New books and Barnes & Noble

[smasraum]

I'm a newbie so be gentle. ^_^

I was in Barnes & Noble the other day and saw two Japanese textbooks that I had never seen mentioned before. It seems like they are new.

Elementary Japanese I
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&isbn=0804835047&itm=2

Elementary Japanese II
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&isbn=0804835063&itm=4

I was just wondering if anyone had any exp with these or had looked at them. I've only just recently started the Pimsleur stuff, so I don't think I'm ready for a textbook yet.

As a bit of introduction... My father was in the military. We were stationed in Misawa Japan at the far north end of Honshu twice ('77-79 & '83-'85) when I was young. Unfortunately when I was young I had no interest in languages (at least I had an appreciation of culture) so i learned very little. I could count to just about anything and could say hello or goodbye any time day or night. Pretty sad, I know. I have lots of great memories of Japan and would love to go back one day, but now that I'm older and not in Japan I've finally gotten off of my butt and decided to learn what I should have long ago. I'm also taking aikido.

Thanks for the time

[KrazyKat]

I haven't heard of those books before, so I don't know how good they are. A quick test would be to see if they are using kana and kanji or just roumaji. If its just roumaji I wouldn't expect them to be worth your money.

If you really do want to learn Japanese I woul not recommend putting off buying a textbook. If you use the search function here, or browse through the old threads you will find many on recommendations for textbooks. Genki seems to be recommended quite a lot.

[smasraum]

If I remember correctly they have kana and kanji in those books. I believe part 2 is mostly kana/kanji.

Yes, I've seen several posts mentioning Genki and thought those books were until I doublechecked yesterday and noticed that they were completely different.

I have a post from here bookmarked that has a huge list of favorite resources for learning Japanese. I'm currently doing the Pimsleur stuff and learning hirigana. Assuming that I can maintain my commitment and momentum for at least a month I'll start collecting other resources. My B-day is in Aug, so I'll have a list of birthday stuff for my family.

Thanks