Product Description
Developed by a team of language experts and educators, thesefun dictionaries for children ages 4-9 are a goldmine of morethan 1,000 colorfully illustrated words.Features:* Essential words for young language learners.*Learn colors, shapes, numbers, family members and animals.* Every word is accompanied by a translation, a simplesentence and a colorful picture.*A conversation section includes simple phrases and sentencesused during a meal and when meeting and greeting people.* Special pages introduce such kid-friendly themes as clothing,insects and toys. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

Beware! No Answer key
It has a lot of explanation but the actual reading practice, quite a lot, has absolutely NO Answer key, NO English translation.

Outstanding
Between commitments, I have been studying Japanese for about 10 years now and have been looking for a book/way to study kanji for quite some time.If you want to study kanji then this book is beyond compare.I have yet to see any book which approaches this book for quality and thoroughness of learning.Yes, the romaji used is outdated (not the kanji as one reviewer said), and while that is a nuisance it is easily overcome and should not detract anyone who wants to study kanji from buying this book.After finding this book, I now find studying kanji to be something I look forward to.

good book for reading japanese but with prerequisites
In the introduction of RJ, the authors mention the fact that RJ is synchronized with Basic Japanese volume 1 (lessons 1-20) and volume 2 (lessons 21-35), e.g., "RJ presumes control of BJ 18, RJ 24 of BJ 34 etc.".So one should read BJ lessons 1-10 before starting to study RJ.
The romaji notation used by the authors in BJ and RJ is not the Hepburn one, and can be a source of errors for a true beginner, The Hepburn system seems more familiar.
There is a total absence of furigana characters to assist in Kanji reading. Those characters are helpful in the beginning. Their absence pushes one to double check the pronunciation of the Kanjis.
It is not exactly a self teaching guide, no keys to the exercices.
About the progressive introduction of Kanjis and their easy and permanent memorization, i am not far enough in the book to tell.

Out-of-date, but still the best!
This is a truly excellent resource for learning written Japanese. Great pains were taken to introduce the characters in such a way that they can be used immediately and repeatedly from that point forward. For instance, when beginning with the Katakana characters, rather than teaching the characters in canonical order, it starts with just the two characters "su" and "mi", and from those teaches you to write "Sue", "Smith", "Miss Sue Smith", etc. It then quickly builds on these, ensuring at each step that the next small set of characters introduces a large array of new things you can immediately learn to write.

Accusations that the material is out-of-date, are not wrong (this is the reason I must give the book four stars rather than five). The book was published in 1976! Much of the kanji is used a little differently, or has been replaced in certain uses by other characters. Of course, most of it is still applicable, and when no newer resources come even close to being as effective, you learn you must make do with information that may be out-of-date--better to have slightly-dated but solid knowledge of the most common uses of several hundred kanji than to continue to struggle to learn your first hundred or so.

Note that the author has written a more recently-published set of books, Japanese: The Written Language: Part 1, Volume 1 (Workbook) (Yale Language Series); I have not examined these but I suspect they may correspond to much of the same material, but perhaps more recently-updated. It might be worthwhile to look into those.

This book, Reading Japanese, is intended to be used in conjunction with a companion grammar book, Beginning Japanese: Part 1 (Yale Language Series) (Pt. 1). However, if you are already familiar with basic Japanese grammar, you will probably find that you can do without the companion.

A note on romanization: you should not be scared off by the fact that it uses "si" instead of "shi", or "hu" instead of "fu". Many Japanese will romanize similarly, and a serious student of the language will need to become comfortable with systems such as Kun'rei-shiki in addition to the more popular (at least among English speakers) Hepburn romanization system. Recognizing "si" and "shi" as the same phoneme with the same pronunciation will help the student become stronger in the language.

Weighing in at only 425 kanji, this book will clearly not be enough on its own to give you command of the written language; but it provides a very excellent start. Follow it up with something like A Japanese Reader: Graded Lessons for Mastering the Written Language (Tuttle Language Library) (another somewhat-dated but excellent book), which covers a much fuller set.

For People who are Serious About Learning in the Long Run
This book requires more of a commitment than the popular books that try to "make learning fun."It is comprehensive so that each lesson builds off of the previous one and is sequenced well at the right pace.

The outdated romaji did not matter to me since I can see for myself how FU and HU (or TI and CHI) are the same kana. The outdated version is actually just another perpective; the older version of romaji shows you in a clearer way how HA HE HI HO HU(fu) or TA TE TI(chi)TO TU(tsu) are from the same respective kana columns.

