teemoteishampoo

That's a pretty good point actually. I took a course on modern Japanese literature at my college and although it was taught in English, I learned a lot about the history of Japan beginning from the Meiji restoration to the current day. I think that for history though, there aren't really textbooks per se. Instead, you might get interested in say, the Sengoku period from playing Sengoku Rance and decide you want to learn more. Then I think reading the Wikipedia article usually gives a decent overview, and then you could try reading some of the references listed for more in-depth information. Culture's definitely important, but I'm not so sure you can "learn" a culture. I feel that you gradually absorb Japanese culture over time, but even then, you have your own perspective that will be different from everyone else. Even among Japan, I'm sure people from Osaka and people from Tokyo will have had different experiences that lead them to emphasize different parts of Japanese culture. Oh, and I do have a recommendation for a book, although it's not strictly about culture or history: http://www.amazon.com/Oxford-Japanese-Short-Stories-Books/dp/0199583196. This is a collection of Japanese short stories translated into English and arranged into chronological order.

Yeah, in my experience, writing the reading in hiragana, the kanji, and a rough English meaning for a word has been really helpful in learning new words. I usually create my own vocabulary list this way using words I encounter when reading VNs and manga and watching anime, and then practice writing down the reading and the kanji just given the English meaning. As for college, I personally don't think taking Japanese classes in college is necessary. It's useful if you need a push to study Japanese, but if you're self-disciplined enough, you can get pretty good by studying on your own and making Japanese friends to practice speaking with.

I'd have to say Quarttet. Both the watercolor art and the manga style speech bubbles were really refreshing. I also liked how there was essentially no narration and only dialogue, since I find that most VNs are excessively wordy without actually saying much.

Hi people, I've been watching anime for a long time and played a couple of VNs here and there. Most recently, I started Utawarerumono around Thanksgiving, played midway through and then forgot about it as finals came around >.< Oh, also, I've been studying Japanese for 3+ years so I'm hoping to be able to contribute back to the community by helping to translate visual novels! よろしくね!