Ultimate Japanese Advanced (CD Pkg)

Rating:
Summary: Well thought out, a great book
Review: I agree with the previous review that this is one of the better books avaible for the Japanese language. I took Japanese for three years in college, so I was glad to find a book that started out with more than just travel basics. The thing I enjoyed the most was the fact that each dialog was duplicated in Kanji in the back of the book. The book covered a lot of grammer and I liked the layout of the book where it gives a diaolog and then reviews the grammar used in the dialog at the end of the lesson.

Like the previous reviewer, I agree that the focus was almost exclusivly on business. However, I would further comment that even though the dialog was almost all about business situations, no real 'business Japanese' vocabular was introduced. I would like to see a book that taught everyday, street Japanese.

In any event, this is a really great resource for anybody who has learned a little Japanese and would like to continue learning.

Rating:
Summary: Exelent book for non-beginer
Review: I just finished this book. If you already studied all the basics of most beginner courses and you seek for some advanced course this one is the right choice!.
The book come with 2 sets of audio cassettes first set for study in car without a book and the second set should be studied with the book. The book itself organized in very convenient form. The 20 lessons come in Romaji with English translation and grammar remark at the first part of the book. At the second part one can find the same text in kana-kanji with a list of the new words and Kanji. Additionally there is English-Jap Jap-English dictionary with references to the lesson where the work was first introduced.
For me this book was very helpful. I hope that in short future additional books for advanced Japanese learners will be published.

Rating:
Summary: There are very few negative qualities to this book.
Review: This book is one of the better language books I have read and used. It is quite clear and interesting, and has proven to be very helpful. The book is divided up into twenty lessons, each with a similar format. It begins with a few pages of dialogue, after which some notes on the more difficult or interesting aspects of the dialogue are explained. I quite like that. Afterwards it focuses on grammar and then introduces a few kanji. The twenty lessons are first written in romaji, and then repeated afterwards in kana and kanji, complete with furigana for each compund (except for one - I wonder if that was an error). The only negative aspect to this book is its tendancy to over-rely on business and polite grammar as opposed to normal speech. It is difficult to find books that teach Japanese the way it is actually spoken. However, this book does include some plain speech and guidelines for usage, but generally it assumes that one will wish to use the -masu form of the verbs, watakushi instead of watashi or ore for 'I', and so on. Nevertheless, I am finding it to be quite useful, and would not have bought it if it wasn't.

One last note: the system of romaji is the Hepburn system, with only some minor variations, such as using n before b instead of m (ie, shinbun instead of shimbun for newspaper).