Japanese I, Comprehensive: Learn to Speak and Understand Japanese with Pimsleur Language Programs [Audiobook] [Englisch] [Audio CD]

A lot of people try to state that they learned a lot or a little, but not what they actaully learned. I just finished this course, here's a quick rundown of the contents:

*Present tense of quite a few verbs, including those for shopping, saying where you are going and staying, eating and drinking, where things are or aren't, what you want and don't want, what you can and can't do, and who you are doing things with. You learn them in present tense, a very simple form of the future tense, and they introduce the past tense in the second to last lesson. Asking questions is emphasised in this course, you do it almost as much as you answer them.

*You learn few nouns other than those needed to use the verbs; it feels like they made a point to not include a lot of nouns. You will learn the words for your immediate family, beer/wine/sake and some other random nouns like "hat". This is the biggest drawback to the program, but it is easily overcome by a good set of vocab lists.

*Also, very few adjectives. Big, small, expensive, fast, far away are among the few. You learn how to say "too" fast/expensive. But you learn how to use them very well, so it would be easy to add more with the aid of a dictionary.

*You spend a lot of time talking about money. How much you have, how much you need, vocab for currency exchanges and shopping. You also learn the numbers 1 to 199. And, weirdly enough, you learn how to ask people for money.

*You learn how to talk about your car, including how to ask for gas and how to give and take directions.

*In the last couple lessons, you learn how to ask what words mean in English and how to say words in Japanese.

*You learn how to talk about time and tell time. How long you've been somewhere and how long you plan on staying, and you do it in days, hours, and weeks. Also, you learn the words for yesterday, today, tomorrow, and morning, night.

*"You learn how to ask why and answer "It's because..."

Overall, the vocabulary is extremely polite, I don't imagine this is the way good friends talk to each other. I have already done the second course in Russian, and they introduce more informal vocab in the second series. (I have done the first series in Russian, German, and Japanese, and the things you learn are the same each lesson in each language.)

Even if the subjects are a little touristy, you are still learning how to use verbs and particles much quicker than with other courses. Once you get the structure of the language down, it's relatively easy to add the vocab for what you want to talk about.

Overall, this is a *huge* amount of information to pack into thirty lessons. I also recommend either pausing so you have time to answer, rewinding so that you can catch something you got wrong and/or listening to the more difficult lessons twice.

I hope this is helpful, this is what I was looking for when I read the reviews, and was surprised no one had done this.

I'm a Japanese, have listened to Pimsleur courses in English, which I found very interesting and useful. I have listened only to sample tracks of the Japanese course and I am not here to evaluate it, the 4 stars above are dummy. However, since someone suspected that the female speaker may not be Japanese native, I'd like to write my impressions here.

Well, the woman's voice sounds a little bit peculiar indeed, but it does not sound accented as Chinese or any foreigner. I think her intonation is too flat even by Japanese standards and each word is a bit too strongly articulated, which reminds me of Japanese old-fashioned voices of radio announcers we sometimes hear in historical recordings.

So don't worry, friends. The pronunciation is passable after all. The mode of intonation in Japanese differs greatly by dialects, genders, and generations. In particular, the difference between manly and womanly intonation may be very important, tremendously so in certain situations, but too subtle to learn easily. For this matter, the (too) neutral intonation of the woman's voice, sounding a bit like electronically synthesized one though, may be rather not so bad to avoid unnessesary misunderstandings. I mean, you can safely speak like her regardless of your gender.

Hope this helps.

Atually, I would give it 4 1/2 stars, but that is not possible. It's not perfect (but then, what is?) My wife and I (kanai to watashi) are going to visit Japan in a few months and we wanted to get a basic working knowledge of the language. I though we really would be missing too much if we didn't know any Japanese.

After going through several audio courses (some spoke so fast we were about ready to give up in complete despair), I found Pimsleur and this course has been by far the best of any. Yes, they are expensive, but the quality is far superior to others and generally the teaching speed is about right (although by the end of the first set and the start of the 2nd set), the pace really picks up. Sometimes, phrases are not repreated, which is frustrating, but all in all, it's very good. We found that we can actually have some simple conversations in Japanese - pretty amazing for two people who didn't know a word a few months ago.

I would recommend though that if at all possible, make it a point to get a good Japanese/English dictionary and also a good grammar book. "Japanese for Busy People" is excellent. Both of us are "visual people" and we need the reinforcement of the written word. We're also doing reading in Romanji - maybe technically not the "correct way", but then again it will be "close enough." Maybe our accent won't be quite right, but so what. Does it matter that much? At least we are making the effort and trying to do our best.

Other reviewers also have the right idea when they recommend "practice, practice." In the car is fine, but wait until after you have heard the lesson at least once before. It's too hard and dangerous to try to "get it" the first time while driving. I also try to conduct simple dialogs in my head while at work, doing other things and so on.

We also wish we could practice and learn with a real Japanese native speaker, but with us living in a rural area, that is unfortunately not possible, so this is the next best thing.

Finally, get a few books on Japanese culture and history. You really need those to give you the proper foundation as why the language is structured in certain ways. Besides, the cultural and historical studies should be fascinating in their own right and it does seem to be much point in visiting a country if one is missing the cultural background. This is especially true for a country with customs so different from our own.

Once we get to Japan, we'll see if all this hard work was worth it. Sayonara!