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Rating: 
Summary: Nice little Japanese grammar, and the price is right
Review: Considering this book is over 240 pages long despite it's small size, and does a very nice job with the grammar, and is only 7 bucks to boot, it's a pretty good deal. It's small size makes it very portable and it would practically fit in your pocket.The author includes separate chapters on all the parts of speech, nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and so on, and most of the book is taken up by those aspects of the grammar. At the back of the book there is a Special Topics section. These include chapters or sections on Numbers, Telling Time, Classifiers, Days, Months, Seasons, and the Weather, Family Relationships, Useful Phrases, Borrowed Words (mainly from Chinese), Synonyms, Antonyms, Short and Long Vowels, Double Consonants, Same Pronunciation but Different Meaning (for 25 words), Different Pitch, Different Meaning (for 16 words), and a 250-word vocabulary list at the very back. The beginning of the book has chapters on pronunciation and phonetics, word order, and the Japanese writing system. The font is color-coded for certain things, which some people may find easier on the eye. I sort of wish language books, like the 501 Verbs books that are so well-known, wouldn't do this, but it's probably okay for most people. Japanese has one great advantage over the typical Indo-European language in that it has almost 100% regular verbs. There are only two that are irregular. (Turkish is one of the few languages I've seen with no irregular verbs). It lacks many of the tenses European and other languages have, and it lacks a true future tense. There is no case system such as in German, Russian, Latin, and Greek. However, it makes up for that in the complexity of its modal verbs or mood constructions, which signify conditionality, probability, unrcentainty, or the attitude of the speaker toward the subject. And the particle system, which serves diverse functions, from modifying the meanings of verbs to marking the subject or topic of a sentence, is also something very foreign to Indo-European language speakers, and is perhaps the most distinguishing feature of the language. Another odd aspect of Japanese that is very different from most languages is that adjectives actually belong to verbs rather than nouns and are inflected to agree with them. A small grammar like this can't give you everything you need to know about these topics, but this little grammar is still a nice, compact resource, and as I said, the price is right. I you get a book on the particle system, such as A Dictionary of Japanese Particles, by Sue A. Kawashima, which treats 100 of the most important particles, you should be in pretty good shape.
Rating: 
Summary: good resource, bad romaji
Review: Overall, this book is a very good resource for beginning or intermediate students. It begins by explaining some of the very basic differences between English and Japanese (word order, verbs, etc) and moves on to some basic Japanese particles and their usage. The particles all have example sentences to show how they are used. The main part of the text is a section showing different conjugations of verbs, all complete with example sentences. Verb conjugations include plain and proper forms, gerund, some conditional and imperative forms, honorific, and maybe a couple others. Actually I have yet to study some of the verb forms but there is a nice section showing in a chart form about 10 verbs with different conjugations. Near the end of the book you get various little sections which cover topics such as counting numbers, calendar dates, suffixes for counting items, helpful Japanese phrases, and some others too; I can't remember all of them. At the end of the book is a glossary of different words that were used in the book. A very good overall resource... So why the 3 star rating? The answer is simple. All romaji and absolutely no Japanese script. Actually I take that back. At the beginning of the book there are 3 or 4 pages explaining what a kanji is and where it is from. You will see the kanji for mountain, person, and Japan. Included in this 3 or 4 pages is a chart of both the katakana and the hiragana. After this point you will see no Japanese script at all.... very annoying. If you despise romaji, do not get this book. Otherwise you can do like I do, you can write all example sentences and words in Japanese (there is usually some white space) and then proceed to cross out all romaji so you do not have to read it; then you will also have some practice with writing.
This book would have earned 5 stars had it been written in Japanese characters. Still, I would recommend this book to all beginner and intermediate students as a basic overview of grammar and verbs. Oh yeah, the price is right too:)
Rating:
Summary: good resource, bad romaji
Review: Overall, this book is a very good resource for beginning or intermediate students. It begins by explaining some of the very basic differences between English and Japanese (word order, verbs, etc) and moves on to some basic Japanese particles and their usage. The particles all have example sentences to show how they are used. The main part of the text is a section showing different conjugations of verbs, all complete with example sentences. Verb conjugations include plain and proper forms, gerund, some conditional and imperative forms, honorific, and maybe a couple others. Actually I have yet to study some of the verb forms but there is a nice section showing in a chart form about 10 verbs with different conjugations. Near the end of the book you get various little sections which cover topics such as counting numbers, calendar dates, suffixes for counting items, helpful Japanese phrases, and some others too; I can't remember all of them. At the end of the book is a glossary of different words that were used in the book. A very good overall resource... So why the 3 star rating? The answer is simple. All romaji and absolutely no Japanese script. Actually I take that back. At the beginning of the book there are 3 or 4 pages explaining what a kanji is and where it is from. You will see the kanji for mountain, person, and Japan. Included in this 3 or 4 pages is a chart of both the katakana and the hiragana. After this point you will see no Japanese script at all.... very annoying. If you despise romaji, do not get this book. Otherwise you can do like I do, you can write all example sentences and words in Japanese (there is usually some white space) and then proceed to cross out all romaji so you do not have to read it; then you will also have some practice with writing.
This book would have earned 5 stars had it been written in Japanese characters. Still, I would recommend this book to all beginner and intermediate students as a basic overview of grammar and verbs. Oh yeah, the price is right too:)
Rating: 
Summary: Good Book, But Lack of Kana Has Me Wondering....
Review: Personally, I think this is a great book. It explains verbs and sentence structure in a clear and concise form, and it gets straight to the point, and I like how it is small and fits into my pocket, but it only gets 4 stars because of no kana
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good
Review: This book is pretty good. I like the fact you can stick it in your pocket. One thing I can't stand is books that are loaded with a bunch of "filler" space just to make it look like it contains alot of information. I think alot of authors could learn something from reading this book: That it doesn't have to be big to be complete. The material is presented immediately and in a clear fashion. It's hard to NOT understand the usage of all the different particles, pronoun usage, wa vs. ga, etc after reading this book.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good
Review: This book is pretty good. I like the fact you can stick it in your pocket. One thing I can't stand is books that are loaded with a bunch of "filler" space just to make it look like it contains alot of information. I think alot of authors could learn something from reading this book: That it doesn't have to be big to be complete. The material is presented immediately and in a clear fashion. It's hard to NOT understand the usage of all the different particles, pronoun usage, wa vs. ga, etc after reading this book.
Rating:
Summary: Beginners only
Review: This book provides a good introduction to Japanese grammar for the beginner and there are plenty of usage examples. However, due to its small size some points are not explained in enough detail and in other areas you are expected to understand the grammar points through examples alone. I would not recommend this to intermediate or advanced level students, but for the beginner it provides a very good starting point due to its clear layout and uncomplicated explanations.
Rating:
Summary: Good for "forgotten japanese"...
Review: This is a good book for those who forgot all the rules of basic Japanese. If you are a beginner, get a copy of this. However, this book briefly describes particles. Books I recommend are "All about Particles" and "Japanese Verbs at a Glance", both by Naoko Chino. They are more comprehensive on particles and verbs than "Japanese Grammar".
Rating:
Summary: A must-have reference
Review: This is an outstanding primer on Japanese grammar. Its small size makes it easy to tote around in a coat pocket. The explanations are very clear, and you can easily get a "macro view" of any area of Japanese grammar.
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