One still has to learn pronunciation from another source, probably audible. ... Read more

Product Description
This book has large, busy pictures for looki ng and talking, surrounded by small, labelled pictures of 10 00 of the most familiar things, to build up the reader''s Jap anese vocabulary. This is backed up by a full alphabetical w ord list. ' ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Maybe Slightly Fewer Than 1000 ?
I like the series and I'm not at all sorry that I bought the book. However ... reviewers (on the UK site)have already referred to the poor proof reading. Now I am an almost complete beginner in Japanese, but it wasn't ten minutes before I started finding lots more mistakes. It would be silly to list them, but sometimes labels are quite wrong; in one case two pictures side-by-side have been given the same caption by mistake. You might take the view that a dozen or so mistakes in a thousand is not too bad a failure rate. You might, on the other hand, like to look at Marlene Goodman's 'Let's Learn Japanese Picture Dictionary' which has the same format. I've not yet received my copy of that from the States (so can't vouch for its accuracy) but I understand that it also gives the kanji. You may find that useful.

If you are completely new to the series, it is perhaps also worth saying that of course simple children's-story-book pictures do not in themselves make the language any easier. There is a trade-off: some people will find that the 'everything you can see here on the farm' approach is not a good way to learn ... it's obviously not at all systematic. Against that, lots of reviews (here and elsewhere) suggest that it works very well for young children. It's cheap, cheerful, good fun - a way of adding vocabulary - worth buying, I think ... providing that you can get by without the Japanese for 'hedgehog'! (Perhaps the slips do not occur in the US version, but I'd guess the artwork is the same.)

Really good for learning simple Japanese words
This book was really good for learning simple Japanese words. I really enjoyed it and I learned a lot from it. It sets out th kana so you can learn from them and distinguish them. My complaints were that it does give you the exact English word for the Japanese word. It simply gives you a picture and leaves it up to you to speulate what the word actually means. Also, it doesn't give you phrases or anything, so the book is kind of useless if you are really looking for something to teach you how to communicate in Japanese. But I don't believe that was the intent of the book, so I letting those of you know to not buy this to learn how to communicate. Only to learn words. But it is a very entertaining book and I reccomend it.

Great Starter for Learning Japanese
We are Japanese Americans, and we love using this book to teach our children Japanese. We all know that most children love reading picture books. The drawings in this book are very cute. Kids love reading this book and they think it is a story book. Little do they know that they are actually learning Japanese!!

We also like to use this book to teach adult students Japanese. Like the saying "pictures worth thousand words", the grown-ups also find the classes interesting when using material like this one.

We have got 2 copies and will order more for our students.

Great for children or new Japanese students!
I'm an engineer for a Japanese company here in the US and I recently began learning Hiragana and Katakana.This book is fantastic to begin building your vocabulary.The pages are set up by topic and have the romanji and either hiragana or katakana.This book has no Kanji!I prefer that at the beginning of my learning, I see no Kanji.It is just too confusing!

I also have a three-year-old son that has looked at this book also.I'm simply amazed at how quickly he has picked up everything that I've read to him.Each word has a picture and he quickly recognizes it.He certainly can't read either the Japanese or English, but he can pick up the language very easily!

This a great addition to either a children's library or the new Japanese student's.

GOOD
I have learned most of the 1,00 words in this book over a short period of time. It is very helpful if you want to learn Japanese. ... Read more

Product Description
Renowned for its Japanese for Busy People series, The Association for Japanese-Language Teaching (AJALT) has developed a new comprehensive course for teaching Japanese to young adults in English-speaking countries.

Japanese for Young People is a new three-level series designed for junior high and high school students, with an optional starter level for elementary students. With an emphasis on the coordination of structure and verbal communication skills, this program builds upon the basics of Japanese grammar through the use of key sentences, dialogues, exercises, and entertaining activities. Exposure to spoken Japanese is facilitated by three compact discs.

Japanese for Young People provides the perfect foundation for learning one of the world's most difficult languages.

Japanese for Young People is a new three-level series designed primarily for junior-high and high school curricula, encouraging systematic Japanese-language process.The student books introduce the building blocks of grammar through key sentences, dialogues, exercises and activities.Workbooks contain hundreds of exercises and games to help with the written language, while tapes provide natural, native Japanese.From the authors of Japanese for Busy People. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

A Very Good Start To Learning Japanese
I used this book to start to teach myself Japanese. It probably is a little basic but the success I had with it kept me motivated and gave me enough of a foundation to move on confidently to more complicated Japanese books.

The use of key phrases throughout is ideal for users of SRS but also gives clear goals and the book allows for plenty of practice. It explained by example, which I find ideal. One bad point of the book is that it doesn't use Kanji at all. It's also very colorful. Adults might find it a little patronising but I would still recommend it as a first text book.

