Rating: 
Summary: atama wa itai...
Review: Actually, it's a fairly good book, but certain parts really make my head hurt. (as the above topic says) I'll start out with the good.
It has a decent amount of material. Approx 700-800 native words and non-english based loanwords, and around 200 required kanji, with perhaps 500 more shown. I'm glad that it touches Kanji, because many worse textbooks avoid it altogether for Japanese 1-2 (college) or Japanese 1. (HS) Like many people here, I was a serious language learner before I started taking the class, so the first semester was ridiculously easy, with a few of the Kanji being the main new material.
The classroom exercises are logical and good practice. I had lots of fun talking back and forth with classmates, especially because lots of them were just getting into it, heehee. They're valuable and sensible for functioning as a tourist in Japan, at least. Later chapters are more useful for those who plan on an extended visit, the closest to a "useless" chapter being the part in chapter 5 with terms to refer to your own family with. My family has no interest with Japan, it's only useful for plays/TV/RPGs or knowing what your host family's saying. =p
However, the most awkward aspect of the book was the romaji. Romaji is the term for the alphabetical representation of Japanese. Their version of romaji would represent ‚¨‚¤ and ‚¨‚¨ as "oo", along with ei/ee, which only causes confusion later when you switch to the kanas (japanese "alphabets") and have to remember which ones had special "rules." This is done to make them look closer to their pronunciations, and is completely unnecessary, because ‚¨‚¤ could have easily been ou.
The tapes themselves have a rough learning curve. After the first part or so, the speech goes straight to its maximum, native-like speed seen throughout the rest of the book. This leaves listeners running the tape over and over, no matter how well they can understand the sensei.
Harsh criticism aside, it's still a pretty good book, I'd have voted 3.5 stars if I could. My college could have easily chosen much worse.
Rating: 
Summary: One Horrible Attempt to Teach Japanese
Review: Given the complexity of the language you would think the book would want to make it as easy as possible to learn the language but it doesn't. It starts with a few basic phrases in romaji. Then it jumps straight to sentence structures. You are expected to just know the Hiragana and Katakana when you start chapter 1. The whole "Getting Started" Section is a waste of time. You don't remember words that you learned as romaji when you see them later in the book as hiragana. Besides it's horrible "flow" of how you learn the language it's explainations are so bad that without a professor that is very fluent in english it is almost impossible to understand what they are trying to say. If this book isn't a required text for your College class then don't buy it. Buy some Kodo comic books that are in japanese and english instead. You'll learn more from them then this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Another student's perspective
Review: I agree with most of the 3-4 star reviews - while this book isn't perfect, it's a pretty decent choice for a classroom setting. I think some of the material would have been beyond me without the help of my Japanese instructors.I also agree with those who were impressed with the lack of romaaji - my class was fast paced, and we learned all of the kana in less than a month! @_@ Anyway, this book is a good tool for learning Japanese, when mixed with good instructors and some resources of your own - for example, I made flash cards that helped a ton. However, if you're on your own, you might want to pass up this book and find something catered less to a classroom environment.
Rating: 
Summary: Not for learning on your own; better in a classroom
Review: I own the 2nd edition hardcover with audio CD and the workbook. The Yookoso book is admirable in that it is reasonably paced for beginners, but it is a poor teaching manual if you are trying to learn alone. Instead, this book seems to be written with the intent that it be used along with teacher supervision as a textbook in community college and university courses. Granted, you can't blame the authors for trying to sell to the vast educational textbook market. That market is larger than the set of individuals learning Japanese on their own that would pay the cost of getting this Yookoso textbook and its accompanying workbook for over 100 dollars. In my opinion, there are two approaches many people take in learning Japanese. All need to learn rudimentary the katakana and hiragana written language as they need it to understand the phonemes involved. However, after this, people diverge into the camp of trying to quickly learn spoken Japanese by reading romaji (Japanese words spelled out in English alphabet format) and the other camp of reading the Japanese words (written in katakana and hiragana with the occasional Furigana). This 2nd approach is tough to do if you are on your own or if you are pressed for time. **Furigana (think of it as "cheatagana") is not one of the three official forms of written Nihongo (katakana, hiragana, kanji). Instead, it is those tiny little katakana pictographs printed as superscript above some of the obscure hiragana/kanji pictographs as a hint as to the pictograph's meaning. My opinion is that once you learn the kana symbols, you should stick to this instead of trying to memorize meanings by reading romaji. By buying separate cheaper books, you can customize your learning experience depending on which of the two learning styles you prefer. There are quite a few much cheaper books that do better at teaching katakana and hiragana for beginners. In tandem with some other books that specialize in teaching the written language (and having you enunciate the words), you can then get by okay for a first effort. This set of two books is really for use in a classroom where you have the benefit of an instructor. It's a lot of money (too much in my opinion) if you are looking for a book and not taking a beginning Japanese class that is not formed around this book.
Rating:
Summary: Avoid this book if you can...
Review: I read reviews on Amazon about this textbook prior to taking my first Japanese course in college. After reading the reviews I became nervous. Many people had negative comments and someone even said to avoid this book altogether.
