Member Review
Review by
Librarian 721318
Not a beginner book
My background comes from doing my undergrad in EAS and that I lived in Japan for 8 years; I speak and read Japanese quite well so I was sort of taken aback at the actual difficulty of the content. When reviewing this book, I looked critically at its use as an instructional tool for an independent learner and for a learner in a classroom setting.
Besides the full color pages, the nice bit is that the book does use furigana above the kanji, so those with a basic grasp of hiragana can struggle along with the first few pages of block text. Rarely is kanji not with out furigana....
Sorry, “hurigana”.
The book is split up into 3 levels.
The first level reviews the writing system. However, I was surprised the author chose to use “hu” rather than “fu” for ふ/フ - that’s not traditional for Japanese language learners and may be awkward for nonnative speakers of Japanese to understand the lip movement. It was an interesting, but welcome, choice to show the alphabet in another font, too.
It goes a little bit into the differences between commonly confused characters, which I thought was a nice touch. It even explains a bit about the JLPT and that reading this book will bring the reader anywhere between N5-N4 level. Awkward because up until that point, the level is way beyond a beginner looking at JLPT.
After what feels like eternity of taking an entire first year Japan writing history class, part 2 starts. Part two is where the description gets it’s chapters from. Each chapter has a script, research, and learning page. For example, chapter 1 has 4 grammar points that it covers. It does kind of an okay job on it, but again, I do not feel the grammar and presentation matches the level this book advertises.
At the end of part 2, there is an answer key for the activities, so answers can be checked.
Part 3 has a vocab list for each chapter, verb conjugation charts, and some other helpful things like calendar vocab and counters.
Overall, this is not a beginner book, but the title and description makes it appear to be geared towards students who’ve dabbled in Japanese language learning. Traveling is usually associated with tourist which is usually associated with new learners. This book would be best used in a classroom for study abroad students who are planning on studying in Japan, or who have started studying in Japan, with at least a year of Japanese study underneath them. Students returning to study Japanese could be confused and frustrated by the difficulty. Some of the translations in English are also slightly...off. This is pretty typical though of Japanese textbooks written by nonnative English speakers, but is unfortunate because it can trip up learners, especially emerging language learners.
I wanted to rate this a 3, but it may be a lower 4 if this is used as part of a curriculum with a good teacher who can go beyond the gaps in the book. Could be a decent review for JLPT 4, but is too simple for JLPT 3.
My background comes from doing my undergrad in EAS and that I lived in Japan for 8 years; I speak and read Japanese quite well so I was sort of taken aback at the actual difficulty of the content. When reviewing this book, I looked critically at its use as an instructional tool for an independent learner and for a learner in a classroom setting.
Besides the full color pages, the nice bit is that the book does use furigana above the kanji, so those with a basic grasp of hiragana can struggle along with the first few pages of block text. Rarely is kanji not with out furigana....
Sorry, “hurigana”.
The book is split up into 3 levels.
The first level reviews the writing system. However, I was surprised the author chose to use “hu” rather than “fu” for ふ/フ - that’s not traditional for Japanese language learners and may be awkward for nonnative speakers of Japanese to understand the lip movement. It was an interesting, but welcome, choice to show the alphabet in another font, too.
It goes a little bit into the differences between commonly confused characters, which I thought was a nice touch. It even explains a bit about the JLPT and that reading this book will bring the reader anywhere between N5-N4 level. Awkward because up until that point, the level is way beyond a beginner looking at JLPT.
After what feels like eternity of taking an entire first year Japan writing history class, part 2 starts. Part two is where the description gets it’s chapters from. Each chapter has a script, research, and learning page. For example, chapter 1 has 4 grammar points that it covers. It does kind of an okay job on it, but again, I do not feel the grammar and presentation matches the level this book advertises.
At the end of part 2, there is an answer key for the activities, so answers can be checked.
Part 3 has a vocab list for each chapter, verb conjugation charts, and some other helpful things like calendar vocab and counters.
Overall, this is not a beginner book, but the title and description makes it appear to be geared towards students who’ve dabbled in Japanese language learning. Traveling is usually associated with tourist which is usually associated with new learners. This book would be best used in a classroom for study abroad students who are planning on studying in Japan, or who have started studying in Japan, with at least a year of Japanese study underneath them. Students returning to study Japanese could be confused and frustrated by the difficulty. Some of the translations in English are also slightly...off. This is pretty typical though of Japanese textbooks written by nonnative English speakers, but is unfortunate because it can trip up learners, especially emerging language learners.
I wanted to rate this a 3, but it may be a lower 4 if this is used as part of a curriculum with a good teacher who can go beyond the gaps in the book. Could be a decent review for JLPT 4, but is too simple for JLPT 3.
*This page contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you.
