Nakama 2: Japanese Communication, Culture, Context

Brand new, just like the one I bought 19 years ago for college. This time, I'm not going to write in the thing! I'm excited to tech my children from these books! Took three tries to get it, however.

I decided to write this review in response to the overwhelmingly positive reviews that were posted on this website. No conscionable person could possibly stay silent on this issue.The truth is that Nakama is not what these people present it as. Nakama is, in fact, a horrible textbook for a college course.It's childish.The grammar explanations are jejune at best, a little splurge of example in the form of some uninteresting dialogue is all that is given for each grammatical example. And when I say "at best," it's because grammar in this book is really rather scant. Grammar is definitely not at the forefront of Nakama. It definitely takes a back seat to too much uselesstidbits of "cultural" aspects of Japanese and example sentences and dialogues that border on rote methods of language learning. The coverage of vocabulary that would fuel strong grammatical examples is also weak.This textbook's main failure lies in the fact that it follows a popular methodology for language learning in the 90s that put the spotlight on the classroom environment to fill in the many gaps that textbooks left in learning. Most of the exercises in the book are classroom activities to be done with a partner or in front of the class. Grammar examples were apparently left to be presented by the teacher and any missing vocabulary again to be divulged by teacher or dictionary.The cultural exposure also falls flat and it turns out that in a classroom setting this overly complicated feature of the book (Salutations in written letters? Reading medical charts?!) is usually skipped in favor of more teacher examples. This book would leave a self-studier almost as completely blind as some similar European language books do. So what's the point of that? Why doesn't the teacher just teach without a textbook or hand out his own worksheets? It'd probably be equally or more effective.And as I said, the book is puerile. It focuses on basic conversation, as if the plan of the author was to never allow the student a fighting chance at fluency.This book also has virtually no real textbook/workbook examples within the text itself. You have to buy the overpriced workbook to get any practice out of it - practice which is really necessary to one's ability in the language. It also doesn't come with a single audio CD. Those can be purchased separately for an inflated price. But the most important audio portion of all is the "Student Tape/CD" which is not included in such a package. This whole thing is just a huge rip-off.Unfortunately, you don't have much of a choice when learning Japanese. Of the four mainstream Japanese texts, Nakama is right in the middle and not prominently so - it's only marginally better than the laughable Yookoso and in return the more serious Genki series is only marginally better than Nakama. All of the popular Japanese textbooks recently published have been of such mediocre flavor.Good points? To be honest, the coverage of Kanji is sufficient. This book is very neatly laid out, and the paper seems to be of good quality. Also, the glossaries and appendixes are easy to navigate. And it's not completely useless - the intermediate course might get you through what should be basic first year Japanese with a good book. However, if you're planning to really learn the language and get out of kindergarten Japanese without wasting the price of a private tutor to explain how much you were ripped off by this book, you should consider another method.

Okay, so I just realized I accidentally reviewed the workbook/lab manual with what I wanted to say for the actual book. Well then, I will say that I was perfectly satisfied with the workbook/lab manual, because it only had a couple of marks in the preliminary chapter, and they were unobtrusive. The textbook, on the other hand, was a different story as mentioned in the other review.Sorry about the mix-up.

Nakama 2 is certainly useful, if you are taking a class and have access to other language sources. For myself, however--and perhaps this is due to my Genki background--it seemed overly verbose, far to big, and not too terribly concise. I admit that my feeling might be quite different if I had worked from Nakama 1, but as it was, when I got to Nakama 2, I knew most of the grammar in the first two chapters and all the vocabulary. Sadly, there was vocabulary from the first volume I did NOT know--which made staying on track in class rather diffficult at first.My opinion is that Nakama 2 is good and fine and suitable for class guided study. Make sure to get yourself up-to-date on the vocab and grammar if you don't have a Nakama background, though. And if you are looking for self-guided study, try Genki, instead.

This is just the Nakama 2 Textbook. If you are like me and thought this was a cheaper alternative to buying from your Uni's bookstore, make certain that your class does not require the iLrn online component; as that will set you back another $90.00 for the key.

Something wrong with this book. Colloquililsm errors? Phraseology idiosyncrasies? Or are they mine?Textbooks are usually over-priced, and this one is not an exception.I think a Japanese instructor could choose a better text book than this one.

Great book for the price. I wish all textbooks can be this cheap.

Used in a collegiate/graduate intermediate-level Japanese language course, though book is not easy to follow as a native English speaker without the assistance of a teacher of sorts.