Workbook/Lab Manual to accompany Yookoso! An Invitation to Contemporary Japanese

Rating:
Summary: This book is great!
Review: Allthough I did not purchase it on Amazon.com (I bought it when it came out in '94), I recommend wholeheartedly that you buy it now! It's THE best book of it's kind, and will do you know wrong. There are a few errors, but only experts on the subject would locate them. Allthough the culture is changing in Japan, most of this holds true today.

Rating:
Summary: An editing disaster
Review: I have the second edition of the workbook and the second edition of the textbook. Apparently when they edited and "simplified" the textbook nobody bothered to update the workbook. As a result, the workbook references incorrect page numbers in the textbook, and asks you to know words that no longer appear in the vocabulary lists of the text. This series also emphasizes learning kana and kanji more than other beginning books I've seen, which can be good or bad depending on why you are studying Japanese.

Rating:
Summary: An editing disaster
Review: I have the second edition of the workbook and the second edition of the textbook. Apparently when they edited and "simplified" the textbook nobody bothered to update the workbook. As a result, the workbook references incorrect page numbers in the textbook, and asks you to know words that no longer appear in the vocabulary lists of the text. This series also emphasizes learning kana and kanji more than other beginning books I've seen, which can be good or bad depending on why you are studying Japanese.