 but it's a good book giving the kanji, stroke order, meaning and combinations with other kanji. I would like something along those lines to continue.

I would really appreciate it if people could provide names of the books so that I can go to Junkudo to pick them up while I'm still in Japan.

For kanji, I assume you mean "joyo" kanji. One suggestion may be:

Kodansha's Compact Kanji Guide (Kodansha) ISBN 4-7700-1771-5 C0580



It covers 1945 "essential" kanji. If you can count the total number of strokes, you can look up by the stroke count in the index. If you know one of the readings, be it "on" or "kun," you can look up by that as well. And when you find the kanji, it lists common kanji combination words that uses that kanji, and gives the reading of the whole word in hiragana (for "kun") or katakana (for "on" reading).



I found the "Asian Edition" of the above in Singapore, I believe, some time ago, so I'm not sure if the same one is available in Japan. If not, try:

Kodansha's Essential Kanji Dictionary@ν—pŠΏ‰pnŒκŽ«“T



A classic is the following, but the words selected tend to be somewhat old:

Essential Kanji: 2,000 Basic Japanese Characters Systematically Arranged for Learning and Reference

(by P. G. O'Neill)





For grammar, I've seen some other threads with the following as recommended:

“ϊ–{Œκ‚ΜŠξ‘bƒ‹[ƒ‹ Basic Connections: Making Your Japanese Flow (Kodansha International)

and

“ϊ–{Œκ‚Μ”ιŒ Making Sense in Japanese.



A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar “ϊ–{ŒκŠξ‘b•Ά–@Ž«“T (Japan Times)


Please have a look yourself at Junkudo or some big bookstore and see which one feels right :)

answer to Your first question:
book name: Obunsha's High Top English-Japanese/Japanese-English Dictionary@
‰ •ΆŽΠƒnƒCƒgƒbƒv‰p˜a-˜a‰pŽ«“T
*this book's title will be printed both in English and Japanese.

answer to your second question:
book name: Obunsha's ‘ŒκŽΐ—pŽ«“T(kokugo jitsuyou jiten)@it's description is ˜a‰pŒ“—pƒyƒ“Žš }‰π“ό‚θ (waei kenyou penji zukai hairi)
this kanji dictionary is easy to use if you can read hiragana and know how to count strokes of kanji. It has print out od word or characters first in hiragana followed by kanji, it also describes usage in English.