Here is my opinion: this book is an absolute nightmare. It is completely disorganized and somewhat incoomplete. The grammar aspect if the language is impossible to understand because it is hardly explained. I had to buy so many supplemental Japanese books just to do the homework in the laboratory manual (that is sold separately). This text is inconsistent. It skips around so much.
My advice: avoid this book if at all possible. I wanted to learn Japanese more than anything and now I am very discouraged. This text is making Japanese much more diifcult than it needs to be. If you like to get poor grades in your college courses then sign up for a Japanese class that uses this book. Then watch your grade plummet right into the ground. :o(
Rating:
Summary: shippai suru kanousei no aru mono wa, shippai suru.
Review: I studied Japanese for about one year before taking the class. I have used several language texts, including ones that teach in kana/kanji and in roomaji. All of them were superior to Yookoso. I am not exaggerating when I say that this text is inferior to the others. First, the organization of the chapters makes very little sense. The book tries to put things into vocabulary-based chapters and fails miserably at keeping things from fragmenting. After all, most of the grammar exercises are unrelated to the overall theme of the chapters. Moreover, the grammar exercises themselves appear to be fragmented. Nothing seems to blend together and nothing builds upon what has been learned. At least, not as much as in other texts. Yookoso's fragmented set-up is not its only problem. It often gives little to no explanation of the grammar points, merely throwing out one or two examples in lieu of a more detailed lesson. I realize that this is a classroom text, but every other classroom text I've used was superior in its explanations and examples. This text tries to distill the major points and in this, it succeeds. However, the lab manual does not merely ask for the basics. It asks for complex sentences when the examples themselves are so base that it FEELS like a textbook rather than living language. Language must be presented so that the techniques can be mimicked. If I'd mimicked Yookoso, I wonder what the results would be.
Rating:
Summary: shippai suru kanousei no aru mono wa, shippai suru.
Review: I studied Japanese for about one year before taking the class. I have used several language texts, including ones that teach in kana/kanji and in roomaji. All of them were superior to Yookoso. I am not exaggerating when I say that this text is inferior to the others. First, the organization of the chapters makes very little sense. The book tries to put things into vocabulary-based chapters and fails miserably at keeping things from fragmenting. After all, most of the grammar exercises are unrelated to the overall theme of the chapters. Moreover, the grammar exercises themselves appear to be fragmented. Nothing seems to blend together and nothing builds upon what has been learned. At least, not as much as in other texts. Yookoso's fragmented set-up is not its only problem. It often gives little to no explanation of the grammar points, merely throwing out one or two examples in lieu of a more detailed lesson. I realize that this is a classroom text, but every other classroom text I've used was superior in its explanations and examples. This text tries to distill the major points and in this, it succeeds. However, the lab manual does not merely ask for the basics. It asks for complex sentences when the examples themselves are so base that it FEELS like a textbook rather than living language. Language must be presented so that the techniques can be mimicked. If I'd mimicked Yookoso, I wonder what the results would be.
Rating: 
Summary: Very good and well rounded book
Review: I used this book and its sequel in a college class and it is the best Japanese textbook I've seen. It doesn't focus only on speaking but allows and forces you to read kana and kanji. Very little romaji here. I found no problem with the kanji and if you have a problem reading it you will have an even harder time reading authentic Japanese materials. All of the minor flaws of the first version have been fixed in the recent Second Edition, but even the first edition is outstanding and with the audio tapes and workbook is much more suitable for self-study than other books, like Japanese: the Spoken Language series, which hardly makes an effort at teaching reading and writing.
Rating:
Summary: Learning Japanese
Review: I've read a lot of negative reviews for this book so I wanted to write an article in defense. I'm in my second year of Japanese right now at a community college. This book is definitely not for those who are studying by themselves. But it is one of the best Japanese textbooks I've seen on the market. A lot of textbooks use romaji (or as another reviewer put it cheatagana). This one doesn't except at the beginning. I think almost any really serious student of Japanese will tell you romaji is a terrible thing. It slows down language aquistion and it is hard to find books about learning Japanese that don't use romaji. All in all, this is a very useful textbook. If you have a good Japanese-sensei you will find your self picking up the language at a very respectable rate while using this book. The amount of vocabulary is a little much in a few places, but that is my only complaint. If you can you might want to try and get a package that includes the workbook and both sets of audio CDs (textbook and workbook audio) to make the best use of "Yookoso! An Invitation to Contemporary Japanese".
Rating:
Summary: An excellent book....
Review: It is an excellent book for studying the real Japanese. It is a very hard language to master and determination is the only foolproof plan to it.
This book moves quickly from a few pages of romanized spelling to kana (Japanese syllabary) then to kanji (Chinese characters). This may be hard for English speakers, but to be in the habit of dealing with the real language, is the sooner the better. This book most definitely enforces a good study method by early introduction of kana and kanji.
The book contains gradual and fairly thorough grammer points. The grammer points in this edition are neatly divided into small and digestable portions along with cultural tips, which matter enormously since learning a new language is really learning another cultural mindset. There is also quite a bit of kanji included in this edition; they are very relevant and useful, all paired with furigana (syllabary used to denote the sound of kanji).
I wish you good luck.
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