Total Japanese Course (Learn Japanese with the Michel Thomas Method): Beginner Japanese Audio Course Audio CD – Unabridged, 26 Dec. 2014

Although fairly expensive, I feel this is well worth the money. I would have paid a lot more to attend a course somewhere, but feel I have probably achieved a similar level of learning. It's easy and pleasant to listen to and incredibly well structured. You are essentially listening to a teacher teaching two students (you are the third student and join in with them), and also a native Japanese speaker who repeats sentences to ensure correct pronunciation. Although not necessarily the most useful vocabulary, what this audio course proclaims to teach is the structure of the language, giving you the confidence to build your own sentences and add vocabulary. Because I would like to learn Japanese as thoroughly as possible I am using this course in conjunction with an app (FluentU - highly recommend) and a book to learn the Japanese 'alphabets'. All in all, I feel like I'm well on my way and have thoroughly enjoyed this. I have listened to each cd three times before moving on.

This is great. After 3 years of studying on paper and VERY reluctant to speak I feel quite confident now and am looking forward to doing the next level. I can now talk to my Japanese wife (who admits she's a rubbish language teacher...:-)). That still leaves the written side of things which is very useful but being able to speak and maybe converse is far more important.

really works for me. It's so much more useful learning how a language works than just regurgitating repeated grammar.I'm only marginally cleverer than the dopey helpless one, so she is a relief often.

It is a very good product, but the one student is so wildly incompetent that it really began to grate on me.

My teenage son has learned a lot of japanese from this course and is still using it

Struggled with books and lessons from the internet but this has moved me on leaps and bounds. My memory is no longer the best but this method seems to work for me.

Having both this course and the advanced Japanese course, I fail to see why Michel Thomas Method languages has not provided a Japanese vocabulary course (like those for Arabic, Mandarin and Russian). All the new editions seem to be re-hashes of the former editions. Isn't it about time they published a Japanese Vocabulary Builder Course, so we can learn about 1,000 new Japanese words? It would be nice to talk about more things than 'He went there, but I went here!' Or, 'I ate sushi at a Japanese restaurant and then played tennis with my friend!' It gets a bit boring by CD 6! Oh and that idiot female student who never gets it right, even by CD 8.

Easy to use, clever way of teaching languages.