Customer Reviews

Japanese for Everyone: A Functional Approach to Daily Communication

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As a third generation Japanese-American, my parents thought it'd be good for me--in conjunction with my Monday through Friday public, American schooling-- to supplement my education with some Saturday Japanese classes as well. So every Saturday for two years, I went to Japanese school. That was almost twenty years ago, and I hardly remember a thing.

Now that I'm older and appreciate the value of learning about my heritage (including the language), I was driven to purchase this book. Partly: a) as a refresher course and b) partly as new instruction.
After purchasing other books in the past, and some of those, "speak Japanese" CD's. This is the only book I've found that includes romaji, hiragana, katakana and some kanji. It's clearly laid-out, has a fantastic dictionary and reference charts in the front and back of the book. I think that persons interested in learning Japanese that have no prior instruction would find it a great resource.

There is a MAJOR problem with this book being sold on ... though: throughout the book, they make mention of "listening to the tapes". Being that ... doesn't sell the tapes (in fact, no one does. I had to special order them from the publisher directly in Japan), I've been finding it very difficult to make it through the lessons.

I think that ... should somehow acquire the tapes to sell in conjunction with the book, or you should hire someone who's fluent in Japanese to help you!

All in all, it's a great book, and I'm looking forward to getting my tapes from the publisher in about a month.
Shame on ... for not catching this problem!

First, to sum it up... "Japanese for Everyone" is the best Japanese tutorial book that I have encountered so far. Yes, I do feel strongly about this, which is the reason I am writing this review, partly to express my many thanks to Nagara-san for his effort and also to let others interested in learning the language find the perfect study companion. That being said, let me elaborate... The book starts with the basics but it wastes no time. It immediately introduces the writing system, which I feel is an integral part of learning Japanese. Each chapter is part of a related set of stories which follow the life of a couple (their hobbies, social interactions, work, etc...) from the moment they arrive in Japan. There are 27 chapters and they are clearly laid out in a very readable format. Each has one or more dialogue/story sections followed a vocabulary section and separate "Function" sections discussing the idiosyncransies of the grammar used in the dialog passages with lots of examples. Later the dialogue is also presented in English, but you are encouraged to comprehend it without referring to it. The chapters then contain more "Function" sections with separate "Grammar notes" and exercises with smaller vocabulary sections as needed, plus a separate reading comprehension and a listening comprehension section at the end. The stories and the related material radiates a very warm and friendly atmosphere which makes learning a lot of fun. There are a lot of pictures related to the stories and the exercises but they are by no means fluffing up the book but rather they are very useful and are an integral part of the chapters as study aid. The material related to grammar is organized in an amazingly well thought out fashion and it is perfect for future reference as well. Along with the grammar some of the more common kanji are also introduced at first with furigana showing the proper way to pronounce each and later without it if it is used in the same passage, to help reinforce the learning process. The vocabulary sections will also show these frequent kanji next to their hiragana version. Here I have to make a note that the earlier chapters also have romaji (Japanese text using English characters) under the dialogue lines and next to the hiragana in the vocabulary section to help with learning hiragana and katakana. Amongst other things the end of the book contains the solution to the exercises in the chapters and a handy Japanese-English summary vocabulary section for the words used in the book with a reference to the first page where the word was introduced. The inside front cover has a nice hiragana/katakana chart and the inside of the back cover has a list of the most common "particles and other grammatical markers" In conclusion the only thing I can add to what I have already stated above, that if I could have a single book to help me learn Japanese then this book would be it. In addition to the book I would highly recommend listening to Japanese music and also recording Japanese movies you watched onto tape or MD and then listening to them before falling asleep or while you are doing other things. I found this highly effective in getting used to the way the language sounds, and I think it is the best way to immerse yourself in Japanese short of moving to Japan... ^_^ Well, enjoy the book and I hope you'll find it as useful as I have.

Ok, first of all, you *must* learn hiragana & katakana to use this book. I recommend getting James Heisig's book on learning both.

That said, this book jumps right into Japanese, and assumes you will *work* to learn the language. Each chapter, assuming you do the exercises will take several days. But they are well worth it.

One great thing this book does is use realistic Japanese conversational structures. Most books use convoluted (to the japanese ear) but educational (to the learner) sentences. This book always presents a "typical" japanese construct (as well as the more educational styles).

One disappointing thing with this book is that I have not been able to locate the tapes that go with it. Other than that, this is a great book to learn japanese with (tho you have to be willing to work hard!)

