Product Description

For quick mastery of hiragana and katakana, this concise text provides grids for writing practice, reading and writing exercises. An optional audio tape (sold separately) aids in pronunciation. The text is fully integrated into the "Japanese for Busy People" series.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #388421 in Books
• Published on: 1996-09-01
• Original language: English, Japanese
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 80 pages

Customer Reviews

Learn Hiragana and Katakana
Any advanced learner of japanese will tell you that mastering hiragana and katakana is a key step in your development. Teachers will explain that pupils who don't and instead learn Japanese through Romaji (western characters) have worse pronounciation, learn more slowly and don't get as far. So if you're serious, you have to do it.

The good news is that if you're willing to put in the effort, this book will enable you to master both alphabets in a matter of weeks. I used the book (and associated tape) in parallel with a weekly class and mastered both hiragana and katakana in just 10 weeks from starting as a complete beginner in Japanese.

The vocabulary and grammar used is closely aligned with that used in the early chapters of Japanese for Busy People I, so it helps if you're using that, but I wasn't, so it's not essential.

The tape helps with pronounciation, linking each letter, and then combinations of letters, to the sounds and intonation of japanese and showing that pronounciation isn't as difficult as one might expect. But again it's not essential and may be covered anyway by whatever japanese language course you're doing.

Fantastic for hiragana, not so great for katakana
The book is split into sections for hiragana and katakana. The hiragana section is about 80-90% of the book and is fantastic. The katakana section doesn't need to be as long as the hiragana section but I felt they'd cut it REALLY short. The hiragana section has pages covered in characters that help you develop 'random access' memory of the characters. The katakana section is very much lacking this incredibly important part.

If the katakana section had been as good as the hiragana section this would have easily scored 5 stars. I'd still buy it since I've never found anything anywhere near this good.

Good, but I have my reservations
I agree that this book starts at the basics and give you a really good introduction to both kana scripts (despite the shortness of the katakana section). On the other hand the advice to study the hiragana chart until it becomes second nature seems a bit strange. There is no way you're ever going to memorise the kana just by looking at the table in the book.
Other books I have seen do a much better job by breaking the chart into groups of ten and looking at them in blocks, testing that block, then moving on. It's much easier to comit the kana to memory by breaking them up into small sections such as this. It woud also be nice if there were more writing exercises in the book, and maybe even a page of the little squares that you could photocopy to get the hang of keeping your kana all the same size and in proportion.
The book is really strong in other aspects though. I like the way the tapes that accompany the book give the kana a more tangible meaning outside of a scribble on your page.