Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

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).

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! :)

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.

I was kind of exccited when I received the set with CDs (which turned out to be Audio CDs) and workbook, I am very disappointed with the book overall. The book is poorly laid out, and mainly text, not enough pictures or colour which I think would be more conducive to learning a language. Perhaps I am prejudiced by the fact that I am an adult student, and learning is not as easy for me as it used to be. I had previously used Kontakte 3Ed for learning German, where all introduced vocabulary and the grammatical explainations are located in coloured pages at the end of each chapter. I also think the author should not have used any romanji at all. The author has already stated that using romanji retards the learning process, so why use it?

Seeing the "bad" comments here made me want to write a good one for that book. I actually used 'Yookoso' in my Japanese Level 1 class in university. I tried to learn Japanese on my own with other books, and all of them left me unsatisfied. I do not think there is any "good" book about Japanese... One has to use most of the time many books, and just use the best parts of them. Yookoso is a very good starting point for beginners. It's main strenght is that it uses the things you learned in the previous chapters in the new ones (most books I tried before were poor at that). The grammar points are not explained thouroughly, true, but beginners don't need more. It would simply be too much for a start. Yookoso has good exercises too, good kanji (although there could be more), and good vocab list sorted by topics. Overall, I certainly recommend that book, even though it is not perfect. ;)

Actually, it's a fairly good book, but certain parts really make my head hurt. (as the above topic says) I'll start out with the good.

It has a decent amount of material. Approx 700-800 native words and non-english based loanwords, and around 200 required kanji, with perhaps 500 more shown. I'm glad that it touches Kanji, because many worse textbooks avoid it altogether for Japanese 1-2 (college) or Japanese 1. (HS) Like many people here, I was a serious language learner before I started taking the class, so the first semester was ridiculously easy, with a few of the Kanji being the main new material.

The classroom exercises are logical and good practice. I had lots of fun talking back and forth with classmates, especially because lots of them were just getting into it, heehee. They're valuable and sensible for functioning as a tourist in Japan, at least. Later chapters are more useful for those who plan on an extended visit, the closest to a "useless" chapter being the part in chapter 5 with terms to refer to your own family with. My family has no interest with Japan, it's only useful for plays/TV/RPGs or knowing what your host family's saying. =p

However, the most awkward aspect of the book was the romaji. Romaji is the term for the alphabetical representation of Japanese. Their version of romaji would represent おう and おお as "oo", along with ei/ee, which only causes confusion later when you switch to the kanas (japanese "alphabets") and have to remember which ones had special "rules." This is done to make them look closer to their pronunciations, and is completely unnecessary, because おう could have easily been ou.

The tapes themselves have a rough learning curve. After the first part or so, the speech goes straight to its maximum, native-like speed seen throughout the rest of the book. This leaves listeners running the tape over and over, no matter how well they can understand the sensei.

Harsh criticism aside, it's still a pretty good book, I'd have voted 3.5 stars if I could. My college could have easily chosen much worse.

I agree with most of the 3-4 star reviews - while this book isn't perfect, it's a pretty decent choice for a classroom setting. I think some of the material would have been beyond me without the help of my Japanese instructors.

I also agree with those who were impressed with the lack of romaaji - my class was fast paced, and we learned all of the kana in less than a month! @_@

Anyway, this book is a good tool for learning Japanese, when mixed with good instructors and some resources of your own - for example, I made flash cards that helped a ton. However, if you're on your own, you might want to pass up this book and find something catered less to a classroom environment.

80% of the other reviews are well stated at what and why this book is lacking. I stress that you 'jump' around alot and that grammatic and sentence structure rules (deep rules) are not explained. You are expected to just accept (?) and memorize. There are not enough reference pages or appendix to aid with lessons. There are way better books on the market to challenge and (most importantly with language instruction) to motivate. Unfortunately, this text is required for some Canadian universities. If you (the student) are required to purchase this text, I highly recommend the use of companion books to explain grammatic points that this book simply doesn't explain well enough (ie. Japanese for Busy People). Gambatte ne!

I studied Japanese for about one year before taking the class. I have used several language texts, including ones that teach in kana/kanji and in roomaji. All of them were superior to Yookoso. I am not exaggerating when I say that this text is inferior to the others.

First, the organization of the chapters makes very little sense. The book tries to put things into vocabulary-based chapters and fails miserably at keeping things from fragmenting. After all, most of the grammar exercises are unrelated to the overall theme of the chapters; that is, the constructions provided do not correspond well with the ideas presented by the theme for the chapter. Moreover, the grammar exercises themselves appear to be fragmented--grammar points are covered, the text moves on, and they pop up again later in the chapter. Nothing seems to blend together and nothing builds upon what has been learned. At least, not as much as in other texts.

Yookoso's fragmented set-up is not its only problem. It often gives little or no explanation of the grammar points, merely throwing out one or two examples in lieu of a more detailed lesson. I realize that this is a classroom text, but every other classroom text I've used was superior in its explanations and examples. The grammar is addressed with examples of a grammar construction and a sentence or two explaining the basic uses in the Japanese language of said construction. Despite this, the evolution of such a construct, methods for combining grammar constructs, and more detailed examples are omitted. This text tries to distill the major points and in this, it succeeds. However, the lab manual does not merely ask for the basics. It asks for complex sentences when the examples themselves are so base that it FEELS like a textbook rather than living language. In other words, Yookoso provides simple, elementary sentences and demands complexity from students later in the laboratory portion.

Language must be presented so that the techniques can be mimicked. If I'd mimicked Yookoso, I wonder what the results would be.

This book is poorly organized and gives little independent feedback. In our 100 level class we spent a whole semester just on the introductory section (some 80 pages long). These authors believe that you can't do a thing with Japanese until you've learned kana, but meanwhile they expose you to a myriad of other concepts without explaning anything. The glossary in the back is in kana also, making it impossible for the beginner to find anything.