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A review by ashleylm
GENKI: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese, Vol. II by Eri Banno
4.0
It's no Eats Shoots and Leave but is a great resource for learning Japanese. (I know how much I appreciated the Genki books, because when they were finished, I panicked about what the next textbook would be. Lucky for me the same company launched the similar-but-different-but-not-too-different series Quartet for people like me, and I'm so glad!)
My quibble with the beginning of Genki I> (too much romaji) wasn't the case here. So my only quibbles would be:
1. too much vocabulary about the life of a student. I'm a 57 year old tourist. I'm never going to have to use words and phrases like home stay family or college major or beg my professor for an extension on my essay. No, I want to make restaurant reservations over the phone, ask the hotel desk if there's a different room with a desk in it, or (this happened a lot in Japan) explain why I happen to know so much Japanese, none of which got covered.
2. The sample dialogue character Mary-san seems like a real piece of work. It would be more entertaining if the authors admitted she was terrible and just went with it.
(Note: I'm a writer, so I suffer when I offer fewer than five stars. But these aren't ratings of quality, they're a subjective account of how much I liked the book: 5* = an unalloyed pleasure from start to finish, 4* = enjoyed it, 3* = readable but not thrilling, 2* = disappointing, and 1* = hated it.)
My quibble with the beginning of Genki I> (too much romaji) wasn't the case here. So my only quibbles would be:
1. too much vocabulary about the life of a student. I'm a 57 year old tourist. I'm never going to have to use words and phrases like home stay family or college major or beg my professor for an extension on my essay. No, I want to make restaurant reservations over the phone, ask the hotel desk if there's a different room with a desk in it, or (this happened a lot in Japan) explain why I happen to know so much Japanese, none of which got covered.
2. The sample dialogue character Mary-san seems like a real piece of work. It would be more entertaining if the authors admitted she was terrible and just went with it.
(Note: I'm a writer, so I suffer when I offer fewer than five stars. But these aren't ratings of quality, they're a subjective account of how much I liked the book: 5* = an unalloyed pleasure from start to finish, 4* = enjoyed it, 3* = readable but not thrilling, 2* = disappointing, and 1* = hated it.)