Express Japanese

“Minna no Nihongo” is one of the most popular Japanese language textbooks for classrooms and individuals across the world. Lesson topics including essential grammar, vocabulary, listening and speaking are taught and instilled in students through situational daily conversations. This “Shokyu 1” is essential for beginners who have studied Japanese for less than a 100 hours.

This is the second edition of “Minna no Nihongo Shokyu 1 Honsatsu”.  Vocabulary and conversational settings have been revised. Words that have gone out of usage have been replaced with new expressions frequently in use, and conversational settings have also been updated. In addition, a CD of the dialogues and exercises has been included with the book and illustrations for use in reviewing have also been increased.

From the book: “Minna no Nihongo is aimed at anyone who urgently needs to learn to communicate in Japanese in any situation, whether at work, school, college or in their local community. Although it is an introductory text, efforts have been made to make the exchanges between Japanese and foreign characters in the book reflect social conditions and everyday life as faithfully as possible.” 

Book Structure:
1. Sentence patterns and example sentences
2. Conversation
3. Drills
4. Practice
Using this textbook with its companion “Translation & Grammatical Notes” will help you understand the lessons efficiently and help reduce frustrating misunderstandings in your studies with easy-to-understand, detailed explanations. “Translation & Grammatical Notes” is available in English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Korean, Indonesian, Thai, and Vietnamese.

We highly recommend purchasing The Complete Set (Minna no Nihongo Shokyu 1 Honsatsu, Translation & Grammatical Notes in your native language, and CDs) which includes all the necessary set of tools to most efficiently learn Japanese.

Although this Complete Set is aimed at beginners, in order to get the most out of the companion text, “Translation & Grammatical Notes,” you must be familiar with hiragana and katakana. 

If you don’t already know hiragana, please consider purchasing our set of “Kana Flashcards” along with this product. There are about 46 kana characters, so if you learn 5 to 10 hiragana and katakana per day, you can learn all the kana in as little as a week.

About this volume
Original Title : みんなの日本語初級Ⅰ 第２版 本冊
Language : Japanese
Pages : 249 (+ additional 55 pages book & 1CD)
ISBN : 9784883196036

This book is a great text book  if you buy the associated grammar book . Without the companion book, this book is bit hard for beginners, especially if you’re studying on your own. The companion grammar book has an explanation of this book and pedagogical theory, translations for every chapter, vocabulary lists, and detailed grammar explanations for each point included in the text. It’s essentially half the text book.

Still 4 stars because in terms of content and drills, this is the best text book I’ve found. It’s geared towards adults, thin on pictures and some of the interest-building tangents that typical textbooks used in schools have, but it’s great for learning the basics of the language to be able to function in Japanese.