Japanese not just for young people
I'm not really a young person.Both of my kids are studying Japanese in high school, and I feel a bit left behind.Besides, I'd like to, some day, watch an anime without relying completely on sub-titles.The book is very gently paced and delightfully illustrated.Matched with its companion book (there is an information book and a workbook), this is a very friendly introduction to Japanese.Yes, there is a long way for me to go, but there's a book II, which I will get.

Helpful but Not the Best
Used the series for a class I was taking. Even with instructor assistance, the book wasn't very conducive to learning. Genki is much more thorough, and Pimsler is great for oral training.

Useful for older people
I bought this book because a group of people in the workplace are learning Japanese with a Japanese colleague. We specifically regard the structure of the book and the fact that been targeted to young people, it's easy to follow by an adult.
I recommend this book to anyone who wishes to learn Japanese.

Where are the CDs?!
What Amazon and the other reviewers fail to explain is that you must have the CDs or cassette tapes to properly use "Japanese for Young People, I" -- and that Amazon does NOT include them with your purchase or the book. Indeed, you cannot even buy the audio recordings separately (Amazon lists them as "unavailable").

Page after page of "Japanese for Young People" has exercises based on the recordings, which makes much of the book pretty useless. Wish we had known that before we ordered the book, as it would have saved us the trouble of shipping it back and asking for a refund. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (29)

Great conversational Japanese, if on the beginner side
I give the format an A+.You get the actual manga strip, it written out in kanji, hiragana and romanji, a literal translation, a colloquial translation and a very detailed explanation.Nothing could be better for learning spoken japanese.

My only complaint is that this book is (not surprisingly) geared towards the beginner.I started the book on page 180.But, even so, I think the whole book could be used for learning new vocabulary and kanji even if the grammar doesn't ever get too complicated.Not sure if there are higher levels of this book but I'd love to check them out if so.

Good book for intermediate learners
This is a good book to learn Japanese, the manga format makes it really appealing and easy to follow. The lessons are structured nicely, best if youfollow the order in which they are presented and the grammar explanations are really helpful and clear. However, this is not a book for beginners. Even if you got the romanization of every kana and kanji, my advice is that you master already the kana and know at least 200 - 300 kanji before you start using this book, since it won't give you any advice about how to write and read them.

These textbooks of Informal Japanese should be as mandatory as the textbooks of Formal Japanese.
Superb. This is THE resource if you want to learn casual Japanese. Polite and casual Japanese are both crucial to learning the language. Regular textbooks (like college textbooks, "Minna No Nihongo", "Japanese for Busy People", etc.) will teach you polite Japanese. But "Japanese the Manga Way" will teach you casual Japanese.

WARNING: This book is not really for beginners. Unless you already know all of your kana and beginner Japanese grammar, the topics won't click past page 100.

Entertaining Supplement for Studying Japanese
As others have noted, this is not a stand-alone book for learning Japanese--but then, alas, this fiendishly difficult language requires a variety of books anyway. However, it does provide a thorough review of basic grammar and great colloquial phrases and structures, using panels from actual manga. It's a useful resource for someone who has a bit of Japanese and needs the reinforcement--much more fun than going through a grammar with random fabricated sentences. I look forward to going on to read more extended manga,in the Mangajin series. For a future edition, it would be helpful to have all the grammar summaries as an appendix, and a good glossary giving all the words and kanji used in the book.

Japanese theManga way
I like this book, it's a good intro to Japanese culture and language in a cute and informative way. It is a bitmore simplify then the defunct Gaijin magazines. However, Japanese language is a mixture of Kanji (pictorial) and Kana(syllable) writing. This book is heavy in the Kana. It would have been nicer if some basic Kanji was introduce. For a better intro to Japanese I would recommend the Mangaland series from Marc Bernabe if your interest is in Kanji. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Great for kinesthetic learners: learn characters by practicing writing them
We recently moved to Japan and we see characters everywhere: road signs, menus, adds...I can't seem to memorize characters without writing them first.This book easily teaches you the proper stroke order for writing each character.My Japanese neighbor told me that the first characters in the book are what children start learning in grade-school. The characters get gradually more complex until by the end of the book they are high school/college level.You really do need to know characters to get by in Japan.I highly recommend this book.

Lacking useful information.
I find this book to be quite useless.I never use it.It is great for stroke order, but that's about it.It resembles more of a kanji dictionary without much substance (buy a real dictionary if you will only use this book that purpose).Plus if you learn radicals, by the time you get a few hundred kanji under your belt you don't need to see the same stroke order over and over again.Also as others have mentioned after 1,006 it just lists the generl kanji.


I personally prefer Remembering the Kanji 1 by James W. Heisig, it is a much better tool at learning the kanji when used with an SRS such as Anki.For traditional kanji learning I would recommend Basic Kanji Book published by Bonjinsha co., LTD.You can also find the stroke orders online with Jim Breen's dictionary for free.

