Review - Japanese: An Essential Guide to Japanese Language Learning by Language Learning University & Takata Ei

Title: Japanese: An Essential Guide to Japanese Language Learning by Language Learning University

Authors: Language Learning University, Takata Ei

Genre: Adult, nonfiction, language learning - Japanese

Publication date: March 2018

Published by: Language Learning University

Source: Borrowed audiobook from library

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Synopsis: This book is for those who want an easy-to-follow guide that will make learning the Japanese language both fun and simple. This book is specifically created for travelers, students, and businesspeople who visit Japan.

Whether you're a just starting out or are already familiar with the Japanese language, this book will help you with speaking, writing and understanding Japanese!

My rating: ★★★★☆

So I did this fun board game where I landed on a square that required me to read an audiobook. I have also really been slacking in my Japanese studies lately, so I thought I could kill two birds with one stone with this book. And it wasn’t too bad! It was a very quick listen and it was very helpful.

One of my favorite sections in this book was about sightseeing. This section actually didn’t have a lot of Japanese, it was just the narrator describing things you could do in Japan... which now that I think about it is kind of strange 🤔 But I enjoyed it! Lol.

This book is very much for beginners, and not that I’M not a beginner, but a lot of this book felt like things I already knew. Which is not a bad thing! I enjoyed as the narrator read the vocab or an example sentence and I tried to figure out what it meant before she translated it. That was fun! This book did have hiragana and katakana charts in the beginning which I presume would be helpful, but in my case, with an audiobook... absolutely no help! 😂 Luckily I already know my kana so I could skip over this no problem. Lol.

That being said, there were some things I had not studied yet, so I enjoyed that. Unfortunately, I don't think those things have stuck with me 😅 This is definitely a book you would need to study a couple times, not just listen to once. On top of that, I'm more of a visual learner soooo yeahhh. Lol. I definitely wish I had a physical copy of this book as well, but that’s definitely more my fault.

Look, audiobooks aren’t my thing, but I really wanted to challenge myself and get out of my comfort zone. And while I did enjoy listening to this—the narrator was a native Japanese speaker, so that was great!—I think I’m gonna stick to my physical books and apps to study Japanese 😅

Have you read this book? If so, what did you think about it? If not, what do you think? Does it sound like something you might want to read? Leave me a link to your review or comment below! 😊