He brings up many great points about the shortcomings of many textbooks and even software for learning a language like Japanese. That's why my favorite introduc

He brings up many great points about the shortcomings of many textbooks and even software for learning a language like Japanese. That's why my favorite introductory kanji textbook is Tokyo University's 250 Essential Kanji for Everyday life (Vol 1 and 2). The chapters are broken up by areas of life that you'd need to know words for (the train station, the post office, the hospital) and they go over the etymology of the ideographs if that helps you remember it. With regards to software, what I see as the holy grail of computer assisted language learning would be a free open standard for documenting one's progress through a language. If I could keep track of all the words/grammar points I've learned from day 1, and it was in a globally available format (online) then any software application that didn't want to be dumb could integrate that knowledge for some awesome applications (Smarter flashcards, smart kanji level adjuster for reading online articles or ebooks, etc.)