Grammar books: way funner than that sounds

You'll certainly get grammar from your textbook, but I tend to want to either look up a grammatical construction, or at least focus on it for a while.

I found Japanese Demystified to fit the bill for that:  you can learn how to compare things, or use passive verbs, etc., and it starts from the ground up.

I still have it and may use it at times, but I've found two such excellent competitors that it's been sitting on my shelf for a while.

I can't say enough good about Tae Kim's Japanese Grammar Guide.  It's succinct, it tells you a variety of constructions from raw beginner on, and I love that it gives the vocabulary it's going to use in its examples up front, so you don't have to spend your time looking up enough words to understand the examples -- unlike every other textbook or source I know!  [Rant, argue, gnash teeth!]  We are beginners, after all!

It comes in different formats, all linked to on this page on Kim's web site: a printed book you have to pay for; the web site itself; PDF format; iOS and Android.  I use the Android app because it has an extra nice feature: touch a vocabulary element and it pops up a window with the translation.  I love not having to struggle to get the vocabulary in order to follow the grammar -- because the grammar is enough of a challenge!

That's a fine tutorial... but this is supposed to be fun, too (or -- since I'm not getting paid for this -- why do it?).  So I've been reading this book just for fun:  Japanese the Manga Way: An Illustrated Guide to Grammar and Structure, by Wayne Lammers, former translator for the periodical Mangajin, which I'll definitely want to talk about later.  For each grammatical element, Lammers gives multiple examples, and for each example:  a frame from a comic using the construction; a roumaji transliteration; a word-by-word translation; the English meaning; and an explanation of why it makes sense.

What's amazing is that even though he's taking his examples all from things not intended for language learning, he's made selections that aren't too trying in terms of vocabulary.  So it's not a lot of work to read it, and (as with Kim) you get to focus on the grammar.

I'd start on this after, oh, maybe one volume of whatever textbook you're using.  Except the manga book:  that's just fun.