Guide to Reading & Writing Japanese: Third Edition Review
This is the best book for learning how to correctly draw the Japanese Characters called Kanji!!! I recommend to anyone trying to learn Kanji well.

Another well done from the Tuttle Publishing House
A clear & simple book on the learning of Japanese script.
I cannot recommend the works of Tuttle Publishing enough in language learning, be it Chinese or Japanese, they always make learning an enjoyable routine.

Decent, but lacking in many areas
The book contains two major parts. The first part contains the "1,006 Essential Characters." For all of these, there are stroke orders, a few of the ON and KUN readings, some meanings, as well as sample compounds. For example, for the character chuu (as in chuugoku, China), there is the number of strokes, step-by-step instructions for writing the character, the ON (Derived from Chinese pronunciation) reading chuu, the kun (native Japanese) reading naka, the meanings are middle, within, inside. Below these are three sample compounds that the character chuu is a part of, such as the word for middle school (chuugakkou). At the back of the book, there is an index of readings that enable a reader to look up a character.

All of these make for a useful dictionary. However, there are some flaws. The features I have noted above are limited only to the 1,006 Essential Characters. After the 1,006th character, one comes to a section titled "The 1,945 General Use Characters." This section is very minimal. It contains--I assume--all of the 1,006 Essential Characters as well as an additional 939 characters. These 939 characters are not accompanied with detailed explanations. They have readings and definitions, but no stroke-order explanations or sample compounds. The only clues for writing these characters can be found in the number of stroke orders, which are given, as well as within the user's own knowledge of stroke-order.

There is another flaw which, while being a small one, is worth pointing out. For the ON readings, vowel extensions are marked with a bar (or macron) over the lengthened vowel. For example, the ON reading for chuu is written as CHU (with a bar over the letter U). This is no problem for the most part, but when one comes to a character like too (the kun reading of the character for the number ten), it is spelled as to (with a bar over the o). If one wanted to spell this reading out in hiragana, one would not know whether to spell it out as too or tou. Like I said, however, this makes no real difference (except to the perfectionist).

This is a solid tool, despite its flaws. Nonetheless, one should look elsewhere. I highly recommend Kodansha's Essential Kanji Dictionary, as it is much more comprehensive than this book. I would consider the Essential Kanji Dictionary as an "upgraded" version of A Guide to Reading and Writing Japanese. Stroke orders are given for all 1,945 Jouyou kanji, the pronunciations are exclusively in hiragana and katakana, and some of the characters have dozens of compounds listed beneath them. One feature that A Guide to Reading and Writing Japanese doesn't have at all is what I would call the "radical aid feature." At the back of Kodansha's Essential Kanji Dictionary is a chart that contains all of the radicals of the 1,945 characters. This enables one to find a character that one doesn't know the reading of. In fact, unlike in the other book, the characters are organized by radical sections. At the beginning of every section, there is the radical used, as well as its reading and meaning. If one knows the meaning of a radical, one would know the category that a character using that radical would fall into. Also, the book has its own index of readings. The only useful feature that A Guide to Reading and Writing Japanese has that the Essential Kanji Dictionary doesn't have is that with the former, students know which characters are the Essential ones, thereby being able to make them a higher priority as they study the 1,945 Jouyou kanji.

Overall, A Guide to Reading and Writing Japanese is a helpful tool, despite its limitations. Nonetheless, an alternative such as Kodansha's Essential Kanji Dictionary is superior to this book in almost every single way. My rating: 6.9/10


... Read more

Product Description
Japanese Language, Gender and Ideology is a collection of previously unpublished articles by established as well as promising young scholars in Japanese language and gender studies. The contributors to this edited volume argue that traditional views of language in Japan are cultural constructs created by policy makers and linguists, and that Japanese society in general, and language use in particular, are much more diverse and heterogeneous than previously understood. This volume brings together studies that substantially advance our understanding of the relationship between Japanese language and gender, with particular focus on examining local linguistic practices in relation to dominant ideologies. Topics studies include gender and politeness, the history of language policy, language and Japanese romance novels and fashion magazines, bar talk, dictionary definitions, and the use of first-person pronouns. The volume will substantially advance the agenda of this field, and will be of interest to sociolinguists, anthropologists, sociologists, and scholars of Japan and Japanese. ... Read more

Product Description
Over 300 of the most frequently used Japanese verbs are presented alphabetically, with each verb shown in all forms. One verb is presented per page for quick, easy location. Here is an ideal review of Japanese verbs and their uses for students, travelers, and business people. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (5)

Book is from 1958 !!!
This is a somewhat scholarly book about the Japanese language. However, it is a translation of a book written in 1957. Why on earth you would spend time reading such a book I do not understand. The Japanese language has evolved during the last 50 years - and so has academic scholarship.

