Book: An Introduction to Modern Japanese, any good?

[Ovioprime]

Hi,

I was hoping I could get people's opinions on

An Introduction to Modern Japanese: Volume 1, Grammar Lessons

and

An Introduction to Modern Japanese: Volume 2, Exercises and Word Lists

They seem to get decent reviews on sites such as Amazon. Has anyone read them? Are they good for self-study? Do you get answers to the exercises and / or does anyone know where answers would be available?

Thanks

Dave

[Infidel]

I use those books.

Yes it is the best course with an emphasis on written Japanese and I use them for self-study. If you want a more comprehensive course that emphasizes spoken Japanese, Genki or Elementary Japanese may be a better bet. While there are no answers provided for the exercises, the patterns are made very obvious in most cases. Whenever I get confused, I just come on here and ask if I got the answer right or not.

[adam]

There is actually an answer key in Genki, but you have to buy a seperate book for it. I'm not sure if it's in the teacher's guide, or a seperate answer book, but i remember seeing it at the bookstore.