Best Text book to Learn Japanese ?

[Jeso92]

Hi all,

So, Im trying to learn japanese using this site, Rosetta Stone, and a textbook called ""Japanese for Busy People" Romanized version, cause thats the book that they asked me to get for my Japanese class 3 years ago. Anyways, the problem is that everything is romanized, and it has just a few kana here and there, so I think thats not really good for developement. I could get the kana version of the same book, but I wanted to ask, if you guys know whats the Best of the best.

I heard about the Mina No Nihongo, and it sounds like a good book, but I hear complains that it is extremily outdated, too oldfashion etc.

Thoughts?

[KingDog]

I've been pretty happy with the Genki series of textbooks. No textbook is perfect, but I think Genki does a good job of taking you through the basics of grammar and vocab.

[community.japanese]

Jeso92 san,

Konnichiwa.
What is the best depends on your goal.
In my personal opinion, learners should not depend on romaji.
I recommend them to memories hiragana as soon as possible because hiragana (Japanese pronunciation) is different from English phonics. For example, Japanese ら is basically written ‘ra’ however, actual ら sound is close to ‘la’.

“Japanese busy people” is for learners who are working and need Japanese.

“Minna no nihongo” is a popular textbook however, it doesn’t have descriptions of grammar points at all and many drill practices.

Genki was written by Lectures at a university in Japan and it’s for oversea students who are studying in Japan.

Yuki 　由紀
Team JapanesePod101.com