Why I buy this one ?
- Includes - 1 Language Program DVD-ROM, 1 Interactive Video DVD, 1 Who is Oscar Lake? Software CD-ROM, and 5 Audio Instruction CDs
- The quickest way to learn a language, guaranteed
- The world's most popular language system

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What our customer's say!

"Low Price, Low Quality--Unfortunately", I would not recommend this product. The CD-rom might be the only thing of real use, but even that was tedious for me, and I have been studying for 2 years (perhaps a bit leisurely:)). What I mean by tedious, is that you cannot--often--infer what things mean by practice (like with Rosetta stone, or Pimsleur, etc ...). It isn't self-contained. When I used the CD-rom, I would have to ask someone what a particular item was, or look it up each time, and this gets tedious. And the set of materials is a real mismatch in regard level of difficulty. The thing that really solidified my opinion, though, was listening to the CD. The person who demonstrates the words in the recording is an American! Besides the obvious accent, some pronunciations are just plain way off--terrible! (I live with 2 Japanese.)

[...]

"It is what it is.", We've been using the program for about 4 weeks now. It took a while to figure out what to do. The game disc was not included. All but one disc is for audio use only.
We put the one computer disc in and had to click around for a while to figure out how to find the lessons. From there, it was much like the Rosetta Stone program we tried through our local library. (No longer available.)
It is immersion. There are no directions in English. You see a picture and you guess from the Kanji, what it might be. You continue until you finally start remembering some. Because the words are not written in our English alphabet, they are harder to remember. (As opposed to say, learning Spanish, which still uses our familiar letters.)
We will continue using this program, but probably buy a book to help with the Kanji too.

"This is not an end-all solution, but it is an excellent supplemental tool.", This program is not for those who have never had any exposure to Japanese, but it has many useful tools. It is as effective as its competition, and the price is thus that you don't need to re-mortgage your house, sell your car, and sell several gallons of blood to own the program. It is reasonably priced, and has good supplements. (There is no Arthur Lake program with this set, because there is no version of that for this language, or at least mine did not come with any such software). It is not for absolute beginners, but with some basic experience, this will give you a passing understanding and ability to communicate.

"Fastest fluency guaranteed, my butt", Awful waste of my time and money, redeemed only somewhat by the audio CDs.

Aside from the audio CDs, there is no straightforward teaching method. There are a plethora of exercises to choose from on the computer program, but that's it: the program is basically just quizzing you on what Japanese you already know. That might be fine if it was compounded with the audio CDs so you choose your responses based on how they sound, except on the computer program and DVD, it's mostly visual, which means that if you don't already know any kanji, you're totally screwed. There is no prior explanation to what the characters mean or what they sound like. If you don't know any written Japanese, prepare to fumble and guess your way through the exercises. Even if you get the questions right, who cares? You're not learning anything since it doesn't even tell you what it is you just answered.

The program doesn't teach you how to speak Japanese so much as it tries to get you to memorize certain fixed patterns, without breaking the sentences down to tell you word-for-word what it is you're saying. And so once again, unless you already know Japanese, you're not learning anything. It's okay if you just want to reinforce what you already know, but even then there are much better programs out there that will actually go over Japanese language instead of asking the same fixed phrases over and over.

The audio CDs, as I mentioned, are actually decent, for the very reasons why the computer program and DVD are not: they don't require prior knowledge of Japanese, they go over sentence patterns and structures, they introduce beginners slowly and with a straightforward teaching plan, and they cover basic vocabulary that beginners will need to know. Whether those audio CDs are worth the $30+ of the full program is up to you. I personally think there are better options out there.

"Confusing. Pass this one up.", Even with a full installation, you still have to run this software off the CD. The program is hard to follow and many of the exercises are just a waste of time. Romanji (ABCs) is used to facilitate pronunciation, but it is not consistent. For instance, the first time numbers are introduced, only the digits appear - there is no pronunciation guide. There is no attempt to actually teach Kana (Japanese characters.) The only reason I gave it more than one star is the Japanese pronunciation is helpful.