Rating: 
Summary: Best product of its kind
Review: I've heard many language tapes and CDs and the Pimsleur is the best of them. While this is the best of the lot, and I recommend it, it's greatest weakness is the lack of scripts for the CDs. It is easy for a non-native speaker to not hear a whispered "i" or "u." At times it is difficult to hear an elongated vowel or the extra beat of a double consonant. Also, "t" and "d" can be mistaken for each other when one only has an auditory cue. If there were a script, one could see the spelling of the word and be better able to follow along with what the speaker is saying (it would help with review, too). Luckily my significant other is Japanese and when she hears me practicing she sometimes says something like "it's not "de" it's "te."I recommend you get a good English-Japanese dictionary to use as a new word is introduced to reduce the likelhood of mishearing the Native speaker and saying a word incorrectly. With the above caveat and potential solution in mind, I believe listening to the CDs can be of great benefit to learning basic Japanese.
Rating: 
Summary: Simple, impressive, carefully constructed
Review: I've never tried learning a language via audio tapes before. Currently I'm in lesson 7 of this Japanese series, and I like it a lot. It's absolutely great for anyone with a long commute. The lessons are carefully crafted and the information dovetails nicely, so that you aren't expected to know what you haven't been taught. Before this, I tried "Japanese at a Glance" by the Barron folks, and comparatively speaking it was awful. All in all, an excellent effort by the Pimsleur people.
Rating:
Summary: changed my life
Review: It was really heartening to know that I could learn a language without a teacher at my advanced age. Supplemental books are helpful, however. At this level I would suggest "Japanese in 10 Minutes" (hardly true, but it does have stickers you can put on the objects in your house to teach you the names of common objects) and "1000 First Words in Japanese." You are learning on a very basic level here on the first set of lessons---lots of repetition. The important thing: never miss a single day, even if it's only a few minutes. Also: as the lessons progress they get harder, and it gets impossible to listen and do tasks at the same time. You need to sit in a chair and concentrate. Don't be afraid to repeat the lessons. In a year's time you will be speaking elementary Japanese from ground zero.
Rating:
Summary: Pimsleur Teaching Method
Review: Pimsleur does and excellent job of organizing this tape set in a way that I can remember just about everything I learned. No learn-test-forget like classic schooling. Its pretty expensive but worth it.
Rating:
Summary: Good if you do not like to study books
Review: The method used in these CDs allows you to pick up basic sentences without ever studying a book. You will progress a lot faster if you do, but I think these CDs are great if you want to listen to them in the car or on the bus. The price is insane, though - especially considering that one set of CDs only takes you as far as the first three or four lessons in most textbooks. Do not forget there are libraries in most cities...
Rating:
Summary: sukoshi wakarimas?
Review: The person who said "wakarimas" is a good example of the limitations of this product. (It should be "wakarimasu") For this product to be effective, a written course is also necessary. I'm just a beginner, but I believe I've done well so far when learning with Pimsleur, a Kanji book, and the Living Language (Random House) course (for its strength in grammar).
It may seem like a small thing (because Pimsleur does work well teaching spoken language only), but it only makes it harder to limit yourself to this method.
The price of these products is insane... I completed the short course (that I purchased for $20-30) but borrowed this from a friend also learning Japanese.
To people new to language learning, I recommend the book by Barry Farber: "How to learn any Language" - his story is interesting, but more importantly he gives a good method for learning.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent course!
Review: The Pimsleur courses are certainly among the very best on the market. The "just-right" speed of the set is amazong, it's fast enough to "sound real", but slow enough to get the nuances. One reader/listener criticized the pronounciation of ""wakarimas" vs. ""wakarimasu" - I may add that it is correct that it may be written "wakarimasu", but it is about 15 minutes into the course you learn that the "su" at the end of words is not really spoken in Japanese. Since they use native speakers on the courses, it also appears unlikely they'd make such a simple mistake. Good luck with your learning!