Well...I had to learn japanese all by myself, and after going through other books (teach yourself japanese, japanese for busy people...) without success, I was amazed that this book expanded my command of japanese with little effort!I can't explain it but it makes japanese an easier languaje, not because it leaves you midway like other books, but because it's a joy to learn with it

I bought this book years ago, prior to a trip to Japan. I read most of it before I went, and it was great. The lessons are great, and applied very well to my experience in Japan. I carried this book everywhere I went in Japan to use as a reference. It contains useful information on life in Japan as well as the Japanese lessons. The first words spoken to me in Japan were "Pasupoto o misete kudasai." (show me your passport), which happens to be the first sentence in the book. I don't think this is coincidence, other chapters followed suit, applying directly to my stay in Japan. I hope Susumusan writes more books, so I can continue my studies.

I have been studying Japanese for about two years now, give or take, and have read many books on the subject in an attempt to figure out which were the best for learning. It is impossible to find one single book that will singlehandedly help you master Japanese, but this is a great starting place.

The book begins with a brief explanation of pronounciation and so on, just like every book, but for there on out it is fairly unique. It dumps you into kana (the syllabic Japanese writing systems) right off the bat, and romaji (romanizations of the kana text) are displayed only for the first three lessons or so.

This book eases you into kanji as well, displaying pronounciations for each as they are introduced. I think their method of slowly integrating the more complex characters into your reading is absolutely brilliant, and pulled off extremely well.

The story revolves around a young businessman and his wife travelling to Japan to live and work, and this, in a way, makes the lesson dialogues easier to relate to. Unlike some books, this text does not demand rote memorization of the dialogues and lesson vocabulary; rather, you simple start to remember them as you do exercises regarding the use of new words and terms from the lesson. That is not to say you will never need to just resolve to memorize something--this is the only real way to build your vocabulary skills. But the exercises are "user-friendly" and help a great deal.

In addition, the back of this book contains the audio tape scripts for the listening exercises for those of us who don't have the tapes, a rare treat indeed. Certainly, no listening comprehension is helped then, but it is better than nothing.

While I do sing the praises of this text, I would recommend having a basic familiarity with the kana systems (hiragana and katakana) before beginning this book, as without this it is too easy to get roped into simply reading the romaji--of which there is very little in Japan.

I return to this book to aid my learning time and time again, and I can assure you who want to learn Japanese that this purchase is well worth the money.

~Kevin

A recent review claims that you must know how to read japanese in order to use this book. This is NOT true.

What is true, and what apparently scared this particular reviewer away from the book is the need to learn the katakana and hiragana before beginning work on this book. The katakana and hiragana character sets are phonetic units (similer to the english alphabet), and are fairly simple to learn (a friend of mine learned them over a weekend and started using this book on that monday). Any of the small katakana/hiragana books availiable on amazon will do to learn these, and usually run around $10 US. In some ways though, it really is a pity they didn't tack a chapter on the hiragana/katakana onto the beginning of the book.

This is a very good basic japanese book, but it does suffer from some limitations. It's a bit hard to transition to a more advanced book after you're finished with it, and the book iteslf is necessarily limited in scope and vocabulary.

As an English teacher living in Japan, the majority of other English teachers I know prefer this book. Either that or, we're just incapable of finding a superior text lving out here in the Japanese sticks. (We don't have a lot of bookstores for foreigners out here.) It is a beginner`s book, but not a beginner`s beginner`s book. Meaning, you do need to learn Hiragana and Katakana to use it. Also, you might find a very basic vocabulary necessary before you can truly utilize this text. However, once you possess these skills, this book will undoubtedly give you a solid foundation of Japanese from which to expand on. But honestly, some days I'm not sure which is more amazing: how much I've learned, or how much I still don't know.

