Customer comments on this selection.
 Great and useful for anyone really wanted to know Japanese
If you aren't serious about learning Japanese, I don't advise getting this book. However, if you are thoroughly interested in becoming fluent, this is the book for you. This isn't slang--this is real life, everyday Japanese that almost anyone can use--and everyone DOES use it! The book has it's share of informal phrases, but so many of them can be used in formal and informal situations. This isn't all about idioms, it's about real-life conversational speaking! It's about grammar and set phrases that teachers have never taught you, and that so many other lessons just love to skim over or skip completely! Instead of saying, "He's ok, but he might die," you learn to say, "He's ok right now, but the doctor says that if worst comes to worst, he might die."
It also gives GREAT explanations between "wa" and "ga," that many students of all level struggle with, along with ample explanations of the uses of "no."
To be honest, I'd rate this book 4.5/5 stars instead of 4/5. But, since I can't...
The only minor-flaw that this book has is it's lack of quizzes or any other study-friendly things. Although I can't really blame the book, considering it would be incredibly difficult to make a quiz for this. The author gives enough example sentences for you to remember most of the things you learn, and, if you read through the phrases a couple times, you can remember the main part of it, if not the whole significance itself. I'm not a person who can just sit down and memorize a dictionary. This is not a dictionary to begin with.
I highly recommend this to anyone studying Japanese, from upper-beginner to advanced students.
 An Excellent Aid for the Intermediate Student
This little book provides a guide to many important Japanese words and phrases that are difficult to find in a dictionary. The explanations are straightforward, and it provides sufficient examples (although more would be better). I find this book very helpful, and have gone back to it again and again for the better part of a year. I suspect I will keep it around for some time to come. Not bad for 131 pages.
A couple of warnings, however: This book is not for beginners. Moreover, it is a supplement or aid, rather than a complete textbook. With those caveats in mind, I wholehearted recommend it.
good ol' koudansha
Well, as the title so boldly states you WILL find things in this little gem that you wouldn't find in just any dictionary(although you might want to try eiwa-waei dictionaries aimed at native japanese speakers if you've reached a certain level of proficiency). I do have one gripe, though. Why can't language guide publishers be more careful when it comes to typo's?They've even misspelled the name of the author on page 3(dai6satsuhakkou).Who is "Kazuko Shoji"? This kind of thing is pretty common in koudansha publications which is pretty sad considering the outstanding work of(most of)the authors. Fortunately, romanised text helps clear any discrepancies most of the time but it's still annoying.
Wish I'd bought this sooner!
This book really is excellent in every way. I'm an intermediate/advanced japanese student, although I mainly study on my own these days. Because of that, I needed something to teach me some of the little things that are difficult to find in a book, yet are a big part of the language, and this book does that. It has a HUGE list of Japanese idioms, set phrases, and similar grammatical tools that are absolutely integral to the Japanese language, and I often found myself going "Oh yah, that's the kind of thing I would say in English, but never thought to learn it in Japanese!" Basically, if you want to take a break from the textbooks and learn some really good fundamental and natural Japanese grammar, this book is for you. For the price, you simply can't beat it. I also HIGHLY recommend "Basic Connections:Making Your Japanese Flow." With those two books, you'll have enough info to last you a long time!
A little more advanced than I was looking for
This book seems quite useful, and is well-indexed... but this is really for intermediate to advanced students of Japanese. To use this book, you should be able to read some Kanji, and already have a good knowledge of Japanese sentence structure and a reasonable vocabulary.
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