Customer Reviews

Japanese for Busy People: Kana Workbook Incl. 1 CD

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

 

 

Some people may be confused this is the Kana version of the "Japanese for Busy People I: Workbook". In fact, this is a kana exercise book. It helps you to learn and practice writing Hiragana and Katakana. And yes, the materials can also help you to prepare your next book, the revised 3rd edition "Japanese for Busy People I: Kana version". If you have the "Japanese for Busy People I: Romanized version" and want to further your study on "Japanese for Busy People II", this Kana workbook serves as a big helper to strengthen your kana knowledge, because the "Japanese for Busy People II" will be written in kana forms only.

"Japanese for Busy People: Kana Workbook" is an excellent book for beginners to pick up the japanese sound system, the phonetic system, syllables, modified syllables, long vowels and double consonants. It comes with a CD to demonstrate the samples & exercises shown in the book. To help you learn writing Hiragana and Katakana, the book uses gray lines to aid writing the accurate style and correct stroke order. Some reading exercises are also included to get you familiar with the common japanese vocabularies used in the "Japanese for Busy People I", such as city names in Japan, various kinds of Japanese food, numerous of sightseeing spots in Tokyo, daily greeting expressions, etc. Besides, it provides tips on how to read loan words from Katakana, and some samples on how to write simple greeting cards. Overall, this Kana workbook will definitely help you to master the Hiragana and Katagana, and also lay a very good foundation for your further study on Japanese language.

(Reviewed by Otto Yuen, 11-May-2007)

*** AWESOME WORKBOOK, 2 QUIBBLES ***

Both the texts and workbooks in this series are *EXCELLENT* for learning Japanese on your own. In fact, these are some of the best books/tools I've found.

However, the publisher's description on Amazon is somewhat misleading. The *CD* has the conversation exercises, *not* the workbook. Make sure the CD comes with your workbook. (If you're buying a used book, ask the seller.) The workbook is *only* vocab and Hiragana/Katakana practice. (I'm reviewing the Kana version; I don't know if the Romaji version has additional lessons, more vocab, or less pages.)

That said, I heartily recommend this to anyone learning Japanese in any setting. Vocab (such as Japanese food) has drawings, not descriptions. Pictures are preferable to translation when learning vocab, unless the meaning would be unclear. I have a *quibble* about the illustration, though. Sometimes you can't tell what a few items are. These are simple line drawings, so they're easy to *see*, but you'll see a bowl of mushy stuff with dots in it and say, "What is that? Rice? Something else?" In those cases, I have to use my dictionary to figure out what I'm looking at!

Also, I wish they would *name* the *actual audio files* before putting them on the CD. A CD player isn't good for practice because the conversations are real-speed. You can't back up just a bit to repeat a phrase several times in a row! You want the audio as electronic files. But when you rip them from the CD to put on your iPod or other MP3 player, the files are random numbers. To use them, I had to stay up *ALL NIGHT*, listen to the announcment at the start of each exercise, and rename *EVERY* file. (There are several files per lesson!) I'm glad I got it done -- because now I can pause and back up -- but it was a *real pain*.

If you need a lot of practice listening, be prepared for this!

This workbook is a *great* way to reinforce your vocabulary (and your Hiragana, though I knew them already). And the textbook is *TOPS*! It's not just me; I run a Japanese-English language group and *EVERYONE* loves this series! My learning is going much faster since I started using it. Plus, it's not expensive, so it has helped our group have more focused practice without breaking our wallets. VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Pros:
* Book introduces both hiragana and katakana
* Includes audio CD with native Japanese speaker

Cons:
* The audio CD only includes one native speaker. It would have been nice to hear different speakers, a male voice, and different accents such as Hokkaido accent, Kansai accent, Okinawa accent, etc.
* The book in places uses large fonts and graphics. These could be sized down and more exercises included.

Minus two stars for the above two negatives for a net of 3 stars.

This book, even if one has not purchased the accompanying text, is a must in the sense that it is excellent in terms of a model for writing & then practicing both the hiragana & katakana characters. Explanation of sounds is also extremely helpful, as are the vocabulary sections & the accompanying CD.

I should add that I have a Japanese teacher & this is a great addition to what she already gives me. The ideal is also that one practices his or her writing in a separate book because writing a character only 10 times is definitely not enough.

First, I thought that this is the workbook to accompany the book Japanese for Busy People I: Kana Version includes CD (Bk. 1). I was mistaken, as this workbook does not accompany the lessons of that book but prepares the student for that book by teaching the Kana. Unfortunately, there is no Kana variant to the first volume, you need to use the same one that was prepared to the romanized version (Japanese for Busy People I: Workbook; includes CD (Bk. 1)). That was the bad news. The good news is that the few pages of picture dictionary that gives the words of some Japanese food and a Japanese room are a treasure because all the picture dictionaries I have come across so far are not Japan-specific but have images and therefore the words of western culture only, which may be useful for a Japanese tourist or a Japanese immigrant to the US or Europe but not to the student who wants to get familiar with Japanese culture as well as the language.

As I bought this book after I had learnt reading and writing the Kana, I cannot tell if it gives an effective way of learning them. What I can say for sure, however, is that it gives a good reference when I grow uncertain how to draw a hiragana or katakana nicely.