I'm Learning Japanese!: Learn to Speak, Read and Write the Basics

I love languages. I have been a language teacher for over 20 years. I can get my head around the Latin based languages but Japanese has always stumped me. Fourteen years ago I did a course on a Saturday morning and I didn't learnt very much as I had no pegs onto which I could hang my vocab and grammar. None of it made sense. Fast-forward to now, I have a twelve year old obsessed with Japan, so I thought I'd buy him this. It is brilliant. It's presented in a child (and adult) friendly comic-style way. It gives you plenty of 'pegs' onto which you can hang your new words. I absolutely love it. I can ask simple questions, give positive and negative answers, all within reading 50 pages of this book. I love the fact it starts by making 'Japanglish' sentences which allow you to get to grips with sentence word order. I thoroughly recommend this book. It is perfect for children (tweens/teens) and adults alike.

Awesome book for beginners. Simple enough for children to get a grasp of the basics but also useful for adults looking to dip their toe it too. Not too complex, easy enough to follow, even for those with no previous knowledge. It teaches Hiragana, one of the Japanese writing systems, as well as simple words and sentences that can be used in everyday situations. Can be used by adults or children as long as they have a basic understanding of English and can read at a basic level or have an adult on hand for explanations.Great foundation to build upon for starting your Japanese language learning journey 🙂

My granddaughter

Very suitable for Adults. It was a great help to me for learning Hiragana. I hope they do a Katakana version as well.I'v e found that some of the training material for learning Japanese is a bit erratic and don't quite work as it should, this does . I am please I bought it.

This is an excellent book for the beginner (like me), for a long time I felt I was just parroting Japanese phrases which I had learned laboriously.But within hours with this book I felt able to construct sentences myself, all those bewildering ga, wa and ka stopped being scary and started to be helpful.This is a children’s book but made more sense for me than many ‘courses’.

Just started and it’s brilliant. I have previously learnt phrases and just memorised them but they didn’t make sense to me, but this explained why and it was light a light switch turning on. The book is aimed towards younger children, but some of the words may be a bit complicated for them but rephrases it again and gives examples, so if you didn’t understand now you do. If it can teach children it can teach me.

My 12 year old son loves it! Great story background and well presented. I also found it interesting.

I bought this book for my 10 year old son as he was struggling with learning through apps and my text books were too advanced. He loved the japanglish way of learning and quickly picked up things like Kore, Sore, Dore where he had struggled before. I have to admit I enjoyed reading the book myself.

Me encantó, ya lo terminé y ahora puedo escribir frases sencillas y entender frases igualmente sencillas cuando veo Anime.

Excellent for learning. There's no romaji, so you're learning to read, really read, in Japanese from the start. You're introduced to a set of 3-5 hiragana, then learn a set of words that can be made with them then works up to simple sentences with some basic grammar points that are explained clearly in a remarkably easy to understand manner. Most often vocabulary is given with a picture and the hiragana beneath it for you to learn by reading Japanese. Each chapter is themed around a bit of Japanese culture, and the conversations and vocab you learn are based around that. It's fun and simple and rewarding to learn Japanese in Japanese.Toward the end you learn a handful of basic kanji and will have the reading comprehension to get through a letter to test your skills.All of this is presented in a friendly, easy to absorb manner with a cast of drawn characters and a fox-sensei. All of the answers to everything are right at the back of the book.My only complaint is that it could have a bigger vocabulary, but as-is it's fine and a perfect intro to reading and writing Japanese for anyone.

I've been studying japanese for some months and I was searching for books oriented to teach japanese to children. Fortunately I've found this one! It makes the learning process so simple and easy to understand. Of course the book is not enough to know a lot, but I can easily say that the basic stuff you can find it there.The only bad thing is that the reading is so catching that when you realize you will be at the end of it.It's amazing how so many information is concealed on such a easy to read book. I really recommend it for japanese begginers.I'm from Brazil and I couldn't find a book in portuguese with the same approach. Great book!

Questo libro è carino per iniziare a imparare l'hiragana e il Giapponese, però essendo per bambini non spiega bene la grammatica che bisogna cercare su internet o su altri libri.This book is nice to start learning Japanese but honestly speaking it lacks of grammar explanations since it is for children. So you need to learn grammar elsewhere, on other books or apps or online...

Great book to learn life lessons