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| Author: Gene Nishi
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy New: $9.22
You Save: $7.73 (46%)
New (31) Used (20) from $7.17
Avg. Customer Rating:  43 reviews
Sales Rank: 31716
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.8 x 6.9 x 0.7
ISBN: 0658014900
Dewey Decimal Number: 495.683421
EAN: 9780658014901
ASIN: 0658014900
Publication Date: April 17, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
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| Customer Reviews:
 The book is all right, I don't October 27, 2007
0 out of 6 found this review helpful
Well, I think that if you are a computer engenier you will learn Japanese in no time with such a book.
I was completely lost with the do-re lullabies in order to get the proper tone when I say bridge or chopsticks in Japanese, and then I find awful to encourage people to use kanji, when the book itself has most of the examples in romaji.
I think the author should anyway have to show the stroke order, but that is superfluos for Ibm professionals, perhaps.
An interesting experience, anyway
Awesome Book, But a Few Quirks October 5, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is overall a great book and covers all of the areas that you will ever need in learning Japanese grammar. I am very happy with it, but it may not be for some people, because it has an odd way of presenting the material.
The verbs are given in a long list of five to six pages. In fact, there are many lists of random vocab (no nouns), and you will find most of these at the beginning, so if you do indeed wish to read the book to learn Japanese "step by step" you will have to wade through lots of vocab before you get the real grammar. Otherwise, You will have to find a way to review it and organize the learning process yourself, because this book presents it in such a way that it would be silly to go in order.
There are plenty of examples that illustrate every concept, along with kanji. However, this is another quirk. The use of kanji is not consistent. Kanji only appears in the examples (and the section on kanji) and is relatively non-existent other wise. There are many tables and lists of words that have no kanji at all. This is frustrating, because I find the kanji very helpful when remembering the word, and I have to look most of it up myself.
The portions that are written in romaji use an odd style to inform you of the tones. Capital letters and underlining are supposed to show you how you should increase the pitch, and this will easily through you in to accenting the capital letters instead of raising the pitch which is not terribly important in the first place.
All that said, this is the best book I've found that touches on all of the points you will need to know. I recommend it for those who have studied Japanese before, but are still looking for a concrete method to go by. Beginners should probably read something else first and late intermediate will probably not find this book necessary unless as a reference.
4/5
 useful supplement: cheap, relevant, organized August 29, 2007
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
I used this book in the very beginning of my Nihongo self study 8 months ago. The 1st pass through the text was difficult --- the kanji gave me nightmares :) So I put it aside and learned 500+ kanji (definitions in English and some readings) then picked this up again from the library and it was a lot more helpful the 2nd time around! It's fairly well organized and if you copy the sentences by hand ... the grammar and kanji do stick. However I didnt like how the romaji was presented (strange capitalization). Ive spent 100s of dollars on Japanese texts from Amazon, Kinokuniya and Cheng Tsui and this is 1 of the better deals out there.
Great for the beginner to intermediate learner August 6, 2007
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Nishi san has done a wonderful job for people that need practial, understandable Japanese lessons. No book can ever be complete as a language learning tool, but this one covers a topic that most miss, the pitch changes that make for different words. Because the book also uses both the kana and kanji, it does not suffer the trap of being a pure romanji based tool. It also covers proper grammar and both formal and informal use of the language. Since strangers speak formally, and news papers and co-workers use more informal structures, it is important to be able to identify and use both.
Between this book, some good flash cards, like the ones by White Rabbit Press, and audio tapes, like the companion ones for the White Rabbit cards, you will be well on your way to mastering the day to day Japanese needed for getting lunch, directions, business meetings, and so on.
Nothing can completely replace formal training in a language. However, this book is one of the tools I strongly recommend to anyone that has a need to be able to study alone. It builds as it goes, and has a very ordered structure of progression.
The only reason I give it 4, rather than 5 stars, is because no book without companion audio can truly teach pronunciation. However, this book comes closer than any other, and since I have over $2500 worth of Japanese self study materials, that is saying something.
Ok, for a second reference August 3, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
As a mostly self-studying student, I use a few text books. Mostly the Japanese for Busy People books. Japanese Step by Step is an excellent companion to the Japanese for Busy People series, as it gives "formulas" and strategies for congugating verbs, adjectives etc, which as a scientist I find very useful. For example, flow charts are used to show how verbs change according to past, present etc. This is much better, IMHO, than some books that just say "Here are some examples, memorise them." If you like to learn processes, rather than examples, this book would be excellent for you.
However, as a self study book, it is near useless. It has no exercises, just several examples for each point.
The language used is concise and to the point, something I greatly appreciate. It is also great at self referencing. For example, if it is discussing a new verb type, and it refers to a previous verb type, it always give the location where the latter was discussed. I have found that a lot of text books expect you to remember everything that you have learnt, which makes looking back over the text tedious. This book avoids that to a large degree.
Overall, a good reference, but you will probably need at least one other text book series (e.g. Minna no Nihongo) to get much benefit out of it.
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