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Rating: 
Summary: A great place to start ... but not without a little help
Review: This is one of the best Japanese Grammar books I have bought. The best feature, in my opinion, is the fact that the books does not restrict itself to Romanji (Romanized Japanese writing) or Kana (the phonetic Japanese writing). Instead, all the expressions and vocabulary given is written in both Kanji and Romanji from lesson 1. And there are quite a few lessons (about 40)! So by the end of the book you will be reading page long passages in Japanese!. This may be a bit rough in the beggining (since reading Kanji is hard because each character can be read in *MANY* different ways), and that is why I suggest another book, like Eleanor Harz Jorden's "Reading Japanese", since it has many reading drills and will make you more confortable with reading more quickly. The combination of these two books makes the reader very familiar with common Japanese sentence structures and day-to-day Kanji characters. Definetly a great buy!
Rating: 
Summary: Superlative! Readable and Useful
Review: This is quite possibly the best Japanese grammar/teaching text I have purchased. It is neither pedantic nor superficial. However, it is VERY dense (in the content sense). The introductory text "Yookoso!" by Tousaku, at its slower pace, is probably more appropriate for someone who knows absolutely no Japanese (IMPORTANT: for "Yookoso!", buy the soft-bound lesson book and audio CD's too). If you know some Japanese but are a bit rusty, or if you are seriously trying to teach yourself, Bowring and Laurie is a wonderful reference book (although I find it very readable too).The book is organized into 52 lessons, each preceded by a passage in Japanese. Each passage in the reading is cleverly selected to demonstrate a particular grammatical construction. These constructions are then picked apart one-by-one in the lesson. I loudly applaud the authors for refusing to use ANY romanization except in the romanized translation of the passage for each lesson (which is isolated from the lesson itself) and except for the very early lessons where it is required for explanation of the syllabaries. This prevents students from handicapping themselves with a fake and truly useless writing system. It makes me very upset to see the profusion of Japanese texts peppering the shelves that concentrate only on speaking and lean on the crippling crutch of romanization. Try to read a subway map in Toyama or some other small city having learned nothing but romaji; let me know how you do. "Learning" Japanese without learning how to write is like "learning" physics without first learning basic calculus- you will never truly understand. There's no way around it: if you want to know Japanese, you must learn your kanji and kana just like everyone else. This book is heavy. At close to 500 pages, there is a lot of material to cover (the recommended study time is 1-2 years). Again, the authors win my respect for their completeness. There is no way around this. No matter what that computer software or those car-audio tapes advertise, I'm sorry: you cannot learn Japanese in 90 days by studying "just X minutes a day." The authors' tone is light and for the most part avoids linguistic terminology. American-English or other non-UK English speakers may notice some differences in diction, but this does not affect the learning experience at all. The material and the pace are very enjoyable. My recommendation, if you are truly serious about learning Japanese is the following. Buy this book, the lesson book (Volume 2), a Kodansha EJ-JE furigana dictionary, and a kanji learner's dictionary. Make a Japanese friend and/or date a cute Japanese girl or guy (seriously- you'll be surprised how motivated you'll become). Concentrate on forcing yourself to speak and read Japanese. Read as much every-day material as you can: newspapers, advertisements, comics, whatever you can get your hands on. Most importantly, be persistent! And if you can afford it, travel to Japan and immerse yourself.
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