I love mail!

[vampiresaru]

YaY not only did my sis take me out for a belated birthday dinner but I had mail waiting for me at home! yes its blurry and most the wind box is covered but thats on purpose... just in case. ^_^

By the way I find it amazing that it took less days for my himeya shipment (wind and kanon) to get here from Japan then my hirameki shipment... which came from the same country I live in and had the same shipping timeframe. (himeya took 3, hirameki took 7).

....kyah! Himeya has yet to ship mine. Maybe they're momentarily out of stock....but it'd be nice to be informed of that....

[Carl]

Impecable taste if I do say so myself.

Just wait until I finally pay off Akibado...in about 3 weeks.

I think I owe them around 22,000円 - about....actually a little more.

I'm paying half of that this week, so there's about $100 of a $170 paycheck gone....

[Spiritsnare]

All I noticed was that you use the same Japanese textbook as I do. <3 It's awesome.

wait till you get 4 boxes of stuff from various sources waiting at your doorstep one one :P of course most of the items were from HLJ.

[vampiresaru]

Originally Posted by Spiritsnare

All I noticed was that you use the same Japanese textbook as I do. <3 It's awesome.

It was the only thing I asked my family to get me on my birthday... I have "japanese for busy people" as well from when I had the class in college but i hate it. So far I am really liking genki though.

[Minoto]

Three days from Himeya?! Most of my orders from them have sat in processing / ready to ship for almost that long. Or did you just mean the actual shipping time once it went out? EMS definitely rocks in that regard -- when I ordered AIR from them earlier this year, it was about a week total time from order to arrival, and it got here the morning of my birthday, even though it was a Sunday. I know there's still half the year left, but that moment will not be beaten.

How is the Genki book, by the way? I've heard good things, but haven't had the opportunity to flip through one for myself. Since February or so, I've been working with a combination of the Pimsleur CDs and Eriko Sato's Contemporary Japanese 1 & 2 (about halfway through 1 at the moment), with pretty good results so far. Still, I'd be happy to hear about any other good books that are out there.

Unfortunately, I have no widely used official textbook, but I do have a number of books....I should really go into New York again and check and see what Kinokuniya has to offer.

[GreatSaintLouis]

Originally Posted by Spiritsnare

All I noticed was that you use the same Japanese textbook as I do. <3 It's awesome.

Genki for the win! We used the Genki textbooks the first two years here, and while I initially felt a little dumb studying the adventures of Mary-san et al., I came to appreciate the teaching speed and manner of the books. Besides, any textbook that makes several references to Michael Jackson can't be all that bad.
Come fall we're moving on to the Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese textbook from the same publisher, which doesn't have nearly as interesting (or enigmatic--we're learning healthy Japanese?) a name as 'Genki'. It does have a greater focus on kanji, though, which I really need.

[Osthekake]

so.. Hamlet?

[vampiresaru]

Originally Posted by Minoto

Three days from Himeya?! Most of my orders from them have sat in processing / ready to ship for almost that long. Or did you just mean the actual shipping time once it went out? EMS definitely rocks in that regard -- when I ordered AIR from them earlier this year, it was about a week total time from order to arrival, and it got here the morning of my birthday, even though it was a Sunday. I know there's still half the year left, but that moment will not be beaten.

How is the Genki book, by the way? I've heard good things, but haven't had the opportunity to flip through one for myself. Since February or so, I've been working with a combination of the Pimsleur CDs and Eriko Sato's Contemporary Japanese 1 & 2 (about halfway through 1 at the moment), with pretty good results so far. Still, I'd be happy to hear about any other good books that are out there.

My himeya order was placed friday and shipped out sunday (going by eastern time zone) before I had a chance to cancel due to the news on the nnl main page...so even with that it was only 3 business days really.

As far as genki goes. What I really like about it is it only seems to give you the romanji the first 2 chapters and then its all kanji, hiragana, and katakana. (they even use kanji you aren't expected to know yet and give the furigana) so it forces you to start to get used to japanese and not rely on romanji as a crutch, which is one of the major problems i had with Japanese for busy people although there is kana version but my college didn't use it... Anther thing I like so far is they try to explain things better than J.f.B.P. which just had me memorize the way things were and was harder for me to grasp. In the first chapter of genki for instance they explain the relationship between the word that comes before and after の instead just give sentences to remember.

Yep, romanji is a joke.Impedes learning more than it helps and it is harder to read to boot (once you know basic hiragana and katakana).Learing hiragana and katakana only takes a few hours to learn anyway.
BTW I am aware of the irony of posting in romanji while denouncing its use, but I lack japanese input on this machine ATM. :)

Yea... the book we use here at my college is "Japanese: The Spoken Language" accompanied with "Japanese: The Written Language" developed by two linguists ( An English and a Japanese) in Ohio Universtiy in like the 80s.

<_<;;

Its not a bad one to learn with, but if you were trying to self-teach, id advise against it. It's rather horrible without an instructor. but the Instructors that know how to teach using it, make it one of the good ones out there.

[Claudio]

If I had to choose one japanese learning book, it would be "Gramática teórico práctica de la lengua japonesa para uso de los estudiantes de habla española" (quite the title), by R.P. Fr. Vicente Gonzales, O.P.

The first edition is from 1954, and a friggin' work of art at it. It's a missionaire's work; it starts basic, but quickly reaches a very high level.
I recommend any hispanic with a serious desire to learn more about Japan to get this book. It's somewhat rare, but I managed to find one at my local library.