Review of Nihongo de Manabu Nihon by Kangaeru Hito

I've recently received the first book of the Japanese Lecture Series: Nihongo de Manabu Nihon. It's designed to improve listening comprehension for English students of Japanese so you can listen to college lecture and such (make sure you get the tape and the book, they're sold separately).

The first book contains 3 lectures, Nihon no Rekishi (The History of Japan), Tokyou no Rekishi to Chiri (The History and Geography of Tokyo), and Nihon no Kindaika to Bungaku (Japan's Modernization and the Birth of Modern Literature).

The book contains a script in Japanese (no furigana), followed by English definitions for the words and grammar patterns. The first lecture (Nihon no Rekishi) includes a definition for many of the words every time they are encountered (mostly specific historical words), while the others seem to only give the definition for the words the first time they are encountered.

After all the lectures are lots of supplementary background material for all the lectures (timelines, charts, written material on many of the things briefly mentioned in the lectures). Furigana is included, but no English definitions (which is ok, this is all supplementary). After that are extra examples for the grammar patterns encountered in the text, and then an index of the Japanese words encountered.

The book is aimed at advanced students for good reason. I'm on the first one now and it is very difficult to follow, but excellent listening comprehension practice. Although it may be difficult, beginner students with a good grasp of all the basic grammatical constructions and some elementary Kanji could attempt this because of the inclusion of English definitions. I really like it, and recommend it to anyone wanting to improve their Japanese listening comprehension.

☆ See all reviews by Kangaeru Hito.