Rating: 
Summary: Difficult, but effective with help
Review: After owning this program for two days, I can confidently tell any prospective buyer that this is a SUPPLEMENT program. As mentioned before, it has no clear beginning or process to it. You are brought to a menu with links to such things as "Dialogue" "Exercises" "Pronounciation"...and no guide on where to start, how it works, etc. It took me ten minutes of playing with it to realize that I should probably use the Blackbelt disc first...it is the only place that you will find the alphabet and basic grammar. Even then, it is shown in one way and one way only, and it gets repetitive.
As for being "out of order" like a previous comment mentioned, of course it is! You think you can learn something effectively when it is sequential? By putting Wednesday after Friday and Sunday before Thursday you actually are forced to LEARN the word and how to recognize it, instead of knowing that kayoobi follows getsuyoobi which follows nichiyoobi, etc etc. That way when someone says "Hey how do you say 'Thursday'", you don't have to start at Sunday and go through the days in your head.
Back to my main point though: supplement. My boyfriend is half Japanese and finally sat down with me to guide me along. It was a great help. Together, we're working through it and even he is learning things he didn't know.
I would say to get this if, and only if, you are either taking a class and want extra practice, or have a friend who speaks and is willing to sit down with you as a tutor. The main bulk of the lessons require a grasp of the language that the CD does not directly give you. As a first experience with Japanese, it is quite overwhelming. As an aid in addition to a formal class, it is quite helpful.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: Great Program! I have studied Japanese since university and this is a great program!
Rating: 
Summary: waste of money
Review: I bought this title just last night in the hopes of finding good software to help me learn japanese. Within about 5 minutes of installing it, I was ready to return it. It comes with no book, so I had to guess what all the CDs were first of all. After I figured that out, the program itself was confusing to navigate. What I discovered were a lot of weak looking drills that were basically for testing what I already knew about the japanese language. Unfortunately, what I know is NOTHING--that's why I bought the software in the first place!! I'm assuming that the "lesson" portion of the program was to teach me, but seeing how nothing happened when I clicked it, that didn't really help... (XP issue?). Hopefully BestBuy will let me return it even though I opened it... I really want my money back. If you want to learn japanese, you're probably better off getting a book instead. It may be harder, but at least you'll learn more from that than this software.
Rating:
Summary: waste of money
Review: I bought this title just last night in the hopes of finding good software to help me learn japanese. Within about 5 minutes of installing it, I was ready to return it. It comes with no book, so I had to guess what all the CDs were first of all. After I figured that out, the program itself was confusing to navigate. What I discovered were a lot of weak looking drills that were basically for testing what I already knew about the japanese language. Unfortunately, what I know is NOTHING--that's why I bought the software in the first place!! I'm assuming that the "lesson" portion of the program was to teach me, but seeing how nothing happened when I clicked it, that didn't really help... (XP issue?). Hopefully BestBuy will let me return it even though I opened it... I really want my money back. If you want to learn japanese, you're probably better off getting a book instead. It may be harder, but at least you'll learn more from that than this software.
Rating:
Summary: Crushes Hopes of Learning Japanese
Review: I made the mistake of asking someone to buy this software as a gift, since I really wanted to start learning Japanese. Nothing but problems. First, it seems more advanced, but that's not it. It may seem advanced but it's really only poorly designed and does not function properly.As someone has already mentioned, the lessons don't work when you click on them. Also, there is no sense involved with the usability. Zero stars for ease of use. Instant Immersion Japanese Deluxe probably crushed my hopes of trying to learn Japanese. Stay away from this product at all costs, it is enirely misleading. I suggest you check around Amazon for books/software that really do help you, as I'll be doing the same.
Rating: 
Summary: Could have been much better!
Review: I ordered this product in hope of a good program that would help me learn Japanese. I instead was found with a program that, instead of teaching, sent me more on my own to learn. Its a lot like going to a book shop and buying a Japanese dictionary.
Though the program has a lot of information, it doesn't give a good guide to show you where to start. There wasn't even an instruction manual packaged with the software. I would recommend another product because I am very displeased with how this one is performing.
Rating:
Summary: Waste of money
Review: I would never recommend this software to anyone who was actually interested in learning a language. They taught you the days of the week out of order... numbers out of order... it was a HUGE pain. I'm just going to check out books and tapes from the library and learn the old fashion way. :(
Rating:
Summary: Won't teach you Japanese--There is no instruction!
Review: If you buy this product expecting it to teach you Japanese, you'll be extremely disappointed. It is a bunch of drills and exercises, but with no curriculum. Without a curriculum, it's impossible for a beginner to go through the drills with a clue as to what's going on. It's like taking a Japanese test without being taught any Japanese beforehand. Some of the drills, like voice recognition to test your pronunciation, are worthless gimmicks. The software itself is also poorly documented and when you load it up, you'll be wondering what it is you're supposed to do. I'm not sure who the target audience for this software product is. If you don't know much Japanese, you won't be able to use it. If you already know what the software requires you to know before you use it, you probably will be advanced enough to not need it.
Rating:
Summary: Lots of information, little direction.
Review: It's as clear as the title. When I got this I had no idea what to do and was confused about whether or not I bought a bad product. Once you give it some time though, you realize there is a lot to it (not the language, of course there's a lot to that, but the software). It's lacking direction almost entirely though, so that means you'll need to put in a good amount of effort. Doesn't that make sense though? You couldn't seriously think you could learn a language with a new set of characters without putting in effort did you? It just takes some figuring out. It's good to start off with the blackbelt disc and learn the kanji and then after you've spent some time on that try the other set of discs. Switching back and forth seems the best way to do it. Since you don't have a tutor (but you can get a 2 week online tutor for free) it might be good to make up your own excercises or something. I just used a method from learning spanish. Write the word in english, then write the kanji version of it twice, then write the romanji form of it so that you know how to pronounce it. Writing and studying will help you learn. I'm unsure exactly about whether or not I'm writing correctly. I haven't gotten that far in the program yet though.
Rating:
Summary: instant nothing
Review: not accurate at all. has some good words but not
really helpful in teaching. it has grammer,
japanese Black belt is not a fun game or useful at all!
you click on the right one & it beeps
not allowing you to move on
YES its the right answer. it was simple numbers
and tried it on English & it did the same thing
muti media video is also very short.
find another item !
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