Rating: 
Summary: great package
Review: The previous reviewer says this book makes "exclusive" use of the western alphabet. That is totally wrong. Every chapter has a section on teaching the Japanese alphabet. But in order to not make you wait until you've learned the thousands of intricate Japanese characters before starting to use the language, the book prints texts in our alphabet. This approach makes perfect sense to me.
Rating:
Summary: great package
Review: The previous reviewer says this book makes "exclusive" use of the western alphabet. That is totally wrong. Every chapter has a section on teaching the Japanese alphabet. But in order to not make you wait until you've learned the thousands of intricate Japanese characters before starting to use the language, the book prints texts in our alphabet. This approach makes perfect sense to me.
Rating:
Summary: The best materials to learn japanese comes in this package
Review: The ultimate japanese book and cds are wonderful. There are 8cds that comes with this. It helps you to get the pronuctiations right. And also the manual gives a lot of detail about the jaapanese language.
Rating:
Summary: Ultimate Japanese
Review: This book and the cd are great. They clearly explain how sentences and particles are used and give cultural highlights about japan. The cds help saying words and alot of helpful things.
Rating: 
Summary: too fast
Review: This book assumes that you have a basic understanding of japaneese words. This is very tough for a beginner to follow. The sentences are very fast and there is no time to get the basics. Not recommended for the beginner.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: This book is great. I finally found a book that makes it easy to learn Japanese. The audio CDs are great. I now can be sure that i am pronouncing the words correctly because the CDs allow me to hear how it should be. It does a good job of teaching grammar too.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: This book pretends to teach you to "speak, read and write japanese fluently" but does not even use kanas or kanjis in most of the text. To avoid if you want to learn to read and write fluently !
Rating: 
Summary: A good guide
Review: This book serves as a very solid textbook for learning the language. Each lesson is well-structured, starting with a conversation and then explaining different grammatical points and usage. It has been and will continue to be my primary guide for learning Japanese. The audio will be an important pronounciation tool for those of you who don't have a Japanese mother (as I do).However, you must be your own teacher. There are no exercises, only limited testing (you can pass the tests without having mastered the material, such as vocab), and very little added fun. I don't mind the additional work of making my own exercises, but it's not for everyone. And I have lots of personal motivation to keep me going, which is absolutely necessary if you use this as your guide.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect for the serious beginner
Review: This book takes a highly structured approach to teaching Japanese. Each lesson contains a clear and complete explanation of new grammar concepts, a table of new vocabulary for rapid memorisation, and example dialogue. It is positively jam-packed with information; there is not one sentence that will not teach you something new. New concepts are explained one at a time, for easy assimilation and revision. There is an excellent index and table of contents; I still occasionally use the book as a reference. I didn't speak a word of Japanese when I bought this book, but within the year it took me to finish it, I had a solid understanding of basic Japanese grammar and a good foundation of common vocabulary. The vocabulary is well-chosen, reflecting the concerns of tourists, students and businesspeople. Both casual and polite grammar is shown. The accompanying tapes also complement the book nicely, teaching proper pronunciation. I highly recommend it as a starting point for anyone with the willpower to teach themselves Japanese. I found it far superior to the other beginner's books I have seen. It will not make you fluent -- no one textbook can do that -- but it will turn you into an intermediate-level student capable of learning with real Japanese material. That said, one thing this book does not put much emphasis on is how to read and write Japanese. Although there are many reading exercises, they are optional and can be skipped over. The Japanese in the book is almost entirely written in romaji (using our letters). The book does not provide an organized framework for learning the kanji ideograms: you will have to buy a specialized kanji textbook such as Heisig's Remembering The Kanji. Using romaji has the advantage of making the first steps much easier for the total beginner, but it means you will have to make an extra effort later on in your studies to learn how to read and write. However, since I was mostly interested in spoken Japanese when I began my studies, this was the perfect compromise for me.
Rating:
Summary: You need this book
Review: This is a really good book. After the first lesson I was able to make my own sentences. Limited but I could make them. The book has the Audio cds too which reall help you to get the accent and such down. Makes the vocab really easy to remember. And what I found suprisin was that at the end of each chapter, there was a quiz to see if you know what you read. There are also cultural notes to help you get into what Japan is actually like. Everything is explained in detail and the book is great. Japanese actually isn't really that hard to learn if you just put a little time into it. Buy this book
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