Kana From Zero!: Learn Japanese Hiragana and Katakana with integrated workbook.

I cannot say enough good things about the Japanese books from this series and authors. I started using Rosetta Stone to learn Japanese, but was frustrated when Rosetta Stone did not explain why there were exceptions to sentence and word use. This and other books in the series do an excellent job in helping to learn the language but also give you practice in writing the language in all forms of Japanese alphabets. They are short chapters that can be done in 10-15minutes. I can't imagine using any other books at this point.

This book will definitely make you learn the kana and is suggested before you begin any Japanese course that uses kana (which any good one will do). My 12 year old son is working his way through this book. While it's not his favorite activity, it definitely is teaching him and give him pointers on what he's doing wrong. The chapters aren't too long and are self-reinforcing. The guy who makes these books (George something) has a ton of Japanese from Zero videos on YouTube that are EXTREMELY detailed and helpful even if you don't use his book. I highly recommend you check them out.

I had absolutely no self confidence about this before I started, but I decided to give learning Japanese a try. This was an excellent foundation for me, and gave the confidence to move forward with Japanese From Zero book 1. Sure, the two books overlap with many of the same vocabulary, but hey, repetitious practice only reinforces the learning. I have just finished JFZ book 1, and I'm looking forward to continuing this adventure with book 2. I really don't have any real criticism with this book. It's very clean in it's layout, and the subject matter is easy to understand. If you were as timid as I was, start here, and don't be afraid to take it slow.

Excellent book! So amazing and helpful ! teaches you both alphabets in one book and Has PLENTY of fun exercises to cement the letters into your memory because the best way to remember something is to use it frequently The writing portion is great because writing the letters our out makes it so much easier to retain them in your memory there is also an answer key at the end of each chapter where you can check your answer and it is very helpful to reinforce what you have learned. learning kana is made very fun in this book, it is quite a useful resource Thank you for your hard work

When I realized I wanted to learn Japanese I bought a bunch of books and computer programs. They ended up sitting and collecting dust before I finally tried to dig into it all. I came to a conclusion very quickly, similar to one that hindered my ability to learn any other language that I've tried to learn--the books and programs go too fast for me. When chapter 1 of your book introduces 25 new characters, and expects you to have memorized them all by chapter 2, making progress seems really slow, because you now have to stop, spend time studying and recognizing them, before you can really move on, all while at the same time they are introducing vocab and grammar, and some cultural tidbits of information. I actually started reading Japanese from Zero first, and quickly stopped since the first part of that book was how to count in Japanese. My next attempt was with Human Japanese, and I made it several chapters into it when I realized I was treating it more like a video game of quickly learning some relevant information so I could get 5 stars on the quizzes and unlock the next chapter only not retain really any of that information. So that wasn't really working for me, luckily I remembered I also bought this book and started my third attempt at beginning to learn Japanese. So, I'm proud to say I've actually made it through the entire book. This was able to teach me hiragana and katakana to a point where I can now recognize all the characters as well as pronounce them (semi-reasonably well--ok, let's be honest, I'm probably butchering most of the words based on the pangs on my Japanese friends faces when I try to say something, but that's okay, I'll get better with more practice). So, if you are like me, and want to approach Japanese a little slower, and give yourself a head start when you pick up your first Japanese book on grammar, I highly recommend you pick up this book, along with some flash cards, and a Campus notepad and just take it slow. Do the exercises in the workbook, practice writing the characters, and drill yourself using some flashcards. The beauty of this book is how its structured. Each chapter contains a set of characters (sometimes with dakuten), so the usual bunch of characters you need to memorize are 10 per chapter. So it actually feels like you are making progress. Ok, so I did give this book 4 stars instead 5 because there are errors in the book. I'm lucky enough to have some Japanese friends to pester with questions, and there were several times that I sent them pics of some of the vocab examples and they were like, that's so not right, that's not how we say that (that ranged for everything from some examples of color, to the word no (ノー). There were also some printing mistakes, like when you get to lesson 9 in Hiragana, the box of characters doesn't tell you that the last character ろ is ro, or in the final chapter when learning katakana they give the example of the word fuse, which they spelled ヒュース but its actually spelled ヒューズ. Did these mistakes really hinder my ability to learn hiragana and katakana, no, but educational books shouldn't have obvious mistakes in them like these. So I still recommend the book, and I'm looking forward to going back and picking up Japanese from Zero and starting Human Japanese from the beginning since now I have learned both syllabaries and don't have to get bogged down learning too much at once.

This book is good for either learning or touching up your Hiragana or Katakana. It not only teaches you what the characters are it also shows the stroke order for writing quickly and explains the pronunciation to sound more natural. It also offers a good amount of practice words in it that can be used to expand your Japanese vocabulary.

I used this book to keep my hiragana skills up while reviewing their level 1 book. It’s a good companion and highly recommend it.

This book made it easy for me to remember hiragana and katakana. The integrated workbook gave excellent examples. I had a a little typo in my book so far but it wasn't big, only that on page 75 Ro is missing from the box. But besides that small thing the book was excellent. i will continue using this series of books for my future studies.