I have been interested in learning the Japanese language for several years, but it hasn't been until more recently that I've gotten serious about it. This review requires a bit of background, first: When I started learning, I began with the very basic "Japanese in 10 Minutes a Day." This book, though effective in teaching key phrases (question words, colors, numbers, asking for directions, etc.) does everything that's essentially wrong with language-learning books. It doesn't explain the "how" and "why" of Japanese grammar and says almost nothing about particle words. Then, I moved on to the Living Language coursebook/dictionary/CD set. The audio CDs were the best feature of this package, but the lessons moved much too fast for me. It's a great reference work for how to construct Japanese sentences and finding essential phrases...however, it is entirely in romaji with almost no information about hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Around this time, I lost interest in Japanese somewhat and it was a few years before I even attempted it again.
After this hiatus, I then decided to approach the hiragana and katakana. I realized that this was what had been missing from my study of Japanese all along. It only took me about a month or so to memorize both of them, with some help from websites and making flashcards. This is really the first step in learning Japanese...I think it might even be the most important step, in the long run. Then you'll be able to write the phrases that you're learning! Hiragana are for all native Japanese words (konnichiwa, sushi, etc.) and katakana are for words borrowed from languages other than Japanese (like "Amerika" for America, for example). Japanese For Everyone anticipates that you will have learned these (or are at least in the process of learning them), since romaji is kept to a minimum in the first three lessons. If you plan on learning Japanese without learning the writing system, than you had better look for another book. I'm not saying that it's impossible to get a handle on the language conversationally without dealing with the writing. However, if you know how to read and write Japanese you will probably find that it's easier to visualize the sentences and understand how words are formed. Once you've learned the hiragana and katakana, Japanese For Everyone is the next step!
Onto the review: prior to the lessons in Japanese For Everyone, there is a clear outline of the structure of the Japanese language. It explains pronunciation, sounds, syllables, and accent. Another section explains hiragana and katakana (and a good explanation of kanji comes later, on pages 94 and 95). Also prior to the lessons, a very good description of Japanese grammar is given; the sentence order is different! English is a SUBJECT-VERB-OBJECT language (SVO) whereas Japanese is a SUBJECT-OBJECT-VERB language (SOV). An example of English in a sentence would be "Fred eats chocolate". The same sentence in Japanese would be "Fureddo wa chokoretto o tabemasu." (the English translation would be, approximately: Fred chocolate eats). This SOV and SVO distinction is an extremely important part of understanding the core difference between English and Japanese. Of course, there will be some sentences with which this rule doesn't apply, but it is generally valid across the board. The beginning section also discusses particle words, which serve grammatical functions within the sentence (for example, the particle "wa" points out the topic of the sentence). Verbs and varying styles of speech (polite, plain, and respectful) are also discussed. Each lesson opens up with a dialogue in Japanese. These are intended to utilize sentence styles and vocabulary later introduced in the lesson, as well as provide a fairly authentic conversation in Japanese. Afterwards, a list of vocabulary used in the dialogue (braking it down into nouns, verbs, expressions, etc.) is given, as well as an English translation. The lesson is then broken down into specific "functions" to be learned. The first lesson's Function I is "Identifying Things: A is B: A wa B desu". Other functions include "What is this?/Kore wa nan desu ka", "Identifying things by pointing them out", "Asking someone to do something". Each function is accompanied by one or more written exercises that help to facilitate what you've just learned. This book provides very good practice for reading and writing Japanese. I'm not exactly sure how to obtain the tapes...I've heard that they are quite expensive separatetly, since they are not available with the book anymore. However, one could just as easily record themselves practicing the dialogues or ask a friend to help them converse. This might even be better than listening to the tapes, because it would provide you with additional practice on top of listening to them later on.
As the lessons move on, basic kanji is introduced (such as "hon" for book). In total, the book states that around 450 of the most frequently used kanji appear in the book. For those who are hoping to avoid kanji for a while, especially if you've just learned hiragana and katakana, don't be alarmed! The introduction of kanji in the lessons progresses very slowly; you'll probably barely notice them being there. It is best to think of them as "replacements" for what you would've written in hiragana before. Some of them are so simple that you'd be better off knowing how to read and write them anyway, instead of thinking you can get away with knowing the hiragana alone. Though different style of text, Japanese for Busy People I: Kana Version, does not do this at all! The entire book is in kana, except for some scant kanji references and pictures of signs containing kanji. For additional information on how to write kanji (with pronunciations, meanings, and word examples), hiragana, and katakana with the correct stroke order, Kenneth Henshall's "Guide to Reading and Writing Japanese: Third Edition" is the book to get.
Japanese For Everyone helps you get accustomed to the actual sort of Japanese you'll encounter in books, magazines, websites, etc. I think it would be just as useful for someone wanting to know "business Japanese" as for someone who was simply very interested in learning how to read and write Japanese for their own purposes. The only thing that I hope they do in future editions is to provide dialogue CDs. Then, it would be perfect!

I think this book is the best!!!

If you want to find the audio tapes, try going to Sasuga Japanese book store.
[...]

But be aware, these tapes are EXPENSIVE!! $106 for four tapes.

I bought my tapes through Kinokuniya bookstore and paid only
$55. But that was about twelve years ago. And I'm not sure if
Kinokuniya still sells them.