Rating:
Summary: High-End, Most Comprehensive, Lazy Man's Japanese
Review: The Pimsleur series is best for people who do not have the time to fuss around with coloring books and written material. The course is entirely on CD. You don't need to follow along in a book while you study. If you feel comfortable muttering Japanese in public, you can do your lessons while walking, biking, jogging, taking the subway, driving, or skiing -- to work, from work, on your lunch break, in line at the supermarket, you name it... It is the most comprehensive oral program out there, so if you want a comprehensive program, you should start and end with pimsleur. Don't buy some low-end learning product and then try to jump into Pimsleur II because the other product stopped; start with Pimsleur from the beginning. Each of the 45 CDs in the entire series builds upon the previous ones and reviews previous material. Drawback: yeah it's expensive. It's because no program can compete with them in completeness and ease-of-use. Other programs you actually have to set aside time to do lessons. Pimsleur goes faster this way, but if you don't have time for that, you just plug and play. If you're comfortable, you move on to the next CD. If not, you stay where you are. It's as easy as that. Of course, if you want to learn a few tourist phrases and be done, then find something cheaper. they're out there. Japanese learning software for your computer is probably the cheapest decent route. Drawback: eventually you're going to need to know how to read and write. Pimsleur does not teach this. HOWEVER, having the oral background Pimsleur gives you allows you to pick up the written parts much easier. So drop about $20 on a few hiragana and katakana workbooks and some kanji flashcards, and zip through them. You'll find that with the Pimsleur background, you'll be able to easily make sense of what would have otherwise been gobble-dee-gook if you had started out trying to write as well.
Rating:
Summary: Irreplaceable.
Review: There have been a lot of attempts to create a Japanese audio course as well as Pimsleur has managed to, but they always fall short for various reasons. The lessons are executed without the necessity to read or write anything, which seperates them immediately from most any other "comprehensive" courses. With just a half hour a day, you'll be able to hold a very basic conversation with another person in Japanese - and you'll be preparing yourself for further study, too! I agree with other reviewers that the course has some faults: pricey, weird female voice, and the male voice is too fast. But since there really is no alternative to Pimsleur for its method and quality, these problems are irrelevant. Highly recommended to those who wish to develop a motivation for further study in Japanese and get used to hearing and speaking the language on a fundamental level.
Rating:
Summary: Accept this method for what it is and you will be very happy
Review: To begin, a few comments to set the tone of this review... Yes, it is very expensive. Yes, it is audio only (which is the point). Yes, there is no explanation of the Japanese syllabaries. Yes, it is worth every penny.
Japanese I (3rd Edition) teaches you how to speak Japanese as a child would. When children are learning in the home, they are not assaulted from all angles with text books and written explanations. They learn by listening. Then, later in life, things like how to write the language they already know, and learning the reasoning behind the grammar picked up through speaking, all fall into place. As an adult, you can take extra advantage of this because of our enhanced ability to reason, and make deductions on what we already know.
This first level of the Pimsleur Japanese course focuses mostly on simple and essential phrases you will need to know to get around in Japan. You learn greetings, how to convey your mastery (or lack thereof) of the language, how to get to and from important places, counting (and money), and so on. Each lesson has a simple and logical progression, teaching you new things and then building upon the usage of what you just learned. The lessons also flow into each other, and usually have several minutes of review at the beginning of each one. They also make a point of bringing words you haven't used in a few lessons back into fresh memory by incorporating them into the new material you are learning. 100% mastery of each lesson is not necessary, as nearly everything you learn is reinforced repeatedly in following lessons. Being able to answer in about 80% of the situations is a more realistic goal. It is important to only do one lesson per day, although that one lesson can be reviewed repeatedly during the same day. Also, note taking or transcribing what you are hearing is discouraged as it will actually undermine the method used in this course.
So, I wholeheartedly recommend this course. It does exactly what it claims to do, which is help you learn to speak Japanese. If you are looking to do more than just speak the language, I still recommend this product, as hearing native speakers is invaluable. A few points to consider on your quest for fluency... It has become accepted among many modern educators that learning the kana (the syllable based writing of Japanese) as early as possible can make learning Japanese much easier. Knowing the kana helped me avoid thinking of the things I was learning in this course "in English", and instead I could visualize the words spelled out in Japanese in my head. This extra immersion was very helpful. The "readings" (extra audio to be listened to after the lessons) are also nice for insight into cultural differences and grammar in Japan. All in all, an excellent product!
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