Reviews by Ken DeLong

Japanese for Today

A somewhat uninspired text, I found it useful as a complement to the Mizutanis' book. Going through both texts together enabled me to get two different explanations of most topics.

An Introduction to Modern Japanese

both kanji/romaji, furigana where necessary. Tapes available for 16000 yen

This is a very nice text, quite complete for an intro text. It relies a little too much on romanized script (and a somewhat odd romanization as well), but I liked the Mizutani's way of presenting the subject matter. I'd recommend this for beginners.

Japanese for Busy People I

Both kana and romaji. Two tapes are available.

This is an acceptable introductory text. It moves very slowly, however, and is fairly limited.

Rii to Kuraku no Bouken (The Adventures of Lee and Clark)

Level: Intermediate Conversational (suggested after An Introduction to Modern Japanese). The tapes focus on conversational Japanese. They include sample conversations in the form of an ongoing mystery story involving Lee and Clark, as well as drills for the new grammatical constructions and ... read more

The Complete Japanese Verb Guide

This nice reference contains 600 verbs, with practically all their conjugations, and five example sentences for each (most important)! The only drawback of this book is that it's all in romanized script.