Japanese For Beginners
This mini-book by Takahashi is 169 pages and pocket sized. I'm not exactly sure what the book's main intention was. It will certainly not teach you Japanese!
First, it starts with this intro.
There is a book.
Hon ga issatsu arimasu.
There is a book on the desk.
Hon ga issatsu tsukue-no-ue-ni arimasu.
This is in a section entiteld "how to count numbers" - but this doesn't seem to be about counting at all. Also, I have no idea what the word "book" is nor the word "desk". In the first example "there is" is in red, as is "ga" and "arimasu". So I could *guess* that maybe the Japanese phrase is saying
one is book there
or maybe it says
book there one is
But I really have no idea, because this phrase book doesn't tell me.
Skip forward a number of pages with phrases about ashtrays and pianos and I finally hit a counting chart. It says that the number 1 is ichi or hitotsu. It doesn't say when I would use one or the other, and I don't see either an ichi or hitotsu in the initial example which supposedly was about counting.
A subsequent chart gives examples, and it says for 1 pearl necklace you say
shinju-no-nekkuresu ippon
I suppose I can assume ippon is the "one" in that phrase, but it doesn't look like ichi or hitotsu which just makes it more confusing. Another chart talks about counting coffee and tea and says for 1 cup of coffee you say
kohi ippai
another word with ipp in it - so that must be the "one" part. But I'm making guesses here.
And so it goes. Random phrases, no explanations, no idea of what parts mean what or when to use which items. Really, the only helpful part of the book is in the back where they give you straight vocab. Bank is ginko. Tax is zei-kin. However, they don't have taxi or phone or subway which just happened to be three random words in a row I thought up that the average tourist might need to know. That's not a good sign.
There are tons of other really helpful books out there both to learn Japanese and to have a reference while traveling. I'd go with one of those other options before using this one. Perhaps the book's only redeeming value is it's from 1980 and gives you insight into what the Japanese book world was like back then.
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