"Judgmental lingusitics" but not without interest
I picked up this book because I was interested in how Japanese differed from familiar Western languages, but I didn't want to learn Japanese.The book served this purpose tolerably well.Not surprisingly, it would have been more useful if I had known a little Japanese.It would also have been more interesting if it had been written by someone with a background in the languages of Europe.The author apparently knows some English, and the translator has fleshed out some comparisons there.But all too often the book makes statements such as "Supposedly in German..." or "Expert X says that French...."Most of those statements are correct but (surprisingly) a few are clearly false.

Most important, the author's purpose is not really to introduce Japanese to foreigners.It was written in Japanese, in 1957, after all.Kindaichi's main concern is more political: to argue that Japanese is a sophisticated and complex modern language suitable to a civilized people.In other words, he wants to show that Japanese is as "good," or nearly "good," a language as English, French, or German.He also wants to show that it is more civilized than the languages of the Pacific - - though comparison with East Asian literary languages are less common than one might expect.This task strikes me as an odd one, and it obviously reflects Japanese concerns of the 1950s.(One of the other reviewers claims that the author places fast and loose with some facts to make his political point - - I'm not in a position to judge, but it doesn't surprise me.)

This political purpose means that he allocates space differently than I would have liked.For example, he notes that Japanese does not have the variety of animal terms found in European languages (such as bull, steer, cow, calf, and ox for a single species).However, he argues that this does not make Japanese inferior to European languages because Japanese has a similar variety of terms for fish.

This kind of "judgmental linguistics" is always present, and to the modern reader, unnecessary.I would have liked to see more comparisons of phonetics, syntax, and other linguistic questions.Kindaichi's concerns and mine did overlap in areas of pragmatics and literary style, which I found to be the most interesting parts of the book.

A Translation of a Flawd Academic Reasoning
Don't waste your time with this book.

Prof. Roy Andrew Miller spends an entire chapter in his "Japan's Modern Myth" to pick apart all the academic smoke and mirrors Kindaichi hides behind to bolster the ideas of Japanese uniqueness. Kindaichi makes up references out of thin air and quotes long-debunked Western linguistic "scholarship" to provide straw men for his arguments.

Recommended Reference
A great pocket-sized reference for some of the more technical aspects of the Japanese language.It explores such topics as the geographical history of Japanese, pronunciation nuances, the impact of the the vocabulary on Japanese society, and the meaning of Japanese syntax and sentence structure.Although it tends toward being a bit dry if you are unfamiliar with Japanese, it is an engaging read for anyone with some knowledge of the language.Recommended for beginner-intermediate level speakers and above.

Excellent examination of the Japanese Language
This book is stuffed full of interesting and insightful information about the Japanese language and its place in the world.Kindaichi examines the origins and evolution of Japanese, what you can and cannot say in the language, and how sentences and expressions are constructed.

This is an academic work, and some of the text is a little dry.But it's more accessible than you might expect for a scholastic book that's been translated from another language.

The book is not intended as an aid to non-native speakers learning Japanese.Even so, I (an intermediate-level speaker of Japanese) found that it really helped clarify and explain a lot about the language.It gave me a lot more context and history, so that I could understand not just what is the way to say something in Japanese, but also how and why that is the way to say it.

I highly recommend this book to any intermediate level or above student of Japanese, and to anyone with an interest in linguistics. ... Read more

Product Description

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Product Description
The Japanese are extraordinarily polite and soft-spoken people who are always indirect and evasive in their dealings with each other. Right? Well, not really. They can be just as explicit, vicious, vile and downright vulgar as anyone else when they want to be.
This little gem of a book teaches you hundreds and hundreds of Japanese taunts, threats, curses and expletives that you'll never find in any dictionary-showing you how the Japanese really talk to one another when they are angry or emotional. It leaves no taboo untouched and sets the record completely straight.
Intended for students of all levels and anyone interested in how Japanese is really spoken, this book is absolutely indispensable for foreigners who live in Japan and want to know what is being said when someone insults you in Japanese!
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Customer Reviews (8)

Me Like'um
Been playing around with the notion of learning Japanese.I figured if I was going to learn the "high" Japanese, may as well learn the colloquial.This is another of those books where I may not use it very often, but it will be good to know.If nothing else, it will make you chuckle.

Great slang - if you lived in Japan 40 years ago
I bought this book to try and learn some more "colorful" Japanese.However, when I asked my Japanese wife (born in Japan and just immigrated to the US) if the book was correct, she said that a good number of the insults were from when she was a child in the 1960's.

