I think Minna no Nihongo supplemented by Tae Kim's guide or James Crippen's Dirty Guide to Japanese will not be too confusing, and set up some good habits for using primary materials right away. I like the Unicom JLPT books, too, for their clarity.
Other than the dictionaries wzafran mentions, I don't know that there is one good textbook for Japanese in English. Japanese: the Spoken Language would contend if it weren't all romaji, and most of the others are poor; Yokoso in particular is a train wreck, and they all suffer from "Language Book Speak." "[kana]watashihaanatani...[/kana]" And none of them really seem to go beyond 3Kyuu grammar-- has anyone else noticed this, or are there ones I've missed?
Other than the dictionaries wzafran mentions, I don't know that there is one good textbook for Japanese in English. Japanese: the Spoken Language would contend if it weren't all romaji, and most of the others are poor; Yokoso in particular is a train wreck, and they all suffer from "Language Book Speak." "[kana]watashihaanatani...[/kana]" And none of them really seem to go beyond 3Kyuu grammar-- has anyone else noticed this, or are there ones I've missed?