Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8981 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-31
• Original language: Japanese, English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Customer Reviews

Improvement from the previous edition.
Overall this is a very good book, it comes with a CD and encourages speaking practice which is very important to gain fluency.

Grammar is clearly explained with plenty of examples. At this stage, learning Japanese one can be overwhelming with the amount of vocabulary and grammar. However, the content in this book appears to have been carefully selected with clear and concise material. There's also the introduction of Kanji with furigana throughout the book.

JFBPII introduces various written styles of texts (such as a web blog and magazine articles) which at first can be overwhelming due to the unfamiliar writing style and the amount of new vocabulary. The texts are interesting and give some insight into Japanese history, culture and lifestyle. Understanding these texts will prepare you well for getting accustomed to reading real material such as websites and newspapers as I found. Although you still need to learn a far greater vocabulary beyond this book and start with furigana texts.

The book is light on grammar exercises. The previous edition seems to have more exercises so you may want to consider getting the workbook in addition. Perhaps this could be a move to encourage students to practice grammar via conversation rather than writing.

Having since completed this book I still find it very useful as a reference. Occasionally when I need to send an email in Japanese I check the example emails in the book and use those as a template. Note: the previous edition was a bit outdated and therefore did not include such real life example material.

The voices on the accompanying CD appear to have a clear Tokyo dialect that are easy to understand. On the CD's that were sold for the previous edition it seemed like the characters would mumble in the conversational dialogues adding unnecessary difficulty for a student at this level.

The book starts out at a level where the revised edition of Japanese for Busy People I left off, however the difficulty increases with the introduction of hypothetical forms of grammar.

The opening pages of the book give clear instruction on how to approach each chapter and study the new material. This is especially useful for those learning on their own. If you follow the book as outlined in the introduction and devote the necessary time, your Japanese will improve a lot.

JBP 2 new edition
This is a great series of books for learning Japanese. I started off using the previous edition of book one and a few chapters of book two before moving to Japan where I have now finished the new edition of book two.

There is good use of the three scripts (hiragana, katakana & kanji) and lots of listening practice on the accompanying CD. There is also a great introduction of useful grammatical structures and vocabulary which have often got me through dealing with everyday situations in Japan.

However, the grammatical explanations are sometimes too brief, and certain things are not returned to later in the book and so it is easy to forget what was learnt previously. Each chapter introduces 10 new kanji characters but the explanations are not clear or detailed enough. There are also a couple of chapters which are not useful for everyday situations.

All in all it is a good text and I will be starting the new Book III in a couple of weeks. Infinitely better than the Minna no nihongo series which is dry, outdated and far too complicated.

Probably the best book for this level
I agree with the previous two reviews. Overall this is a very good book and introduces an easily digestible mixture of grammar, vocabulary and speaking/reading in each chapter. The included CD really helps to give you much needed speaking and listening practice. The exercises are a little repetitive though, and the "everyday" situations that are introduced are geared a bit too much towards business. However, of all the Japanese textbooks I have seen, this is by far the best. Especially useful for people trying to learn Japanese on their own.
Highly recommended.