Customer Reviews

Beginner's Kana Workbook

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I began learning the Japanese language not long ago. Although one can learn romaji, if you go to Japan, well, they write in Japanese. So, I figured I should start learning kana (and then kanji) as soon as possible. I looked through our library, and found this book.

It has been incredibly helpful in learning kana. Be warned, this is not a book that teachs grammer or any such thing, for that purpose buy a different book, or prehaps a computer program that teaches Japanese. But if your goal is to be able to have a rudimentary understanding of the kana, this is a great book. I have been learning for maybe 2-3 weeks now, at a rate of about 2 characters per day, and can write recognizably almost half the hiragana characters.

Also note, that of course practice is key. Every day I rewrite the kana I have already learned, and do pages of practice of the new characters. I also suggest photocopying the page you're using two or three times, as the one page in the book will never be enough, and you may wish to use it again later.

Finally, this book actually teaches only the basic characters, modified characters (with nigori or maru) are only shown in pictures. However, that's no major setback, as they're not so different as to require another set of pages. I am also using this book in conjunction with a website that shows moving .gifs of how to write the kana figures. Between the two, I have been able to learn kana quickly.

Realize, of course, that this book does not garuntee mastery of kana, nor does it make it unbelieveably easy. The Japanese alphabets are difficult to learn, plain and simple. However, this book certainly makes it easier. It's great for self-study, and better if you have a native Japanese person to tell you where your mistakes are (but we all know not everyone has a Japanese person coincidentally living next to them).

All in all, if you're set on learning kana, buy this book!

We used this book to learn hiragana and katakana after moving to Japan six months ago. We have two adults and two kids (ages 6 & 9) and all of us can now read and write both syllabaries. We're not fast, but we can do it!

We copied the pages to use like worksheets and that worked out well, since just writing something once in a workbook is not adequate. The syllables are not taught in Japanese order, but in order of easier to harder, and that worked out well, since you built up confidence and skill as you went. You can easily relearn them in the proper order once you have the forms down. Our kids now do calligraphy in their school as well as the Japanese kids.

Japanese adults use kanji in their writing, but also use hiragana and katakana, so you can express yourself in writing easily without knowing any kanji if you know these two sylabaries. They can't always understand words written in with "romanzi" or our alphabet as easily. I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn the basic writing of Japan.

The first step to learning Japanese is to learn kana, both hiragana and katakana. It is just like learning the Alphabet. The more difficult Kanji comes only after mastering the two basic writing systems. All quality Japanese books will use a kana base, rather than a romaji (English writing of Japanese) base.

Kana learning is incredibly simple, and is basically learning the strokes, then getting a good workbook for practice. I found the "Beginner's Kana Workbook" to be an excellent tool in kana acquisition, with appropriate exercises for both writing forms. Also, hiragana and katakana are combined in one book, as they should be, for a good price.

Make no mistake, this book has one purpose and one purpose only: to show you how to write the japanese characters within hiragana and katakana. It has ample space to practise, and explains in what order the strokes should be for proper writing.
I found it refreshing to use to remember what each character actually means and would recommend it as a good supplement aid to any japanese language course. (personal or class)

I work for a Japanese company here in the US, and learning Japanese for me is essential to my job. I not only see print, but handwriting on a daily basis. This book is fantastic!

It shows the reader exactly how to make the strokes, in what order the strokes are made, and implied relation between Hiragana and Katakana. This is truly the first book to buy when learning Japanese. You must be able to identify the characters before building a sufficient vocabulary!

This is better than the worksheets we get here in the US when learning English. You will be glad that you bought this book!!!

This book is excellent for anyone wanting to learn Hiragana or Katakana. You can work at your own pace; there are plenty of words and symbols to practice. It's even better to copy the pages as worksheets so you can continue to use the book for review. For me, it is helping with my pronunciation of Japanese syllables and vowels. I definitely recommend this workbook. It's definitely worth it.

The beginner's kana workbook is clear and neat and it gives the right order for the pen strokes to be done. It also has an appealing global approach to kana and includes a final section of useful ready-to-use sentences that help get started with Japanese reading.
Nevertheless it lacks of more explanations about handwritten Japanese and about the commonest variations (e.g. for the "sa" sound). The hirigana way of writing of some basic greetings words that people mostly read in the romanji form of writing are also missed.

The beginner's kana workbook is clear and neat and it gives the right order for the pen strokes to be done. It also has an appealing global approach to kana and includes a final section of useful ready-to-use sentences that help get started with Japanese reading.
Nevertheless it lacks of more explanations about handwritten Japanese and about the commonest variations (e.g. for the "sa" sound). The hirigana way of writing of some basic greetings words that people mostly read in the romanji form of writing are also missed.

This book was one of the first books i bought on Japanese script, and regretfully one of my worst purchases. The book doesn't go into much detail and the material just seemed to be geared towards kindergarteners.
1. The first half of the book: tracing all the kana.
For the writting practices all you have to do is trace the dotted (well, grayed-in) lines; it may seem nice, but it's not very helpful for learning and remembering them. Think about it, when you're learning to draw, what's more helpful? tracing things over and over, or looking at an image and trying to recreate it on your own? the first method is merely mindless repetition while the second uses active learning which involves more of your brain to learn the characters.
2.The second half of the book: words and pictures.
Another thing makes you feel like a two year practicing with this book is the pitures used. After introducing the characters, there's a section that uses large childish pictures next to large squares to copy the characters. It's not very economical, though, there may be 40 some pages here, but each page only has 2 to 4 words on it (all nouns and verbs in random order). It's not really worth learning though since if you continue learning Japanese, you'll replace the kana used for the words for the kanji.
---Overall, I think the book would be good to use for a first grade classroom (although not all of it, i don't think six year olds need to learn the japanese words for "cocktail", "ashtray", or "cigarette lighter" Which are scattered randomly in the book), but if you're over the age of 10, look for a better book.

I was hoping that if I used this book, I would be able to do Japanese-ish calligraphy for some art projects. After a lot of practicing, which has been fun, I still can't make strokes cleanly enough. It takes a LOT of practice. I recommend photocopying the practice pages. And if you intend to do brush calligraphy, enlarge them while you're at it.