Hi, Has anyone used these books? I remember glancing at them quite some time ago. If I recall correctly the first one was kind of basic, but books 2 and 3 give a reasonable overview of beginner/low intermediate japanese grammar. I was thinking of getting books 2 and 3 to review grammar and other aspects of beginners japanese. I could reread the books I studied initially several years ago (Japanese for Busy People) but I'm sick of that series and I wondered if the Mangaland series was any good? I look forward to receiving your comments.

Maybe I should just get "Understanding basic japanese grammar"? However I have never seen this book, and I don't like to buy a book that I haven't at least glanced through at some point.

I found a copy of Japanese in mangaland once and started looking though it, but it totally turned me off when I saw that the author was telling you how to pronounce hiragana characters with incorrect pronunciations. I later heard that the explanation for this was that the author was from spain or something, where words were pronounced differently. So although I completely wrote the book off back then, I would like to see it again now because I do wonder what the rest of the book is like. I've heard that it's pretty good.

As for UBJG, here's a link someone posted for me in another thread: http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E5%9F%BA%E7%A4%...475740168X

Click the cover of the book to see some pages from it.

NestOr, I completely agree with Japanese the Manga Way. I just started using it and I can't get through it fast enough! Since RTK1, I've been working my way through manga - slowly, with my level of Japanese. The language in them is so completely natural they are a treasure trove for sentences. Japanese the Manga Way has really opened the door to me understanding manga even better, and hence finding them even more potent as a learning resource, apart from the fact they can be fun to read. I've flipped through Japanese in Mangaland, but it did nothing for me and I left it on the shelf. Maybe someone else could benefit from it, though. I prefered Japanese the Manga Way.