Interactive Japanese, Book 1

Out of all the books I've bought to learn Japanese, this is by far the best. Instead of teaching first the hiragana, then the grammar, then the syntax, it combines little bits of each in each lesson. That way, instead of trying to learn by rote, you have a way to associate each hiragana with particular words, in a gradual manner. The homework is very good at making you learn the associated lessons. I did find one error. On page 63, there is a Practice #5.3 that has the seasons switched around. It makes it hard to know if you misunderstood something unless you have someone to ask. Other than that, I highly recommend this book to any Japanese language beginner.

Interactive Japanese 1 makes learning Japanese fairly easy considering the difficulties this language presents to the beginner. Despite its title, Interactive Japanese 1 is excellent for studying the language on your own (as I am doing). It definitely makes you learn the hiragana and a couple of kanjis as you go along but misses out on the katakana. However, it is a little slow in its progress in discussing grammatical issues. Now, I am waiting for volume 2!

This book teaches from the ground up, in an easy to read way. It teaches hiragana (alphabet) by dropping the romanizations for a few characters each lesson, progressively weaning the learner. Lessons cover a broad range of topics and situations, and though they can lack depth, they provide vital, practical vocabulary and grammar.

I have purchased many books to aid my japanese language studies, but Interactive Japanese is by far the best. It teached the writing, vocabulary, grammer and numbers in one volume of digestiable size lessons. Includes dictionary japanese to familarize you their system (it's not alphabetical!)