Customer Reviews

Eyewitness Phrase Book: Japanese (with cassette)

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

 

 

This book has a lot words in Japanese that you will have to know when visiting a country that speaks the language. If you mispronounce words from the book while speaking to someone, don't worry, they will correct your pronunciation and anunciation. I highly recommend that you get audio tapes so you can not only learn the tranlations from English to Japanese, but you can learn to pronounce them correctly as well. I am currently on a seven month deployment in Okinawa, Japan, as an Infantry Officer in the United States Marine Corps. This book has been a great help and it is small enough to stick in your pocket and read later when you are waiting for an appointment, etc. The trick to learning words from this books is to learn a little at a time.

Having been to Japan a few times, and exposed to the sound of the language, I can very well see how helpful this nice, concise volume is, and how well the phonetics work. It was well thought out regarding the most common and useful words and phrases, the portability, the division of contents. An easy learning guide, and great to pull and peruse on a short train jaunt.

This Japanese Phrase Book is a small and neat book that covers most eventualities for holiday and basic business needs. It looks at topics such as, everyday phrases, numbers, times, hotels, driving, travel, eating out, shopping, post office and banks and health, as well as more topics besides. It also includes a mini-dictionary at the back for those more common words. The layout is very basic and isn't quite as attractive as other phrase books I own (like the excellent BBC phrase books), but the format is easy to read from and reference. Like most phrase books this is easy to slip into your pocket and the use of romaji words makes this easy to use and pronounce. There is some kanji and other Japanese scripts, but their use is minimal and won't hinder your access to the language within these pages. A perfectly adequate and accessible phrase book for your Japanese travels.

Feel free to check out my blog which can be found on my profile page.

I found this little Japanese phrase book came in handy during typical everyday situations- dining, asking for directions, greeting people. Useful phrases are grouped by context (situation) which makes it easier to quickly locate the correct expression. Pronunciation guide was good but could be improved. Overall, I would recommend this small phrase book to any English speaker who plans on a short visit to Japan (e.g. on a busniness trip).

This book is a great tool to familiarize a western traveler to Japan. Nice comprehensive book, well laid out, good graphics describing a beautiful country.

While I speak very very very little Japanese, I noticed some discrepancy between the basic greetings and dialogue that I have learned from many other sources and this book, and I was surprised. I know that the same words and phrases can translate in more than one way, so perhaps that is the reason this book translates it as such. The information is basic and good, it was lacking in some of the other basic information I was seeking. Overall, a good guide, small, light, great paper material, and easy to travel with, and it does not get wet easily.

I was in Japan for 2 weeks and tried to use this book on several occasions; it helped me only once. I guess what I needed was a small dictionary of food words. For example, I wanted to order "pickles" (Japanese style pickles, of course), but the word wasn't in the restaurant section of the book. I wouldn't recommend this for a traveler on vacation in Japan.