I got myself a CD and book set called Ultimate Japanese-Advanced. Not advanced at all but I knew that before, which is one of the reasons I got it. More like lower to standard intermediate. My first impressions of the first couple of lessons is that it's too business based, which bores me silly. Has anyone else used this book and had much luck? Does it get better later on?

I've yet to find a text that I like. I prefer reference books. Genki I&II&intro to intermediate Japn. don't seem too horrible though.

Genki I and II are great. I think they were the most modern of the all the text books and the combined together they will see you through to jlpt 3. They also have workbooks and cds to accompany the texts. The workbooks are reasonably priced but the CDs are quite expensive 10,000-20,000 yen!!! I just got the texts and workbooks.

Theres no turgid characters or stories in the book like mr robert smiths trip to some sweat shop with his japanese counterparts.

I found the other book by the japan times quoted above a bit of a let down compared to the genki series. It had loads and loads of grammar points but only 4-5 practice questions for each point compared to genkis 30-40. It was more of a grammar reference than anything and a bad one at that as there werent enough examples to get a hook on the nuances. Instead of that book get the Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar by Seiichi Makino. There is also a basic one but a lot of the grammar is covered in genki. Together they will set you back about 9000yen in japan though on amazon.co.uk they were asking for 40quid for one book! Tim Kais grammar site is a great reference and will make a fine substitute (temporarily anyway) for these books.

These books and site however wont provide you with practice questions but i never could find a book past intermediate level that did everything well so i switched to the AJATT method and mined the reference books for new grammar and stuck them in my SRS. Its going well.

The Beginner-Intermediate version of Ultimate Japanese is pretty good. It's the book that finally showed me that learning Japanese wasn't just a crazy dream (I'd tried learning from a CD-ROM and phrasebooks, but to no avail). I never used the Advanced book, though I've seen it. I say just use it a little bit at a time to stave off the boredom and supplement it with other learning materials. It'll probably be good reading and listening practice.

thegeezer3 Wrote:Instead of that book get the Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar by Seiichi Makino. There is also a basic one but a lot of the grammar is covered in genki. Together they will set you back about 9000yen in japan though on amazon.co.uk they were asking for 40quid for one book! Tim Kais grammar site is a great reference and will make a fine substitute (temporarily anyway) for these books.

As far as I know the advanced one isn't published yet; it is listed as in progress on the author's page. Right now there are just the basic & intermediate books.