Customer Reviews

Nakama 1: Japanese Communication, Culture, Context (English and Japanese Edition)

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

 

 

I think Nakama is an excellent Japanese textbook for a college student like me. It has a total of 12 chapters, each featuring a main topic such as daily routine, family, health, restaurant, department store etc. Yes the book does work better in a classroom with the guidance of a teacher. It has many interesting activities to be done in a group with other classmates. When I just started learning hiragana and katakana, I really appreciate the mnemonic diagrams which are rather funny and therefore easy to remember. For example, it says that the hiragana の looks like a "No smoking" sign and is therefore pronounced as "no". The book also has many pictures which make learning Japanese fun. Besides, it also introduces Japanese culture in the beginning of each chapter.

The workbook is not as bad as described by other reviewers, at least it is great to me. I have been taking Japanese class for 3 quarters (~9 months) and finally finish studying the book and doing the workbook. I can now speak some Japanese and write a short essay with some kanji.

I love Nakama and also love learning Japanese very much. I am going to take more Japanese classes definitely and I am going to buy Nakama 2!! The only bad thing about this book is its price. I bought Nakama 1 for about $80, but considering the knowlegde I gain from it, I will probably keep the book. I recommend this book to everyone interested in learning Japanese.

I think your response to this book depends on how you like to learn a foreign language. Personally, I prefer 'direct method' teaching, which means that you learn a foreign language in that language with very little translation into your native tongue. Nakama is not designed for direct method and in fact is far too laden with English directions, translations, cultural explanations, etc. While this is understandable, to a limited extent, with a beginner level textbook it would be better to at least begin to incorporate the Japanese introduced in the course into the text. I find that all the English limits the rate at which I 'absorb' the language.

The book itself is structured well enough, beginning with simple phrases and hiragana and moving on to katakana then kanji. However, it might make itself more adaptable for classroom use by adding role-plays or other such speaking activities. Basically, the book feels overdetermined and slightly like a cram-school approach to language acquisition.

As for the other materials, the cassettes that accompany the Workbook are terrible quality - so much so that the Japanese members of my family cannot understand what is being said at times. The workbook itself is printed on very low grade paper that really must be photocopied before it is usuable (unless you work on a separate sheet and simple write your answers on the workbook page).

Overall, I don't think the Nakama series presents value for money or education. You will end up forking out ~$200 for the set of books and tapes that really, at the end of the day, don't really give much educational return... Unless you have a good teacher and friends/family to help you - which I did.

I literally just finished two college semesters of Japanese, both of which used this text, and it didn't make what was a bumpy ride for me any easier. I was a complete beginner when I started with this, and this certainly isn't the ideal beginner-level Japanese textbook to be using.
As said in other reviews, the book is rather light on explanations. Even the simple distinction between where and when to use "wa" or "ga" is not adequately explained and is a source of confusion. The conjugated versions of verbs are introduced before the infinitives, which is rather strange when you consider that all other forms are derived from the infinitives. Katakana and Kanji are rather kicked to the curb as they only make brief appearances in the text.

What I was really disappointed with was that they were no sections comparing the formal and informal forms of the language. And anyone who knows Japanese, knows that it has a very honorary/hierarchal structure. With different nouns and verbs that are used depending on who is being spoken to. You'll find no information on the informal aspects of the language whatsoever in this book. So if you want to learn how to watch anime in Japanese, read manga in Japanese, or play video games in Japanese, you're out of luck, as those mediums almost always use the informal style.
One last complaint, the audio tapes/CDs really leave something to be desired. The voice actors speak way too fast and I had to rewind over and over again to catch what was being said. For a beginner student, you need things to be a little slower because you need to be able to decode what's being said as its being said.

All in all, if your college is using this book for its Japanese course, go and visit their foreign language department and let them know what a poor book this is, or just boycott. I'm telling you, it's just not worth it, and I just LITERALLY wrapped up two semesters with it. So take my word for it and save yourself the frustration. In fact much of the time, I was reading Japanese Step by Step : An Innovative Approach to Speaking and Reading Japanese by Gene Nishi as a supplement, and it was so much better organized and thorough. I'd highly recommend it over this for beginners.

This is a poor excuse for a textbook. Let's start with the poor and scatterbrained grammar explanations. Not only do the authors succeed in obfuscating what should be simple grammatical rules by introducing multiple grammar concepts simultaneously, but they often offer only a single example as an illustration.
In addition, the authors introduce conjugated verbs several chapters before the infinitives.
The grammar exercises serve only to confuse students because they are often used to introduce exceptions without explanation.
The cursory treatment of katakana (introduced in "Chapter 3.5") also creates handicaps for students that last throughout their second semester of using this book.
The accompanying workbook is next to useless due to the number of typos, the amateurish layout, and completely fictional concordance (for example, there is one place in the notebook where they refer to a family tree illustration on page 95, but there is no illustration to be found on that page).
The accompanying audio (I tried the CDs, but I understand that the tapes are even worse) is of poor quality. There is a lot of background noise that muffles the speakers. The speakers themselves were apparently challenged to speak as fast as they could so that even native speakers would have a hard time discerning their meaning. For beginning students who need clarity and patience, this was most discouraging.

In short, I would strongly discourage students from taking Japanese at their college if this text is being used and I would hope that Japanese programs realize the low quality of this so-called instructional text.

I used this textbook back in college. I minored in Japanese. After going through Nakama 1 and Nakama 2, I was able to speak, read and write Japanese at a 9th grade level. I had no prior knowledge of Japanese before I took the course.

Disclaimer: In addition to Nakama, I had an awesome Japanese professor.

I have used this book from Japanese 1 to Japanese 4 in college. I loved it. It worked really well with its workbook, and we were very active with it. I do not think that this would be a good book to try and learn Japanese by yourself. This, however would be a great book to get if you are planning on taking Tutoring Courses with a native speaker. You could use this book in order to animate your Tutoring Meetings.
I personally think that it is very well done: I like the vocabulary presented, the presentation of Kanji, the grammatical explanations, etc...
I really enjoyed learning Japanese with this book. On top of that, you can use smart.fm in order to review your vocabulary on your computer, but also on your iPhone. It helped me a lot during my classes, for we had a lot of vocabulary to learn, and this was the only way I could learn them. Great site that supports this book!

It's an alright book. I am halfway through my second semester of Japanese, and it is *okay*. I don't to actually expect to learn Japanese from this book, thankfully my teacher is really good.

Anyway, to make up for this book I've started the AJATT method, so I'm learning kanji from RTK.

If you search around online, you can find excel files with the vocab and example sentences from this book, which is really useful for studying from SRS, I wish I had found it sooner...

This is a Seven Audio CD set. (Teacher's version) The study guide for Makino Hatasa Japanese 1 comes with a single audio CD. The student's version audio is available on-line at several University websites. (You have to look for them.) Make sure you have a purpose for taking Japanese, not just curiosity. It is a hard class. You will learn to read and write Japanese, (along with vocalizations). My son is doing well in this class. The learning curve is way up there.

This was a textbook that was required for my japn course in college. Overall, a little disorganized and I wish they had some better form of teaching it. I don't understand why we do not learn counting until chapter 3. Shouldn't that be taught in chapter 1? I also believe that romaji is discourages, since you won't be able to find a shred of that in the book. It's a pretty good book, but not the type of book that you'd want to get for self-learning.

I agree with the other reviews so i am not going to repeat what was wrong with this book