Yookoso! An Invitation to Contemporary Japanese (Student Edition + Listening Comprehension Audio Cassette) [Hardcover]

Yasu-Hiko Tohsaku (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 7, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0072354267 | ISBN-13: 978-0072354263 | Edition: 2nd

Yookoso!, meaning welcome in Japanese, is the first volume of a two-volume series for beginning Japanese courses. Based on modern principles of second-language acquisition, it was the first beginning Japanese text to integrate the teaching of all four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing) and to be accompanied by a full complement of ancillary materials. Grammar is treated as a tool for developing the ability to communicate in Japanese, not as the focal point of the text. The illustration program (photographs, line drawings, realia) and the two-color, hardcover format is unique in this field, providing an attractive context for language learning.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 564 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages; 2nd edition (July 7, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0072354267
• ISBN-13: 978-0072354263
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,375,552 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It's not quite as bad as people say, April 11, 2002

By 

Zachary Turner (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Yookoso! An Invitation to Contemporary Japanese (Student Edition + Listening Comprehension Audio CD) (Hardcover)

The book has its strengths, and its weaknesses. On one hand, you get good experience with Kanji, and it basically forces you to learn Kana early on, which in my opinion is a good thing. Too much exposure to roomaji is a serious handicap, and it will only delay the inevitable (painful) process of having to learn Kana. You're going to have to do it sometime. Might as well be sooner than later, because when you go to Japan there's no such thing as roomaji. I think people expect that they will miraculously learn Kana overnight and be able to read quickly. It doesn't work like that. You _have_ to struggle with it. There's just no other way. That being said, this book forces the struggle to be over with as quickly as possible by making everything after about the first 80 pages or so be in nothing but kana. By my second semester I could read kana at a fairly reasonable rate. But of course, you have to try. if you just do the bare minimum, and you shortcut by writing in roomaji wherever possible, you wont' learn Kana.

The biggest weakness of this book, and I haven't seen it mentioned yet, is the complete absence of any English->Japanese translation. How are you supposed to learn the langauge if you can't translate your own thoughts into the language? The Japanese->English translation you get with this book is practically infinite, whereas the other way around is none. But it's actually really easy to translate Japanese to English. You can guess the meaning of alot of the particles and grammatical structures based on other things in the sentence. When you're going the other way around though you REALLY have to understand what you're doing, and I can't stress enough how much more useful this text would be if it gave translation exercises.

The index and ToC are organized pretty poorly also. When you want to look up a word all it tells you is what chapter it was in. Furthermore, some words are introduced only in dialogues and get no space in the vocabulary list at the back of the chapter, so it's hard to learn all the vocabulary the book has to offer.
Also, as somebody else mentioned, they do throw alot of advanced things at you in exercises and in the workbook before you have learned them. The idea is for you use your intuition and try to figure out what they were talking about based on what you already know. Whether or not this is effective is debatable. The workbook is in my opinion pretty useless. The exercises are tedious, boring, and do not really teach you anything. I simply refused to do workbook assignments, because it's literally a waste of time. You learn almost nothing from it.

Somebody complained about how the book is littered with nothing but grammar rules, verb conjugation charts, vocabulary lists, etc, but in my opinion there are two ways to learn any language:
1) Study grammar, memorize vocabularly, memorize conjugation charts, and practice like crazy.

2) Go to the country where the language is spoken.

Since most people don't have the option of 2, 1 is the best. And there really aren't that many textbooks on Japanese. So this is one is probably as good as most other ones.

Another good place to find resources on the Japanese language is to visit the Japan Times Book Club website, which is easy to find through a google search. All of the books there are only available ordered directly through them, but I've found them to be quite useful. However, much of the material available there may only be useful after you finish this book (even if you haven't mastered everything in the book).

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars At first I hated it, but then....., May 18, 2003

By 

John L. (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Yookoso! An Invitation to Contemporary Japanese (Student Edition + Listening Comprehension Audio CD) (Hardcover)

When I first started using this book, I hated it. I had to memorize classroom phrases ("Write it, please", "Open your book, please", "Pair up with a partner, please") without any explanation of the verbs or grammatical structures involved.
But once I got past the first 80 pages and finally got to the grammar portion, it was a lot better.

I COULD buy a book that explains the grammatical structures in Romaji (Roman alphabet) rather than Kanji/Kana(Japanese characters)....and indeed I would learn the structures a lot faster. However, I find that the struggle to read the grammar lesons in kana/kanji increases my motivation. Even the other Japanese textbooks that DO teach in kana have accompanying romaji as a crutch. Lucky for us Yookoso! readers, we cannot "cheat". Because of this, I can go to a Japanese news website and, even though I am only on Ch. 4 of the text, can surprisingly read some of the news on the website.

I am only giving this book "4 stars" because "5 stars" means perfection. And Yookoso! is far from perfect. There are many hiragana typographical errors in both the text and workbook which, to the self-study person, can be very confusing. Additionally, the index is quite poor....words are not referenced by page number. They are referenced by chapter number. Additionally, the vocabulary lists at the end of each chapter do NOT include all of the vocabulary words introduced in that chapter.

Someone earlier said that the exercises in the workbook were tedious and boring. Well, good! They are meant to be repetitious so that you can do them in your sleep and never forget them.

The textbook is set up so that you cannot forget any of the previous vocabulary and grammar lessons that you learned in prior chapters. In other words, you have to read and study this book from front-to-back. Most other Japanese language resources are written so that you can jump in anywhere in the book and learn a new concept. The reason the former is preffered is because it forces you to build your vocabulary and grammar skills before you learn new ones.

As I stated in my title, I used to loathe this book and almost dropped the course because of it. But once I got used to it, I realized just how lucky I was to finally "snap" and get used to it.

Don't skip class. Read the book. Listen repeatedly to the accompanying CDs. Do ALL of the exercises in the book and the workbook (whether they are assigned as homework or not).

And remember this: US high schools use this same textbook. In other words, it AIN'T that difficult! :)

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Unsatisfying, watered-down textbook, January 31, 2000

By 

J.J. Andrews (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Yookoso! An Invitation to Contemporary Japanese (Student Edition + Listening Comprehension Audio CD) (Hardcover)

I'm currently using Yookoso in Japanese class, and I'm unimpressed.

The authors repeatedly introduce new grammatical points in the exercises, but don't explain them anywhere in the accompanying text. They take complicated problems (like when to use "wa" and when to use "ga") and reduce them to a laundry list of useless suggestions--one of which I've seen mentioned in several other sources as a common misperception about Japanese. And when there is a simple grammatical rule which would save the student much time and aggravation, the authors coyly suggest that the student learn to "make generalizations" and guess in order to become a "better language learner." Er, is this a Japanese language course or a game of keep-away? The vocabulary is good, the exercises are good, and the speed at which kanji are introduced is challenging, but I'd trade it all for a textbook which wasn't afraid to teach me how to speak Japanese.