Colloquial Japanese: The Complete Course for Beginners

"This is a very beginner-friendly course, focusing on natural spoken and written Japanese. This book is compact and concisely written, but still well structured in terms of grammar explanations and the progression of language acquisition. It has a good mix of listening, speaking, reading and writing, with practice material. I used to work together with these two authors, Junko Ogawa and Fumitsugu Enokida. They work in a university setting and teach Japanese both as a degree and as an optional subject, so they pitch at different levels depending on the student. This textbook is useful particularly if you want to study Japanese at a more casual pace, rather than achieve a certain level like intermediate or a full degree. It includes dialogues and audio by native speakers, with emphasis on idiomatic language and pronunciation. So if you just want to try Japanese, then this textbook can be very useful. I start by teaching the polite style first, because as an adult you don’t want to be considered impolite. Polite speech is easier to learn and safer to use. But when young learners go to Japan, of course they want to use more like a casual, colloquial style of speech, which is plain style. As you advance in your study, the plain style can also be used in written Japanese, like essay writing and academic writing, because you don’t have to be polite to write academic content. But for beginners, I explain that the polite style is to show your politeness, and the plain one is more for casual speech. Honorifics are still a very important part of Japanese language, particularly in the service industry, such as hotels and restaurants."