The Amazon.co.jp website has a listmania ‘A Path to studying Japanese’ compiled by a Japanese study  enthusiast of recommended books to acquire and study from as you make your way from 四級　to　一級All the books in the list I have either used, have in possession, or always wished I had bought but never got around to it.
The books for Level 1 and 2, I would also highly rate. The Kanzen Master (完全マスター)　Series are pretty good. There’s even a DS kanji software game in there.  The 読めそうで読めない漢字DS　also looks good too (not in the above list).
Check out the list here

The ALC online shop also has an interesting selection of books they recommend for the JLPT. There is a different list of books for each JLPT level. I’ve never come across or used any of the books on their list but may well give it a try too.
The ALC JLPT list is here

As a warm up to the JLPT I would highly recommend the J Test. I’ve not sat it before but I plan to. They hold it 6 times a year (some cities only three times). I was talking with my workmates yesterday and they had sat it at various times in the past. Seems like a really cool test to do. There are two exams:
A- D      intermediate to advanced
E -F       beginner

Depending on your score out of 1000, you are then given a letter which corresponds to a particular level of proficiency. I did some sample questions and they are really interesting. There is listening, multiple choice vocab and kanji, reading passages and inserting the correct word, filling in blanks (without a word list to choose from), and make a sentence given three random words. Everyone sits the same exam, and the exam progressively gets harder until you reach the level that you are at. From what I’ve been told too, the feedback report is really comprehensive.

I definitely want to try this test.  The official site for the J Test is here

For a further challenge try the Business Japanese proficiency test to be held in November. More info here

And if you think your Japanese is super awesome, do the Japanese language exam that the Japanese take to assess their Japanese. It’s called the Nihongo Kentei. Again held in November (a busy month for Japanese testing). One of the guys at work (a non-Japanese) has taken this exam. That’s impressive. Mind you he is fluent in Japanese. Has done JLPT level 1 a couple of times just for fun and he also regularly sits various Japanese tests to keep his Japanese up to date, and does the tests as motivation to keep studying and improving Japanese. That’s awesome. The Nihongo kentei site is here

Good luck with the study.

Today’s 愛漢字　is 凸凹

でこぼこ。

It also has an added creative pictorial meaning akin to ‘bugger off’ if you know what I mean.

                                         弱肉強食  (じゃくにくきょうしょく)

weak + meat + strong + food  =  Survival of the fittest.

A cool mnemonic that ryhmes (which is even better) is
 ”the weak become the meat and the strong get to eat.”

The rhyme is mine, but the theory is Darwin’s coined by Herbert Spencer.

For the past month or so I have been involved with the local swimming club, and I am a learn-to-swim instructor at the local swimming club one day a week on a Friday night after work.

I teach the youngest group - the Starfish group, hence the word of the day. I usually have three kids between 5-7 year age bracket. Two of the kids are half-Japanese half-Australian, so I get by teaching in a mix of Japanese and English. It’s good practice for my Japanese considering I don’t often use it as much as I should.  I have realised how limited my swimming vocab is in Japanese. 浮かぶ /　浮かんで is another handy word. It means float.
 

　　　　　　二月は逃げる
　
　　　　　　　　　　　　　三月は去る

http://www.speedanki.com

http://ichi2.net/anki/

http://www.angelfire.com/anime4/jslang/jibiki.htm

http://www.mlcjapanese.co.jp/

http://www.japanesepod101.com/ (iTunes podcast)

http://kanji.koohii.com/

http://howtojapanese.blogsome.com/