Yookoso! An Invitation to Contemporary Japanese (Student Edition + Listening Comprehension Audio CD)

Rating:
Summary: I would recommend...
Review: I would recommend you guys try out Situational Functional Japanese.

Those are the books I used, and I found them to be quite good. Their technical analysis of Japanese is quite good. ISBN4-89358-312-3

I believe they're written in Japan for exchange students learning in Japan.

Rating:
Summary: Unsatisfying, watered-down textbook
Review: I'm currently using Yookoso in Japanese class, and I'm unimpressed.

The authors repeatedly introduce new grammatical points in the exercises, but don't explain them anywhere in the accompanying text. They take complicated problems (like when to use "wa" and when to use "ga") and reduce them to a laundry list of useless suggestions--one of which I've seen mentioned in several other sources as a common misperception about Japanese. And when there is a simple grammatical rule which would save the student much time and aggravation, the authors coyly suggest that the student learn to "make generalizations" and guess in order to become a "better language learner." Er, is this a Japanese language course or a game of keep-away? The vocabulary is good, the exercises are good, and the speed at which kanji are introduced is challenging, but I'd trade it all for a textbook which wasn't afraid to teach me how to speak Japanese.

Rating:
Summary: Learning Japanese
Review: I've read a lot of negative reviews for this book so I wanted to write an article in defense. I'm in my second year of Japanese right now at a community college. This book is definitely not for those who are studying by themselves. But it is one of the best Japanese textbooks I've seen on the market. A lot of textbooks use romaji (or as another reviewer put it cheatagana). This one doesn't except at the beginning. I think almost any really serious student of Japanese will tell you romaji is a terrible thing. It slows down language aquistion and it is hard to find books about learning Japanese that don't use romaji.

All in all, this is a very useful textbook. If you have a good Japanese-sensei you will find your self picking up the language at a very respectable rate while using this book. The amount of vocabulary is a little much in a few places, but that is my only complaint.

If you can you might want to try and get a package that includes the workbook and both sets of audio CDs (textbook and workbook audio) to make the best use of "Yookoso! An Invitation to Contemporary Japanese".

Rating:
Summary: Yookoso! An Invitation to Hell
Review: If you want to learn Japanese, watch anime. But do not buy this book! I've seen better written Japanese instructions on the back of chopsticks. If you're taking a class that uses Yookoso! drop the class, run away, drop out of school if you have to. Any fate is better than learning Japanese from this book. Any half-witted Japanese instructor will know better than to use this paperweight to teach Japanese. If you find yourself in your university bookstore buying this contraption a better alternative might be burning down the school and labeling it, "not fit for education". If you have any interest, and more importantly respect for the Japanese culture do not buy this book!
However, if you enjoy tedium, monotony, poorly written explanations, learning about 10 grammar rules a day, and take pleasure in reading fictional linguistics then buy Yookoso! It'll be the best waste of [money] you'll ever spend.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent book....
Review: It is an excellent book for studying Japanese - I mean the REAL Japanese language (not the few phrases one uses to pick up a Japanese girl friend). Those who believe in learning Japanese with romanization will be lost at their very first attempt to master this very language. It is the a very hard language to master and determination is "sine qua non" and the only foolproof to it.

This book moves quickly from a few pages of romanized spelling to kana (Japanese syllabary) then to kanji (Chinese characters). This may be hard for English speakers but to be in the habit of dealing with the real language is indeed the sooner the better. Unless of course, one desires a book used as short hand for picking a Japanese girl friend, this is not at all the propriate material. On the other hand, this may come as a surprise to you: upon one's arrival in Japan, one finds that everything is written in kana and kanj - no joking, while one expected Roman Alphabet to be the one and only writing system even for those backwards people abroad. It would be so painful to translate one's romanized vocabulary back into kana and kanji. Therefore act as soon as you can to master the writing system.

