I personnaly use Genki and  I found it quite good. The gramar explanation are pretty good IMO the book well structured and there are extensive exercice and some reading practice. I am curently at about 1/3 of the second book (of 2).

Compare to JFBP, Genki is more student oriented with some less polite gramar expression beeing introduced. Some Genki exercice are doable only in a class setting, I am taking private lesson and we are doing most of them, pretty good oral training IMO. There are some exercice where you basicaly use the same pattern, to get the gramar point but you also ahve some more conversation-like one's.

I don't know Japanese for Everyone (I think I have head the name but that's pretty much it). One book that I know and that is widely used is 皆の日本語(minna no nihongo).
The japanese school I am going to this summer is using it, so I'll see if it is good. I don't have the book yet, so can't comment about it.

It is way too high muckity muck and hard to work with. Best grammar for any newbie to japanese must be Tae Kim's A Japanese Guide to Japanese Grammar.

It is the best on the web if you are starting from fresh. I'd recommend you use it in conjuction with a text book system, since it lacks proper text to read. But visit it.

www.guidetojapanese.org

For grammar I bought "A dictionnary of basic japanese grammar" at the same time as the genki. And for now I have nearly not use it as I was happy with the genki texbook. I did however recently checked a few grammar point in it and it's was very well explained, in a very systematic way.

As for Tae Kim's grammar guide I wanted to read it since a long time but with genki and finishing RTK1 I have only read the very beginning. The aproach seems really different from texbook, seems really interesting.

In my first year at university we used Nakama one and two, they were awesome - I did a weekend course before I started that used Japanese For Busy People - Nakama blows it out of the water. 2nd year used "Intermediate Japanese: An intergrated course" but I moved to Japan soon after that and didn't finish it. I also have "Handbook of Japanese Grammar" which was really useful, but maybe the "Basic Japanese Grammar" book is better, most of the Power Japanese books (Particles, Basic Connections, Core words and phrases, Japanese Sentence Patterns, Common Japanese Phrases) the Kodansya Furigana dictionary (this is great - has grammar explanations and example sentences) and a few Kanji dictionaries. I agree with the poster that mentioned Tae Kims grammar guide - that guy is a legend and done an awesome job on that textbook. I'd also recomend reading "Making sense of Japanese" by Jay Rubin - it's fun to read even of the subject level is above you. If you are studying by yourself I'd getting Pimsleur from the library, the most important thing at the start is getting the pronunciation correct I think.

When I first started learning, I entered a class that used Japanese for Busy People I. I had a great time with it and thought that it was an excellent book to learn from although I've never really had the chance to compare it with other beginners books. Points to note are that the vocabulary is obviously quite business oriented and is quite polite. If you go to Japan then a lot of the language you hear will not be in that book.

I also used Japanese for College Students at University and that was pretty good but quite academic in style. I switched before I had a chance to do JBP II in class and therefore my studies using JPB II were all by myself. I thought that it wasn't as good as the first book. In fact, that has been my experience with Japanese tuition and text books for a while, the quality can be very high at beginner level but steadily decreases as you progress.

I also use the Dictionaries of Japanese Grammar. Both beginner and intermediate versions are excellent but they are definitely just for reference. Useful for when you come away from a class not grasping what the teacher said or when you see an odd piece of grammar and want to look it up. Not necessary at all for complete beginners but worth considering later on.

It's been mentioned a few times that a lack of romaji is a good thing and JPB I has a kana version which I strongly recommend over the romaji one. I personally think that the first step in any person's Japanese studies should be to master the hiragana. It's often seen as a big barrier but after seeing the results of Heisig's method with kanji, it seems clear that hiragana mastery can be accomplished very quickly. There are various methods and Heisig himself has quite a unique one that I'm told is excellent.

My language course uses Japanese for Busy People, but I'm very glad our teacher introduced a lot of extra grammar during the course that wasn't in the book at that time. JBP has a (bad IMO) habit of tying their grammar explanations to whatever they feature in the sample conversation at the start of each chapter. That means that instead of giving all the rules that relate to a certain form of language use, they chop things up and leave them half-finished most of the time.

I can imagine there are people who can't handle too much info at the same time, but I rather learn for instance the complete list of -te forms at once, instead of having it chopped up over 10 different lessons or so.

I'm sure it's a great book if you want to take it slow, but as an academic and a former linguistics student, I would prefer a method with more emphasis on structured introduction of grammar instead of playing around with sample conversations. The other drawback of the JBP method is that you can never find anything if you want to look it up. Everything is all over the place.

The way kanji are introduced in book II follows the same pattern: they just take 10 or 11 kanji that were featured in the conversation, but there is no good learning pattern to these kanji. They introduce for instance 語　before they introduce 言.

Oh well, classes start again in september, and by then I want to have finished Heisig book I, and perhaps have made some nice kanjitown onmyoji stories.

an alternative to using a textbook is to use a phrasebook to get at phrases you want to know and to study kanji as well...I have been looking at Lonely Planets Japanese phrasebook...you have to transcribe the romaji into hiragana pretty quickly but it is rich in kanji sentences...it was great to look at it after finishing Heisig I

I agree Krusher.  I was actually inspired by a little book I discovered called How to Learn Any Language.  The book explains how self-taught speakers should take a multi-track approach to learning languages:  textbook study, Pimsleur, flashcards, and phrasebook.   Even though you might be using brute memory (not so brutish actually; he encourages the use of mnemonics), you are learning phrases that textbooks do not necessarily teach you.   The theory goes that along with the grammar study of your textbook and all the other methods you will achieve a more natural approach to the language.  There is a website inspired by the method called how-to-learn-any-language.com. 

Right now I am on vacation in Japan.  It is nice to see all of my little kanji friends that I have been visiting but the compounds and the vocabulary overload is getting to me. Gambatte.

bokuzukuri wrote:

BTW, after having completed Genki one should watch Japanese variety shows. A lot. The level is usually lower than your average J-Drama, and the only subtitles you'll find are the integrated, colorful ones (which help a lot.)

Yeah, I always thought that once you'd done RTK1 and your listening was at an okay level those shows with Japanese-subtitles (almost everything on TV from what I saw?) would be really good. I left Japan five weeks ago after a year (Tokyo + Computer programming job = bail ) so I don't have as much access to Japanese TV, I get drama from d-addicts.com via torrents, I have about 9 or 10 complete series, they're hit-and-miss but I find watching them really useful, at worst they give you that brain-numbing feeling most people want from TV and at best you can understand a whole conversation, which does wonders for your confidence Do you download those variety shows or are you in Japan? Could you give me the names of a few please?

I'm with wrightak, krusher please explain... I'm in the Kanto area and trying desprately to get a computer programming job...
We could start a new thread if you'd like...

Back to textbooks... I'm hoping to finish the Genki II textbook within about a month (incidentally also RTK I..  woo-hooo..well maybe), and I was wondering if anyone could give me some suggestions for a post-genki textbook.  I'm also studying minna no nihongo 2 in class, but I would like a text for self-study with maybe a similar style to the genki series, but at a higher level that would follow-on from the genki books.  Someone mentioned "An Integrated Approach to Intermediate Japanese", but I dunno anything about this book?  any suggestions welcome!..　よろしくお願いします。

Gah. I had ordered the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar on Amazon.com and it was supposed to ship about now, after 6 weeks of waiting. Instead I was asked to approve new delivery times, with the book delivered in a month at least. I cancelled and ordered from the japan shop yesterday and it's already shipped. I'll probably get it next week then.