It's more for having fun than for actually using but...
Well, if you really want to sound dirty in Japanese, you should study something else.
If you want to reharse your japanese, and to know how Japanese people think, that's the book for you.
The only defect is that is printed only in Romaji- anyway, when I feel blue, I think to myself like a third class sumo fighter , or say to myself I ought to commit suicide at the presence of a superior, and the world gets better.
A book to re-read, not only to read

Very funny and entertaining
This is probably the most entertaining book you'll ever find on Japanese, and it's probably the funniest I've seen on any foreign language so far, and I've looked at a lot of language books.

The author has over 50 years of experience with Japanese and Japanese culture, including having written over 30 books, and he brings that wealth of experience and a very wry wit and ironic sense of humor to this book. And he's not shy about including some very funny and ribald stories from his younger army days about his first encounters with the seamy side of Japanese culture.

For example, "Ian-fu" means "a girl with no elastic in her drawers." This refers to the women who were sent to comfort the men during times of social unrest and war. As Seward says, most of the comforting took place in silence and in the horizontal position. And a "baka no baita" means an "ignorant slut."

Besides the above, Japanese has so many words for disparaging someone's intelligence that it would be impossible to list them all, but here is a selection from the book:

aho--dumb-ass

gutara--addlepated loafer

gubutsu--foolish chucklehead (this reminds me of when I was learning Mandarin Chinese, and I was told that a "tsao-tao" was a "stupid, happy person"

baka--horse-deer (whatever that is) :-)

Then there are a few strange curses:

Kuso sh_te shine--sh_t and die

Kuso sh_te nero--sh_t and go to sleep (one would think going to sleep constipated would be worse)

Mama-gon--forever scolding hell-hag of a mother

Snakes and turtles come in for a fair amount of abuse in Japanese for some reason, and the phrase, "Omae no yo na dongame wo yatou to wa yume ni mo orawenzo," translates as, "I would never dream of hiring a dull turtle like you." And "deb-game" translates as "a turtle with buckteeth," meaning "a peeping Tom."

So overall, a very funny and entertaining book on an aspect of Japanese language and culture that I haven't seen addressed by the many other books I've seen on Japanese.

Great book But not alot of variety
This book is great. It is quite short though. The only problem i had was that half of the Slang was a diffrent way to say prostitute in japanese. I would recomend the power japanese slang book but this one is orginized very nice. ... Read more

Product Description
From the very earliest stages of study until far into the intermediate level, students of the Japanese language are continually scratching their heads over the usage of verbs. It is no wonder that they should feel the need for a solid reference book, one they can continually turn to throughout their studying careers. The Handbook of Japanese Verbs is just that book.

The Introduction takes the first step toward comprehension by pointing out the features of Japanese verbs that stand in contrast to their English counterparts, such as tense, politeness level, auxiliaries, and transitive and intransitive forms.

Part 1 shows through tables and concise commentary how Japanese verbs are categorized, conjugated, and combined with auxiliaries. Each form is followed by a short exercise, reinforcing the points just made.

Part 2 takes up the forms described in the first part and shows how they function in full-fledged sentences. Each discussion is followed by examples and exercises, ensuring that the student has understood the forms under discussion.

In the appendices, the student is offered a number of look-up methods, including an English-Japanese verb dictionary. This completes the apparatus necessary for a solid handbook on Japanese verbs, a book students can rely on for many years to come. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (20)

Full of useful information
This little book is a grammar on verbs. It is well organised and will help the beginner/intermediate student tremendously.

I would have liked a bit more advanced treatment so I only give four stars. I like a comprehensive grammar that covers a lot of ground on different levels. A book that can function as a desk reference. This book might not be meant as a reference book, but it is actually one of the few books that I've seen that covers verbs in a very clear manner.

Outstanding Help
Goes over numerous types of verb conjugations as well as example uses to help learn Japanese verb structure.

Very handy little book
This book contains all the different verb forms for the Japanese language.It also has examples for each one, and several verbs conjugated for every example.It is very helpful for me as a college student in Japanese.

Nice little book
The Handbook of Japanese Verbs by Taeko Kamiya is aimed at beginning and intermediate students who want to learn a lot of Japanese verbal patterns in one place.In this way, the book succeeds.It contains some 150 entries categorized by each verb form (i.e. "i-stem," u-stem, "te-form," etc.).This is a great aid to the learning process and may just save you from committing some grammatical gaffe later down the line.Each entry contains pithy, insightful explanations and three example sentences each.Additionally, the glossary contains about 12 pages of vocabulary drawn from the example sentences, which is nice for such a short book.

The categorization by verb form I mentioned is also a detraction, however.Since many of these auxiliaries can be added to several forms for a predictable change in meaning, I often found myself bored as I got further in the book, seeing the same auxiliaries I'd seen before, only now in the past tense or the negative.In fact, this bloats the book and if one were to take it into account, the actual number of unique entries treated is closer to 115 than 150.I think the book would be more useful with some sort of cross-referencing in each entry to note all the stems with which it can be used rather than segregating obviously related entries for the sake of the book's format.

