I bought this randomly thinking it was really just a CD that I would use to listen to on the way to work and not even paying attention that it came with a book. Well low and behold I opened it up today and was amazed. IMO this is the gold mine that a lot of people have been looking for.

From my quick calculations there are roughly 1,000 sentences stretched out over 43 different lessons with 5 different levels of difficulty. The book contains full Kanji/kana transcripts for all 1,000 sentences and for the first few levels it appears to provide furigana for all Kanji.

The conversation levels are as followed:

Level 1 starts with just basic statements of existence using dictionary form.
Level 2 potential form
Level 3 Transitive/Intransitive, passive, causitive
Level 4 Onomatopoeias, idioms
Level 5 Causative-passive, honorific/humble proverb.

On the opposite page from the Kanji transcriptions it has English, Chinese and Korean translations! It also has a key to let you know if the sentence is formal or casual.

Of course the best part of it all is that the CD has every sentence spoken by native speakers. And I don't mean speakers who are pronouncing it at 1/4 speed like you are a child. It's 100% full speed dialog with both a male and female counter part. The purpose of this is because the book's intended use is obviously for shadowing which is to train you how to handle processing and speaking Japanese at full speed.

Quick pic I took of one of the pages to give you an example:

Dialog page


Translation page:



I'm still in the middle of RTK1 but now I can't wait to finish so I can get started with this. Being able to add sentences and then hear them all in action is going to be amazing for comprehension IMO.

Edit: Nevermind my pics. White Rabbit press has audio/visual clips so check it out for yourself: http://www.whiterabbitpress.com/catalog/...16500.html

Looks interesting, but doesn't seem useful past the beginner stage. Not to put a damper on it, but it's a bit redundant with the current spreadsheets we have out. The audio/transcripts could be useful, however.

Wow, this sounds quite useful, and quite cheap! Thanks for pointing this out!

I went ahead and ordered it. I liked the audio of the sample and having audio for a load of sentences can only be a good thing.

To be honest, beginner level anything is redundant due to the proliferation of starters in Japanese. What are not available are beginner level material with useful items like: Native audio pronunciation, kanji sentences, normal conversation (more than just -masu forms).

TTS kinda, sort of helped out. iknow.co.jp definately filled that bill. This book looks like another variant that can help.

Oh cool. Good find. I wonder how many sentences are in the final two, 'JLPT 2' units. 400?

This is a pretty sweet find, I must say. It's definitely the first book with an audio CD that has natural sounding Japanese on it. I even ran it past my Japanese roommates and they were quite impressed that a "textbook" like audio cd had such good, natural audio.

Good find!

This looks great! Thanks for sharing! I just wish I was finished with RTK already so I could get to the sentences part. Oh well, I know I'll get there soon enough since I just finished part one of RTK yesterday! : )

nest0r Wrote:Oh cool. Good find. I wonder how many sentences are in the final two, 'JLPT 2' units. 400?

I did a quick estimate. There are about 21 pages of "JLPT2 level" sentences with roughly 20 sentences per page which comes out to around 420 sentences.

Shot of one of the JLPT2 level pages:

I had a quick listen to the audio and it sounds great. The only thing is, I'd want to add all of the sentences as seperate flashcards into Anki, so I'd have to spend a bloody lot of time cutting the dialogue up. Although I might still have access to Adobe Audition at my old uni, so I could sneak in and do a bit of stealth batch processing.

Also, I must say, after reading the topic title in the "Recent Topics" list, I am VERY disappointed in what this book actually contains.

Didn't one of the forum members here work on the Shadowing stuff before, like as an English translator or something? I think if you do a search on the forum, he'll pop up somewhere.

It's an interesting approach.

rich_f Wrote:Didn't one of the forum members here work on the Shadowing stuff before, like as an English translator or something? I think if you do a search on the forum, he'll pop up somewhere.

It's an interesting approach.

Maybe somebody could explain in more detail how shadowing is supposed to work. From what I could gather it's just repeating the audio after the speaker.

alyks Wrote:Maybe somebody could explain in more detail how shadowing is supposed to work. From what I could gather it's just repeating the audio after the speaker.

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/for...=5640&PN=1
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/for...sp?TID=745
http://www.how-to-learn-any-language.com...sp?TID=392

There are some more discussions on just what shadowing actually is, if anyone's interested. Apparently the definition is rather fluid. I'm partial to Prof. Arguelles' interpretation, simply because I think it's a neat feeling when you can hear your voice perfectly in chorus with a native speaker's.

nest0r Wrote:Is that JLPT2? I can't tell the difference. Maybe I'm just that good. Or that bad. ;p

I agree, other than like 2 vocab terms from the JLPT2 list that stuff is very basic...

I was also looking for pron Damn misleading recent topics list.

Jarvik7 Wrote:I was also looking for pron Damn misleading recent topics list.

I'm glad I'm not the only one.

hknamida Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:I was also looking for pron Damn misleading recent topics list.

I'm glad I'm not the only one.

I just noticed that lol.

Cool, it seems like it is a cheaper alternative to the Assimil course. Does it have a vocabulary list? I'd like to compare the word count.

No, there's no vocabulary list.

rich_f Wrote:Didn't one of the forum members here work on the Shadowing stuff before, like as an English translator or something?

Yep, that's me. The book comes with English, Korean and Chinese translations and I and another guy did the English translations. I know all of the people who you hear talking on the CD. They all come from this school, which I attended for about a year: http://www.kaij.jp

The book isn't targeted at people taking the JLPT. It's designed to help listening to and producing spoken Japanese. There are quite a few gags in the book. Have fun finding them!

Sorry to drag this back from the dead - but I'm wondering if anyone's had any luck with this book?

yes, i did.

i bought this book a year ago when i started using srs. It is not really all that valuable to people who are at the JLPT level 2 going up - but i can definitively say that it took me to the next level - lots of really good idioms that i use all the time


its almost perfect for pre JLPT level 3 through studying for level 2


there arent even close to a 1000 sentences in there. *edit* not even close to a 1000 points - the book makes an effort to increase the phrase lengths as you go

Hey, good stuff. I'm on my way to level 2 so some incidental learning from the book will be cool.

I really just wanted it for intonation, speed, and listening practice. Or, yeah - shadowing. Did that part of it work out well for you? I mean, could you notice the improvement?

rich_f Wrote:The book isn't targeted at people taking the JLPT. It's designed to help listening to and producing spoken Japanese. There are quite a few gags in the book. Have fun finding them!

except for the fact that the book is divided by levels that reference the JLPT levels and explicitly states that someone aiming at those levels should be able to do that section's sentences

Ben_Nielson Wrote:Did that part of it work out well for you? I mean, could you notice the improvement?

its really hard to say if shadowing actually made a difference, but it was during the time that i was using this book that I pulled away from people who came to Japan at the same level that I did (beginner).

its really good practice for essential grammar.

This looks pretty good. Thanks for the hint!