Japanese Step by Step : An Innovative Approach to Speaking and Reading Japanese

This self-study text offers a breakthrough approach for beginning learners of Japanese, as well as an indispensable reference for intermediate students. The unique study method in Japanese Step By Step teaches how to construct Japanese sentences, from the simplest to the most complex, using an easy-to-follow, step-by-step method. Also contains flow charts for verb conjugations and derivations.

JAPANESE STEP BY STEP was written by a former IBM engineer. He applied tech-manual principles to the organization and presentation of the inner workings of the Japanese language. The author makes heavy use of logic flow charts to show how Japanese verbs are conjugated, and how present, negative, past and past-negative tenses are developed. He also presents five basic sentence patterns to be used as building blocks for more complex and compound sentences. And, the roman-alphabet representations of Japanese use CAPITAL letters to show the raised pitch accent.

Although the book uses Japanese characters above the roman text (romaji), it uses the 2000+-character KANJI with no furigana (small hiragana characters to show the `reading' of the kanji characters.) I'd like to be able to cover up the romaji and read just the Japanese characters, but the lack of furigana forces dependence on the romaji.

Another thing I found frustrating is having to flip back and forth through the book to figure out how a particular verb conjugates. This could have been solved if the author had either provided an appendix with all the verb conjugation flow charts, or (better yet,) provided an additional set of charts showing how to conjugate each type of verb into all the possible conjugations.

This book is NOT the only book on Japanese you'll ever need. But it's a useful addition to the Japanese-language student's arsenal of reference works. It presents information in a different way, which may be just what you need to get from confusion to increased understanding.


Disapointing, perhaps useful as a referrence after the fact.   February 2, 2006
F. Hymus (Bridgewater, NJ USA)
69 out of 75 found this review helpful

This book will not by itself have you speaking or reading Japanese. As a reference, especially for the verbal idioms, it is quite useful, but only after the fact, I fear. There are no drills, no exercises, and vocabulary is simply listed at the beginning of each major section. Here are 100 verbs, now go learn them. Here are 100 nouns, do likewise. His insistence that Japanes "adjectives" are "words to modify a noun" just as in English, can only confuse. "You mean adjectives conjugate just like verbs rather than decline like nouns?"

His presentation of the Kana is also "Here it is, now just go and memorize these tables." Even his presentation of the traditional syllabary tables is quirky, filling in the ya and wa columns with standard vowels, not at all helpful to the beginner, especially without explanation.

There is no practice reading connected prose. There aren't any connected dialogs at all. Any discussion of politeness levels and the in-out group dichotomy is totally missing. You just don't see/hear real Japanese here, spoken or written. There is no indication that real Japanese is often written vertically right to left. There is no discussion of innovative versus traditional Katakana spelling. Related to this, there is, quite surprizingly, no discussion of modern "loan" words, especially the huge modern English-borrowed vocabulary, and the rules of "transcribing" and "trans-speaking" English into Japanese. Especially surprising for someone in the scientific and engineering fields.

There is no help with real pronunciation (devoiced high vowels and the "soft" medial "g" of the Tokyo dialect for example), and no help at all with determining general pitch patterns of connected speech. Once again, just memorize each sentence as you come up against it. Don't ask why, just do it. Most un-engineer-like.

His Romaji is also, to say the least, quirky. Capitalization to show pitch levels can make the neginning English user fall into stress accents rather than pitch accents very easily.

Last, but certainly not least, his non-explanation of Kanji, especially the possibility of multiple readings, of proper names in particular, and the "just throw it at you in unrelated chunks of vocabulary" are not at all helpful for a beginner. Let alone how you might write it yourself - stroke order and the like. No clue, either, how to use a Japanese-English dictionary.

All in all, a disappointing book. Being an engineer myself, I was hopeful that an engineering/scientific approach to Japanese might be interesting, but there is little here. Stay with the tried and true language experts. Eleanor Harz Jordan and the classic "Reading Japanese" and Part 1 of "Japanese, The Spoken Language" will be much more rewarding to the beginner, even if teaching him/herself.



Delivers the goods for adult learners   October 21, 2005
Iconoclast Warrior
27 out of 28 found this review helpful

After I read the glowing reviews of this book on About.com and Japanese123.com, I decided that I had to add it to my own collection. As I am learning Japanese as an adult professional, I appreciate the grown-up approach that the author takes. So many Japanese texts talk down to the reader, or concern themselves solely with juvenile/school-oriented situations. This book contains language that will be useful to businesspersons from the beginning.

The explanations of grammar are flowcharted out in a way that makes it easy to see how Japanese sentences are constructed. Although the author has a Japanese last name, he was apparently born and raised in the United States. As I worked through the book, it was evident to me that Gene Nishi was explaining the Japanese language from an English-speaker's point of view---whereas many Japanese language texts written in Japan do not take into account the unique problems that English-speaking students of the langauge face.

Bottom line: if you are a beginning or intermediate student of Japanese, this book belongs on your bookshelf.


great presentation, about japanese...   October 29, 2005
a Traveler (Tokyo Japan)
24 out of 24 found this review helpful

This is a exellent text that explains alot about japanese to the beginning, and advanced student. It lays out the basics in an easy to understand way, and builds upon that foundation with easy to follow, explanations. The one criticism, is, though it is not actually very fair, is that it is low on exercises. Which makes this more of a book about japanese, than to practice japanese.

it's an important point, because I find that foreign learners of japanese, especially Americans tend to take shelter from making progress in using the language fluently by studying it academically much more than is necessary. I think it comes from the way foreign languages are taught in schools-- we are tested more on how much we can academically talk about how a language works, than on how well we can actually communicate in the language.

--but Mr. Nishi isnt trying to make a workbook here, so its really up to the student to avoid the trap of being able to discuss how japanese expresses something, but not actually be able to express anything that way in japanese yourself.

--One last point is-- I love how this book uses all 2000 necessary Kanji with zero furigana. there is romaji, and there is Kanji. This is perfect. Some reviewers here seem to think that Romaji is an evil crutch, but if romaji is a crutch, furigana is a worse one in this case.-- Yes, furigana is the phonetic transcription of kanji but the 2000 kanji deemed necessary for daily life are rarely if ever written with furigana (only for kids in kids books). you cant read real japanese and rely on furigana--

This makes the lack of furigana a bonus. Romaji can be readily understood--no questions of if you're looking at 'nu' or 'me'-- which just distract beginners.--- plus you can cover up the romaji, and try to learn to read the words without any visual cues.--- if this book used furigana... this would be impossible. You would never have to read the kanji, your eyes would always cheat and check the furigana--

you become dependent. and sorry to say it, but even though it might be more popular to claim that you dont read romaji, but only kanji texts with furigana-- you are still only reading
F-A-K-E
japanese.

Cheers to Mr. Nishi on this great resource, every student of japanese should own a copy.