Although perhaps not a fair criticism, this book only covers a very basic set of auxiliaries and inflections on the whole, which is frustrating to intermediate students wanting to move on.Japanese verbal inflection is a rich subject matter that goes well beyond the scope of this book, and there's really no reason it shouldn't have been covered more thoroughly.In additon to the bloating of the number of entries I referred to in the previous paragraph, the author did not include any advanced entries such as polite speech, literary-only language or any colloquial/slang language, which again is frustrating.This book could have been much more comprehensive, yet it comes off as elementary and repetitive.

The practice exercises in this book are basically a waste of page space, yet there are so many of them!These are all of the rather useless fill-in-the-blank type, take up about a page each and occur every 2-5 pages.I have never found that filling in a blank with the "correct" verb conjugation helped me to better speak or understand a language.I would have preferred that these practice exercises had been left out, to make room for more informational entries about Japanese verbs.

In all, The Handbook of Japanese Verbs is a very useful book that fills a need in my Japanese language materials library for verb-only grammar with adequate usage notes and an accessible format.Although all of this information is available in other books, no other books I've found have limited themselves to just verbs or treated verbs by "form" like this.The book could be better if it were less bloated, better organized and included some advanced verbal inflections, though.

Good book.
This is a very useful book on Japanese verbs. It follows the familiar classroom preview-content-review-quiz-test format, but it does not mindlessly repeat information to the benefit of the slower learners.

I would highly recommend it to any Japanese student. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
Comprehensive Japanese II includes 30 additional lessons (16 hrs.), which build upon the language skills acquired in Level I. Increased spoken language ability. Also includes a Culture Booklet

Level II will double your vocabulary and grammatical structures while increasing your spoken proficiency exponentially. Upon completion of a Level II, you will be able to:

* engage in fuller conversations involving yourself, your family, daily activities, interests and personal preferences,

* combine known elements into increasingly longer sentences and strings of sentences,

* create with language and function in informal situations,

* deal with concrete topics in the past, present, and future,

* meet social demands and limited job requirements.

Note: In order for the Pimsleur Method to work correctly, you must first complete the Level I language program before proceeding to the Level II language program. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

the more I listen, the more I like :)
I didnt particulary care for Pimsleur I (limited set) when I first started using it last Christmas but after using other CDS (and CD ROMS) Ive come to appreciate the Pimsleur approach much more. Pimsleur II price was reduced and there was free 2 day shipping so I thought what the heck I'll give it another go and Im very happy. Some stuff Ive learned so far in the first 5 lessons:

a) not yet
b) are you familiar with ---
c) how long are you going to stay in ---

Overall it's a very effective way to learn b/c the narrator forces you to participate. Each time I repeat a lesson, I pick up something I missed the first time. A bit pricey though.

An excellent language method
That's the second installment of the Pimsleur Language Program Japanese.
There are two very strong points to the method. One, that distinguishes it from anyother is the fact that everything is done orally. I thought I could only memorise by reading. This method proved me wrong. And with nowdays technology, from the ipod to any PDA or Pocket PC, this turns into a huge advantage as you can practice while being in the taxi, the tube or department stores.
The complementary quality of the method is the excellent choice of vocabulary. I have reach lesson 25 of Japanese II and I still do not know how to say the dog in Japanese, which pretty much any other method would teach you in lesson one. They teach you how to count, to express temporal and spatial concepts, to manage schedule, to speak about your family and they insist on collocial expressions. This proves to be the most useful vocabulary for the average corporate person and most of modern citizens. Well done. ... Read more

Product Description
The Okinawan-English Wordbook, written by the late Mitsugu Sakihara, historian and native speaker of the Naha dialect of Okinawa, is an all-new concise dictionary of the modern Okinawan language with definitions and explanations in English. The first substantive Okinawan-English lexicon in more than a century, it represents a much-needed addition to the library of reference materials on the language. The Wordbook opens to lay user and linguist alike an area heretofore accessible almost exclusively in Japanese works and adds to the general body of scholarship on various Ryukyuan languages and dialects by providing a succinct but comprehensive picture of modern colloquial Okinawan.

