Drive Time: Japanese (CD): Learn Japanese While You Drive (LL(R) All-Audio Courses)

This tape course is great for people who really want/need in-depth Japanese lessons or review. You get a good idea of sentence structure and pronunciation. However, if you are trying to learn some basic Japanese for a short-term trip, this is not the tape for you. You need to know how to ask for basic items (food, beverages, train tickets, the bathroom). I've travelled to Japan once, and plan to go again, and I don't think I'll need to know how to say "It's a big new car" or "Let's go to a concert" to a total stranger on the street. Buy this tape if you need some support for reglar Japanese lessons, or just want to generally improve your understanding of the language for business or regular travel. Nice set-up, but not practical for day-to-day needs.

At the moment I've almost finished with the 2nd disc of lessons, and already I can communicate with some of my friends with the phrases I've learned. Of course, it's designed for the absolute beginner, but that's what I am so it's working well.

I've heard these are difficult if you don't have much of a commute. My commute is about half an hour long each way, and that's more than enough time to get through a lesson.

this is a perfect japanese learning tool for when you are in a car and a beginners. one of things that i like about it is, it repeats words all the time, it just make you memorize it even if you are in the next chapter. highly recommended!

Basically hear and repeat. Best if you have had at least some intro to Japanese pronounciation. Occasionally reference to the book also helps, but you don't have to be looking at anything to do the drills.

Coming from the Pimsleur method of learning Japanese, this audio course felt rushed, and I felt I couldn't absorb as much information.

The vocabulary words are shot at you 10-15 at a time, and there is little review before the next set of vocab, causing me to have to listen to each 1-minute-long "mile marker" over and over again.

This is to Pimsleur as trying to memorize a dictionary is to learning from a textbook.

It just doesn't seem prudent to listen to in the car because I find myself either listening to the 1-minute tracks on repeat until they sink in, or listen to a bunch at a time, and retaining nothing because the quizzing and recall flies by so quickly.

Also, the response time is extremely short. I can barely answer the question in English in that amount of time.

ALL THAT SAID, a strong vocabulary is necessary obviously, and I am eager to get to a level where this tape will be useful for me. For right now, I'm going to settle for the Pimsleur method of simple vocabulary, and focusing on grammar and sentence structure.