This book also has gradual yet fairly thorough grammer points accompanying the text or otherwise this book would not be useful at all. I have no idea which crazy bee has gotten into the bonnets of our modern liguists so they think adults can learn a second language the way children do - through the repetition and listening. Simply, as adults, we cannot regain the faculties of children and dedicate their time to sleeping and eating while pick up a few words once a while from those around them. Adults need to use the literal(written) language, especially if one goes to Japan to study. Therefore I went through the entire edition quickly just to familiarize with the language before I jumped into the dialogues so I knew what to expect and didn't allow unrealistic expections ruin my appetite for studying. In fact the grammer points in this edition are neatly divided into small and digestable portions along with cultural tips that matters enormously since learning a new language is really learning another mindset. Though there are quite a bit of kanji included in this edition, they are very relevant and useful and they are all paired with furigana (syllabary used to denote the sound of kanji). This is even a big help to me who already speak and writes Chinese. So take heart and do not have the least notion that learning a language is about finding a good text book then leave the rest to their own devices.

It may be helpful to give a brief introduction of the Japanese language here. Regarless that Japanese people have employed the Chinese writing system and the 40% of the imported Chinese vocabulary, it is Not from the Sino-Tibetan language branch as Chinese. Its true origin is in debate but Japanese surely share similar gramatical structure with Korean, Manchu(defunct), Mongolian and the rest the Tunguse family from the Altaic language family - relating to Arabic more than Chinese in such sense. Because of this, the Japanese language is a very difficult written language since the vast amount of kanji used, each has several readings depends on if it is in context of natively Japanese vocabulary or imported from China (even the time/dynasty when imported gives rise to several readings), Comparing to Chinese in which each character only has one reading (with of course, rare exceptions, most tonal changes). To me, the beauty of Japanese is in its very difficulty - having conqured the imposible. Other major traits of Japanese also include the polite form of speeches(unique), suffix conjucations(like Latin), genderlessness(like English) and verbs at last(similar to German). The foremost noteworthy is the polite form of speech because it is not only a matter of choice of respectful words but also a separate way to conjucate words. "Yookoso" gives good instructions of Japanese social decorum for one to understand the right level of politeness. The Japanese verb conjugations are EASY but please do not expect effortlessness. In contrast to the European languages' complex tenses and genders one really cannot complain about conjucating in Japanese - these conjugations involve only (roughly) two tenses, no gender and almost no irregular verbs (only two). In additon to that the Japanese speech is the simplest (even compared to Italian, I daresay). It is NOT a tonal language and has the least amount of consonants without consonant clusters think about the consonants and possible clusters in English and its irregularity in spelling) paired with only five basic vowels. Again expect some new sounds and try to keep up a good speech habit.

Well, I wish you good luck and hope that you may have much fun as I did with "Yookoso".

P.S., chances are that you are not arealdy able to write Chinese before taking Japanese, even with "Yookoso", as other reviews point out, studying on your own will be daunting - best for a classroom setting.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent book....
Review: It is an excellent book for studying the real Japanese. It is a very hard language to master and determination is the only foolproof plan to it.

This book moves quickly from a few pages of romanized spelling to kana (Japanese syllabary) then to kanji (Chinese characters). This may be hard for English speakers, but to be in the habit of dealing with the real language, is the sooner the better. This book most definitely enforces a good study method by early introduction of kana and kanji.

The book contains gradual and fairly thorough grammer points. The grammer points in this edition are neatly divided into small and digestable portions along with cultural tips, which matter enormously since learning a new language is really learning another cultural mindset. There is also quite a bit of kanji included in this edition; they are very relevant and useful, all paired with furigana (syllabary used to denote the sound of kanji).

I wish you good luck.

Rating:
Summary: A student's review of Yookoso (1st Edition)
Review: Personally, this language book went a little slow compared to what I was expecting. Before my first semester of Japanese, I had already spent 8 months studying on the net (learning hiragana, katakana and basic grammer structures).

Here's the pros and cons about this book: Note: I have not read the latest version (The copy at the university was pre-wrapped, and I didn't want to waste money on a new copy) So, some of the cons may have been fixed.

1.) Activities would generally come before the grammer notes. This wasn't too bad, but made you jump around a lot.

2.) The kanji were introduced a bit too fast. The first few chapters should have been dedicated to the first 80 kanji (1st grade kanji), and any important kanji. For most students in my class, learning the kanji over top of the kanas was hard.

3.) The Japanese text was quite small, thus making new kanji very hard to read. (The furigana was almost impossible to read)

Pros:

1.) Laid out grammer outline. 2.) Has a complete vocabulary list. 3.) Has plently of exercises.