The Okinawan language as recorded in the Wordbook is that of the inhabitants of the southern third of the main island of the Ryukyuan archipelago, which stretches southwest from the Japanese island of Kyushu toward Taiwan. It melds the gentry language of the old capital, Shuri, with the popular language of commercial Naha and the various localisms of other villages of southern Okinawa. It is also the heritage language of substantial communities descended from emigrants to Hawaii, South America, and elsewhere in the past century. The current work comprises nearly 10,000 entries, many with encyclopedic discussion, drawn from a wide variety of sources in addition to the author’s native knowledge and from numerous areas of interest, with emphasis on the cultural traditions of Okinawa. Entries reflect both contemporary Naha usage and archaisms and areal variants when these are of cultural, historical, or linguistic interest. Thus, in addition to being a comprehensive portrait of the modern Okinawan language, the Wordbook serves as an implicit introduction to the rich field of Japanese dialect studies.

Prefatory material discusses the phonology of Okinawan and the romanization scheme employed in the book, with particular attention to phonological features of the language likely to be unfamiliar to native English speakers and those acquainted only with Japanese. A general introduction to the conjugation of verbs and adjectives in Okinawan is made as well. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

gutes Werk

Im Grunde habe ich an diesem Buch nichts auszusetzen. Ich hätte mir lediglich noch die Schriftzeichen gewünscht. Aber das soll meine Bewertung nicht beeinflussen. Dieses Buch ist klar strukturiert und ein wirklich gutes Arbeitsmittel.

A Perfect Window on an Oft-Forgotten Language
I discovered this treasure of a book through my public library, and when I found it available for sale on Amazon I immediately purchased a copy. To clarify, this book is a well-detailed dictionary on the words of the native language(s) of the Ryukyu islands (of which Okinawa is the best well-known). This book is truly a dictionary - it translates and summarizes the meaning of each word and even gives the Japanese equivalent of each word if one is available - and it briefly teaches how each word is used when speaking the language. (If you're looking to actually learn to speak the Okinawan language, this book is a good start and a great reference and teaching tool, but it would be best to learn primarily from another source when it comes to verb tenses and sentence structure.) The Okinawan section is naturally larger and more comprehensive than its English counterpart, and it includes the names and descriptions of rituals, birds, plant life, and foods found in the Ryukyu islands. Well written and easy to understand, this book is perfect for anyone who loves the amazing culture and language of Okinawa and the other Ryukyu islands. ... Read more

Product Description
The second volume in an exciting new series from Manga University - using original comic artwork to teach readers how to identify and write the most common Japanese kanji ideographs - introduces 80 kanji that all Japanese school children are required to learn by the time they graduate from sixth grade. Each page features its own comic strip, kanji pronunciation guide, stroke order, and English explanations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Good books, but weird organization of the volumes
While I do like these books, and I have found them to be useful in my and my families learning of kanji, they are organized in a completely non-sensical way.At the back of each book, they proclaim that they are useful in studying for the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficieny Test) exams.They are useful.. just not comprehensive.

For example, Volume 1, which has 80 kanji in it to learn, (despite what the paragraph at the back of the book says) is NOT the full list of kanji you would need to learn to pass the first level exam (JLPT4).The JLPT4 test requires 103 kanji at the current time, as well as like 700 vocab words, and basic grammar and listening skills.If you were to just study this book, and nothing else, you would surely fail.

At first I thought maybe the authors had just made an error and meant to say that the books were organized loosely based on the elementary school grade level.However, this is also not true.An example of this is 花　(はな　"hana") which is a grade level 1 kanji taught to first graders, but is in fact in Volume 2.

The only other glaring problem I've found with these books is the lack of any sort of English definition lookup or table of contents.While you can look the kanji up if you know the spelling in kana, being able to look it up in English would've been really nice.However, the books are cheap and fun and pretty easy to use.

Cool book
Nice book for the price. Looked like a lot of information. My niece thought it was great! ... Read more

Product Description
Bring Italian language learning alive with this 32-page brilliantly illustrated book with companion audio CD. Listen, learn and sing along with classic songs for children in this new dual language format. A perfect place to start exploring the Italian language with children of all ages! ... Read more

Product Description
Written for intermediate to advanced students of Japanese, this book focuses on the language used in real-life business situations, giving students both the linguistic skills and the practical information they need to conduct business in Japan. More than a guide to language and vocabulary, "Business Japanese" emphasizes critical thinking and cultural awareness. The book covers Internet and other technical terminology, numbers, and the phrasing of corporate documents. In addition to language elements, the authors provide a short course in the cultural learning that takes place when Americans do business in Japan, discussing topics such as interpersonal dynamics and communications styles. The book also uses the case-study method commonly accepted in business schools. Appropriate for content-based courses as well as the independent student, "Business Japanese" is not only a langugage text but also an intercultural handbook. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Good Seller
Quick ship though a slight lack of communication as I wanted to cancel my order immediatley following my purchase and wasnt able to due to no response from seller.

5 A's and 5 Stars
After taking Azuma-sensei's class at the University of Utah, I can honestly say from experience that this is an excellent text book.
I only wish I had it when I was living and working in Japan. ... Read more