Rating: 
Summary: WHY is this book written in ROMAJI?
Review: It was hard to rate this book with stars. For grammar and sequencing I would give it 5 stars. But it's written in ROMAJI! I found that extremely frustrating when I had to use this book in langauge school. IF ONLY THERE WERE A KANA VERSION!
Rating: 
Summary: Great Textbook for the Serious English Student of Japanese
Review: Jordan's book (and tapes which are also available to accompany the text) are uncompromising and scholarly. Indeed, there are no kana in this series. The emphasis here is on pronunciation, *lengthy* drills, and thorough explanations which are best suited to those students who already have a good grasp on the principles that hold together English - i.e., sentence structure, verb tenses, particle functions, etcetera. This is probably not the best book for those who just want to learn "tourist" Japanese - there are no pictures, and the dialogues are not necessarily built around familiar travel/business situations. For me, the book has been an excellent supplement to the "Japanese For Busy People" series used in my classes at Loyola. The explanations fill in the "blanks" that my native-Japanese teacher is unable to address due to her limitations in English. Bottom line: highly recommended for the serious student of Japanese!
Rating:
Summary: If you are SERIOUS about learing Japanese.
Review: The reason that I have given this book five stars, and I would also give the entire series a five star rating is the fact that in about a year I was fluent in speaking reading and writing Japanese (Kanji included). Eleanor Harz Jorden and Yale University senior lecturer Hamako Ito Chaplin's method for learning Japanese is by far superior for the serious student. The series includes Beginning Japanese part 1 & part 2, Reading Japanese, and A manual of reading and writing. Cassette tapes can be purchased for the first two textbooks. Beginning Japanese part 2 like part 1 is also written in Romaji. This is maybe an obstacle in learning kana or kanji, but might I suggest writing out the lessons to the text in Japanese for yourself.This textbook includes not only the informal and formal forms, but also keigo and its different levels of politeness and humbleness. Which for the student planning to be in Japan for any length of time will find very useful. Also the "prestige" dialect of Tokyo and the standard dialect are used in this textbook. Even without the cassettes examples of these pronunciations are given in part 1. There are 35 chapters in this book and if you diligently study each one (1 week per chapter or until you are familiar with the material) you can become fluent in reading and speaking this language very easily. The basic dialogs are well written and a varity of Kanji can be learned if the student wishes to transcribe the lessons into Japanese. Verbs and words introduced in previous chapters are used repeatedly to illustrate adjectivals in the conditional, provisional, and other forms. Throughout the book female and male speech patterns are given in the formal and informal forms, as you will hear them spoken in Japan. Many of the counters, explainations of the use of particles, footnotes, a concise appendix, a japanese to English glossary and an index to the grammatical notes are all included. This textbook is excellent for the student that wishes to learn in or out of the class room. As for myself i used this textbook and the methods described above to learn to recognize, read, and write 5000 kanji characters in a very short amount of time. Although, I am not Japanese (do not let the pen name fool you), many native speakers of Japanese ask me if I am half Japanese. If I am proficient in this language, it is because I owe it to Both of these extremely talented women.
Rating:
Summary: Nihongo hon wa ii desu.
Review: this book and cassette set will help you learn fluency in Japanese. It teaches you the spoken language only but you can get other parts of the set to teach you the kanji, hiragana, and katakana. I loved it.
Each of the 20 lessons are broken down into parts. The first part is conversation between two or more people. You will hear the conversations in the same speed as native speakers say it. Some lessons have extra vocabulary at the end of them. The next part consists of sentences and word substitutions based on the conversations at the beginning of each lesson.
The only confusing part is the romajii, which is the Japanese words in the Roman alphabet. They use a vey "Sino-esque" Romanization, but they explain it at the beginning before the elssons begin so you will be fine. Sayonara...
Rating:
Summary: This is the old version of "Japanese, the Spoken Language"
Review: This book was first published in 1962 and has been completely updated in the same author's "Japanese, the Spoken Language". I highly recommend that book and can't quite understand why this book is still in print.
Rating: 
Summary: Thorough book, but dated and lacking kana and kanji
Review: Well, I can say that this book is extremely thorough. It will teach you how to speak Japanese fairly well, if you can wade through it. However, I personally dislike this book. This book is quite dated, as are all Jorden books. We're talking 40 years here. What's worst is the lack of kana. You won't be able to read Japanese at all. You can study kana and kanji on your own and in a class, but you'll never be very good at it unless you work yourself to death. Textbooks with kana and kanji in them, such as Nakama or the extremely good Genki are great in that you begin to be able to read Japanese nearly as fast as you can understand it, and kanji recognition is much easier.
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