Suggestions: (if the author reads this)

1.) The kanas could have come with a chart and a way to memorize them, rather than just a page or two.

2.) The verb chart should be highlighted according to their respected groups. (Volitional/Imperative forms one color, Present/Past (plain/formal) tenses another color etc. Some grammer examples in the appendix would help too.

3.) Have a supplimentary booklet with conversation relating to the grammer, as well as various readings relating to the vocabulary in that chapter.

Rating:
Summary: It's not as bad as people say...
Review: Seeing the "bad" comments here made me want to write a good one for that book. I actually used 'Yookoso' in my Japanese Level 1 class in university. I tried to learn Japanese on my own with other books, and all of them left me unsatisfied. I do not think there is any "good" book about Japanese... One has to use most of the time many books, and just use the best parts of them. Yookoso is a very good starting point for beginners. It's main strenght is that it uses the things you learned in the previous chapters in the new ones (most books I tried before were poor at that). The grammar points are not explained thouroughly, true, but beginners don't need more. It would simply be too much for a start. Yookoso has good exercises too, good kanji (although there could be more), and good vocab list sorted by topics. Overall, I certainly recommend that book, even though it is not perfect. ;)

Rating:
Summary: Yokooso I & II
Review: Sure, you learn some grammar points. But what happens when you want to look them up again, or refresh your memory. The index and table of contents are horrible. I had to write it all in by hand, just so I could find it again.

Rating:
Summary: It's not quite as bad as people say
Review: The book has its strengths, and its weaknesses. On one hand, you get good experience with Kanji, and it basically forces you to learn Kana early on, which in my opinion is a good thing. Too much exposure to roomaji is a serious handicap, and it will only delay the inevitable (painful) process of having to learn Kana. You're going to have to do it sometime. Might as well be sooner than later, because when you go to Japan there's no such thing as roomaji. I think people expect that they will miraculously learn Kana overnight and be able to read quickly. It doesn't work like that. You _have_ to struggle with it. There's just no other way. That being said, this book forces the struggle to be over with as quickly as possible by making everything after about the first 80 pages or so be in nothing but kana. By my second semester I could read kana at a fairly reasonable rate. But of course, you have to try. if you just do the bare minimum, and you shortcut by writing in roomaji wherever possible, you wont' learn Kana.

The biggest weakness of this book, and I haven't seen it mentioned yet, is the complete absence of any English->Japanese translation. How are you supposed to learn the langauge if you can't translate your own thoughts into the language? The Japanese->English translation you get with this book is practically infinite, whereas the other way around is none. But it's actually really easy to translate Japanese to English. You can guess the meaning of alot of the particles and grammatical structures based on other things in the sentence. When you're going the other way around though you REALLY have to understand what you're doing, and I can't stress enough how much more useful this text would be if it gave translation exercises.

The index and ToC are organized pretty poorly also. When you want to look up a word all it tells you is what chapter it was in. Furthermore, some words are introduced only in dialogues and get no space in the vocabulary list at the back of the chapter, so it's hard to learn all the vocabulary the book has to offer.
Also, as somebody else mentioned, they do throw alot of advanced things at you in exercises and in the workbook before you have learned them. The idea is for you use your intuition and try to figure out what they were talking about based on what you already know. Whether or not this is effective is debatable. The workbook is in my opinion pretty useless. The exercises are tedious, boring, and do not really teach you anything. I simply refused to do workbook assignments, because it's literally a waste of time. You learn almost nothing from it.

Somebody complained about how the book is littered with nothing but grammar rules, verb conjugation charts, vocabulary lists, etc, but in my opinion there are two ways to learn any language:
1) Study grammar, memorize vocabularly, memorize conjugation charts, and practice like crazy.

2) Go to the country where the language is spoken.

Since most people don't have the option of 2, 1 is the best. And there really aren't that many textbooks on Japanese. So this is one is probably as good as most other ones.

Another good place to find resources on the Japanese language is to visit the Japan Times Book Club website, which is easy to find through a google search. All of the books there are only available ordered directly through them, but I've found them to be quite useful. However, much of the material available there may only be useful after you finish this book (even if you haven't mastered everything in the book).