Customer Reviews

Conversational Japanese in 7 Days

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As I am just picking up the Japanese language, I picked up what I figured would be a good beginner's guide, which is exactly what this is! I can say there is no way in heck that your going to learn everything this book has to offer in seven days (unless you're obsessive), but it offers a ton of beginning phrases, how to read basic road-signs (along with which bathroom your supposed to be in, which is helpful). It offers a lot of basic "hi, how are you? Excuse me. Where is ....?" phrases, and is filled with quite a few pictures to help illustrate what is being said.

It's a great book for beginners, and I am fairly pleased with it!

Conversational Japanese in 7 days is a great book for a beginner, or someone brushing up on japanese. It has great pictures of japanese city-life, breathtaking photos of the natural scenary and a little on martial arts. However- it is not very complete and its dictionary is small! But, if your looking to just get-by in Japan, and not trying to "become a native" this book is for you!

I live in Japan so take it from me, this book is not good. A lot of the vocab is painfully inaccurate. In fact, I wonder at times how this book was ever published. For example, the book claims the word, "domo" means, "Thank you very much." If you walk around in Japan saying, "domo" to people you don't know you will be viewed as incredibly rude. "Domo" is a, "thanks" to be used among friends only and in no context does it mean, "thank you very much." The book is poorly laid out and does not make a great deal of sense. The only reason I gave it two stars is because it has a few decent pointers on etiquette. Get it from a library if you can but DO NOT buy this. For those of you expecting to speak conversational Japanese in 7 days as the title suggests, it won't happen. The title is as such because the book is meant to be read over 7 days.

I only wish I could give this book 0 stars...because it doesn't deserve the 1 it is getting...but here goes!

All I learned in 7 days was what a waste of money this book/tape set was! This book, along with the cassette tapes, are absolutely horrible. The book does not follow what is on the tapes, and the tapes do not follow the book. There are sentences on the tapes that are not in the book, and vice-versa. Also, half of the important stuff in the book is not covered at all on the tapes, making the whole set utterly useless.

If you take the money you would spend on this book and burn it in your fireplace, then take the ashes and flush them down your toilet...you still would have used your cash more wisely than purchasing this worthless piece of garbage!

If you are intent on learning Japanese...try "Learn In Your Car Japanese" by Henry N. Raymond. It will take you longer than seven days...but you will at least learn more than how to say "Man I was ripped off!" in English!

As in other books in this series, the "7 days" is the way the book is organized into the days of an imaginary one week trip. You can't possibly learn the book's contents in 7 days. And even if you could it wouldn't help much - too narrow, too little vocabulary, not enough grammar. Cute photos, though. If you're going to Japan for a visit, get a good phrase book; if you really want to learn Japanese, get a course in it. Also check out kwikpoint.com for nifty folders of pictures that you can point to for your travel communications in ANY language.

The tapes were difficult to understand and hard to follow. The text books were long and boring and i still can't speak nor write Japanese!