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Rating: 
Summary: Quite good actually, although not perfect
Review: Easy to digest lessons; nice lay-out (at least in my edition) and you can listen to parts of the audio without actually having to look in the book. I like that the author has includes hints (hinto) and study-tips. What it lacks is kana and kanji. (One chapter will introduce you to a few kana and 17 kanji; 1-10 and the days of the week, but in my opinion you'll need more than that.) Also it wouldn't hurt with a little bit more audio. I think it's a nice investment although hardly the best book out there and absolutely not essential when it comes to learning Japanese.
Rating: 
Summary: 5 with the tapes
Review: This is a book for people who wish to walk before they learn to run. You will not be bogged down with kanji, and the like, but will learn prononciation and structure of the Japanese language very quickly. It's very well structured and the easiest of five self learn books I own. Learn to speak then learn to read is my advice. The book alone only gets 4 stars as UK/USA English pronounciation differs from Japanese so, as with all language books, I strongly advise anyone considering this book, which I again state is the best I've come across, to get the tapes that go with it, I then give it 5 stars+.....
Rating:
Summary: An ideal introductory book for Japanese conversation!
Review: What I love of this book is that it covers not only the language, but also details about everyday life in Japan. Every lesson contains a dialogue that introduces the new grammatical structures in the shape of a conversation as it could happen in Japan. The same dialogue is recorded in the tape that comes with the book. After the conversation there is a comprehensive and exhaustively commented grammar section, followed by exercises. A section follows on Japanese culture and customs. Finally, there is a revision test recorded in the tape that covers the most important structures introduced in the chapter. The pace is brisk. I have read just over half the book, and at this point the complexity of the structures introduced is higher than in other language books. And you can really learn! At this point I can partially understand conversations in Japanese. Speaking it is much harder, but well, no book can help in this, only practice can... This is not the book you would buy if you only wanted to know a set of stock Janapese sentences. But if you really want to know the language and be able to speak and understand it in a conversation, you should definitely buy this book. If I don't give it the top mark it's because the book does not cover Japanese writing, not even hiragana (the text is all in latin characters). But this is not the purpose of this book...
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