Human Japanese Intermediate

Couldn't get it to load on my Windows Vista machine.

Visual presentation is wonderful, just wish I could print out vocabulary cards or lists to carry with me.

Oh boy is this abysmal. I bought Human Japanese Intermediate along with their first volume thinking I was being smart and saving money on shipping by picking them both up at the same time. Big mistake! I would have avoided this volume at all costs after experiencing the first volume. This volume comes off as an attempt at a quick cash-in as it's padded out with a ton of filler, i.e.; it rehashes a lot of material from Vol 1 and includes a ton of useless and now out of date useless nonsense such as "how to find a hotel room in Japan" etc etc. LOL. I can Google that...I bought this to learn Japanese! All this is accompanied by tons of generic clip art and typical cliche and boring stock photos of Japan, things like snow falling on a Japanese rooftop, cherry blossoms, etc...yawn. What makes it all the more infuriating is there's a lame attempt at humor throughout with lot of cringey painfully un-funny jokes. Yeah real funny guys, I guess the joke is on us, the buyer. Although I have to admit, at times I was laughing, but not at their "humor" but at how bad it is. The whole presentation comes off as something that was put together by students in an app design class as a class-end project. And not one that earned an A, more like a C- at best. Special mention goes to the "voice talent" woman LOL. She alternates between sounding like she's stumbling through trying to read off cue cards, and trying to sound "cute" as if she fancies herself an anime voice actress LOL. But sad, as it just reinforces the negative "empty-headed baby" stereotype of Japanese women. If that's what you like, great. But I prefer intelligent sounding women especially if they're trying to teach me something. If I want to hear a woman speaking in a widdle baby anime voice I'll watch an anime. From the sound of her voice she's an older woman too, so it's very unbecoming, odd, and creepy, but I digress. If I hadn't wasted my money and time on this I would have been rolling on the floor laughing at it. Anyway, if you're serious about wanting to learn Japanese, look elsewhere.

This is long-awaited. As most learners of Japanese know, the language has the reputation of being impenetrable and extremely complicated. While Human Japanese can't change the fact that Japanese is quite far-removed from our language, it can do quite a lot to erase the image it has of some impossibly complex monster that will take you a lifetime of non-stop toil to learn. That's because Japanese really isn't those things, and it also has to do a lot with the author of this software's ability to explain things in a, well, "human" and easily understandable way.The first installment was an eye-opener for me. I took two Japanese classes in college, and the way it was taught - with heavy emphasis on technical explanations of grammar and rules - made Japanese live up to its spooky reputation. In the final weeks of class, with the final exam coming up, I decided I needed to try to catch up or I may not pass. In those final weeks of using Human Japanese to catch up, the language went from intimidating and difficult to quite logical and welcoming. For once, the language seemed almost "simple" and logical to me, and I was for once encouraged to learn something I never thought I could.The author does an immense job explaining Japanese in simple, understandable terms. He highlights many differences that actually point out how English, in many areas, makes less sense than Japanese. Save for Kanji - which no one can claim is easy - the difficulty in learning this beautiful language is actually only due to its distance from English, and not due to its actual complexity.No one resource can promise to get you to absolute fluency, but for me, this software, like its wonderful predecessor, is one of the keys in my Japanese-learning journey. From what I've gotten to thus far in this edition, it's every bit as welcoming and coherent as the first edition, and I'm looking forward to how far it will get me.