Selected Product:
| Nakama 1
Hardcover
Author: Seiichi Makino
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company
Release Date: 1998-06
ISBN-10: 0618131051
ISBN-13: 9780618131051
List Price: $123.56
Average Customer Rating:
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A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar
ISBN-10: 4789004546
ISBN-13: 9784789004541
List Price:$44.80
Nakama 1: Japanese Communication, Culture, Context
ISBN-10: 0669275832
ISBN-13: 9780669275834
List Price:$97.16
Nakama Two (Japanese College Titles)
ISBN-10: 0669285048
ISBN-13: 9780669285048
List Price:$90.34
Nakama 1: Workbook/Laboratory Manual
ISBN-10: 0669275859
ISBN-13: 9780669275858
List Price:$74.95
Nakama Two Workbook/laboratory Manual: Used with ...Hatasa-Nakama 2: Japanese Communication, Culture, Context
ISBN-10: 0669285072
ISBN-13: 9780669285079
List Price:$63.56
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Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Great Seller & Fast Service
| Customer Rating: | | I got this book the third day that I placed it. The book arrived in better condition than that I was expecting from a used book. It even comes with the original cassette tape, although I don't use it. Great Seller. Would definitely comeback again. |
Proofreading problems galore!
| Customer Rating: | I used this textbook during an intensive course. I think it was chosen for political reasons (the author's reputation or connection). But I found it to be lacking in many ways. First of all it is FULL of typos. In fact, one whole chart was mislabeled. An unsuspecting student might think they were learning the past plain form of the adjective when in fact, they were looking at the polite form. I was very frustrated by the typos. Secondly, I could never find clear grammar explanations. A grammar point would be introduced but there would only be one or two examples of it. Then another grammar point would be thrown in, all mixed together in the examples. I ended up buying a dictionary of grammar, which the teacher recommended when she realized how frustrated some of us were with this book.
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It's...okay.
| Customer Rating: | | Probably the main reason we use this textbook in my class is that one of the co-authors is a high-up in the Japanese language department at my university. It's not a bad text, but it's really not that great either. On the upside, the book gets into things like Hiragana right away (and Katakana a little later on), so you can quickly ditch romaji, but the Kanji lessons don't start until somewhat later. The recorded materials for Nakama are somewhat lacking in quality, but they're managable. Mostly I guess it's just a textbook, not particularly interesting. It covers new grammar patterns and such pretty quickly, and the explanations aren't always completely clear. There are a number of very useful tables of counters and verb endings and such in the back, though. Overall, it's an okay textbook, but from the things I hear, something like Genki would probably be a better choice. |
Not bad for a textbook
| Customer Rating: | I have been using this book for a few months now, and I am satisfied with it. Its not like I had a choice of what book to pick, but as far as textbooks go, this one actually delivers. It keeps a steady pace while reintroducing previous lessons in new ones, to keep them fresh in your mind. For example it follows the story of an American exchange student in Japan. It starts out with basic introductions and then gradually goes into more in depth conversation and questions and statements.
This book does not make you dependant on romaji, and starts to introduce kanji in the 3rd chapter. However it does not explain kanji (radicals, etc.) strangely enough. But it is good to get used to seeing them and recognizing them early on, because that will be your toughest battle with this language. A good supplement book is "Lets Learn Kanji" to get into the kanji groove. The audio that comes with this book could have been waaayy better, its very short and not too in depth on pronunciation, but its a nice addition. I'm doing alot better than I thought, since it seems the concensus is that Japanese is this enshrouded impossible to understand language. Its not. Dont believe the myths. I'm not saying its simple, but its not as difficult as you may think. If you just want to learn to understand anime or manga, I dont think thats the best motivation. Unless you have incredible patience, you wont be able to really understand the anime for at least a year or two, and even then, anime uses alot of colloquial slang and rude or impolite forms of speech and youre not going to learn that in class. As far as manga, you'd need real determination for all that wonderful Kanji!!!
Anyway, if you have a good teacher, you should succeed with this book. As far as buying it new, dont. You can get it way cheaper used either on ebay or on amazon market place. I got mine for $46 on here, and was in new condition. Its still a rip, but hey.
Some good supplementary resources I have found so far; Pimsleur audio series, "Japanese: The Manga Way", Random House Japanese-English English-Japanese Dictionary, "Jazz up your Japanese with Onomatopoeia", "Basic Connections:Making your Japanese Flow". Declans Japanese Language series software. Also, if you have access to Japanese movies, anime, or TV (subtitles off!) watch it as much as possible. You'll be suprised at each time you watch it, you'll start recognizing and understanding more and more! |
Neko ga imasu yo!
| Customer Rating: | | I bought this book in order to review first year Japanese after having been tortured by the Jorden series (volumes I and II of Jorden's Solipsistic Language), and I am happy to be able to affirm that, yes, in fact, as we all suspected, romanji are completely dispensable and even distracting. This book gives all examples in real Japanese, not some pseudolinguist/ cultleader's private language. I think that NAKAMA provides fine explanations and lots of good examples. It also begins early on to show the kanji for vocabulary (written in hiragana), which makes this a good book for both learning and review. There are questions here and there, for example, why do the authors claim that Japanese has two tenses, "present and past", and then go on to explain that the present tense is also used for the future? I myself find the perfect/imperfect (completed/incompleted) distinction most intuitive. Anyway, these are minor issues which are naturally open to debate. However, there are a few formatting problems (who in the world does the proofreading for this publisher? does he/she still have a job?), and the book is WAY too expensive, as a result of the reigning textbook tyranny from which college students sadly have no means of escape. (oui, huis clos!) What bumped my review up to 4 stars, I must admit, was the high frequency of pictures in chapter 3 containing that truly indispensable creature: kirei na neko (sorry for the redundancy). Hai! |
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