Rapid Japanese: Volume 1

Bad soundquality makes it very difficult to hear the exact pronounciation oft the japanese phrases. That's unfortunate because the recording is contentwise quite useful.

I find it hard to believe the speaker is Japanese. I find the pronunciation poor and not very accurate. The phonetic sounds in Japanese are different from English.
Just one example, at the start, she reads milk as "milk" but it's pronounced "miruku".
Anyways, REALLY great concept, but my Japanese friends laughed at it.

Memorization to a catchy little tune. . .believe it or not, it works. The readers are very clear, and the available free pdf sheet is a great help.

Understand before you begin, that this is good for a very, very short trip to Japan. You'll be able to order in a restaurant, tell the taxi driver to take you to the airport, ask if you can pay by credit card, etc. They do get rather a lot into the hour long program.

Please remember though, (which, of course, I didn't) it's an hour long program. You will not be able to converse with native Japanese people beyond these very limited phrases. You will definitely not be able to turn off the subtitles on your favorite Japanese movies. You'll still be absolutely clueless when it comes to trying to read Japanese characters. I would love to see a language instruction course based on this rhythmic theory, but with some hint of sentence structure, grammar, etc.

WOW! Having just purchased and listened to Rapid Japanese several times during a beach vacation, I can report that this is truly a BREAKTHROUGH product!!! Here's why:

- The music and the entire approach makes it an effortless pleasure to work through the material. You'll actually ENJOY yourself while learning.

- The music and pacing puts your brain into hypnotic state where the words and phrases are effortlessly burned into your memory.

Music is only the tip of the iceberg:

- The pairing of an English learner and native Japanese speaker. The English learner (narrator) see's things from YOUR perspective asking questions and figuring things out on your behalf.

- Delicious repetition. Each new word and phrase is repeated over and over and over and over, often with subtle variations. I LOVE IT!

- Complex phrases are broken into their constituent parts. Starting from a complex phrase the English learner (narrator) queries his Japanese language buddy for the meanings of each part of the phrase and then rebuilds these parts back into the original combination. As a result things make sense and you're able to hear the parts and intuitively grasp the grammatical structure!

- The English learning (narrator) pronounces the Japanese phrases in way that is closer to the way a new English speaker would - this makes it easier to decipher the sounds. However this less than perfect pronounciation is always paired with a native speaker saying the same phrases perfectly. This combination allows you to hear the phonemes and then shift towards native pronounciation.

- The program introduces Japanese grammer and language constructs - but does so in a right brained immersive way.

I have used many, many language products and I can say without hesitation that Rapid Japanese Vol 1 is the best I've experienced.

My only complaint is that there is only 1 volume

PLEASE produce 20 more volumes just like this!!!

Without a text to refer to, too much interpretation is left to an unpracticed ear.
The mobile phone app might be a superior implementation of this teaching system.

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Even though I have had problems with other language programs in the past I was able to complete all of the lessons in units 1 and 2 fairly easily. However, I found it difficult to remember what I had learned outside of the context of replying to the speaker in the lesson. Someone asked me what I had learned and to my amazement I could think of no reply.

These are really neat!!!

Music tracks are really nifty and relaxed.

This has been very helpful. Honestly.