Yoko Hasegawa

As a first edition, this unfortunately contains a lot of errata (see http://japanese.berkeley.edu for list of corrections). Nevertheless, I like it a lot. It's well laid out. Nice hardcover. Contains many pages of drills for each chapter, clear explanations and examples, reviews throughout. Comes with a CD (though I must admit that I haven't used it yet). Seems a bit shy with the kanji, though -- you're not introdued to them until chapter three, and generally speaking, the textbook shies away from teaching more complicated kanji. Perhaps other university-level courses also try to introduce kanji slowly (We are supposed to learn 300 this semester). However, I am biased about kanji since I can already Chinese; I'd rather just plug into it and get it out of the way, as long as I recognize the Japanese pronunciation.… (altro)