Average Customer Review: ( 14 customer reviews )
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This program does NOT use Japanese syllabry; it uses Romaji instead. When playing the games or quizes you have to spell romaji correctly. I wa never good at the type of romaji they use (ie I prefer to use "o-" rather than "oo"). It has a characture chart, but there are better ways to learn Hiragana and Katakana.

All the dialogs are good, though. They do not teach grammer, or explain verb conjugation. For these reasons, it is best to be studying another way and use this program as a passive review, or practice.

...AGAIN, use his to supplement your studies only.

12 of 14 found the following review helpful:

Sound recorded under a waterfall?Nov 11, 2002

This software was a complete waste of money. The layout of the software is very confused and there is no guide for the user to follow. The biggest problem with the software is the sound quality. The recordings are so noicy that I got a pain in my head after just a few minutes. The speaker are frequently cut short a few ms or the recording start or stops with a *pop*. The amazingly poor sound is combined with a really unclear voice from the speaker. (The girl sounds like she has some thing in her mouth) I saw PowerJapanese at a freinds house but it was unavalible. So I got this... I will now start looking for PJ in the used section.

5 of 6 found the following review helpful:

Best product I've foundAug 08, 2004
By KJ94115
This language software is far and away the best product I've found for learning Japanese. I am currently in Japan and this software has helped me much more than any of the books I had bought. The interactive aspect as well as the opportunity to listen to native speakers has made it indispensible. My only criticism is that it doesn't give you the written Japanese to look at as you learn the words, it just shows you the romanji which is of no help over here when it comes to reading the language.

All in all, it's a bargain given the results you will get from it.

5 of 6 found the following review helpful:

Not very helpfulMar 10, 2003
By Anthony Peak
I gave this program a fair shake, and overall I'm quite unimpressed. One of the program's key features in my book is the ability to say a word and have it judge you based on sound, pitch, etc. Great in theory, but imagine my surprise when I found out I could say anything at all, such as "Cheeto" and still get a perfect score so long as I mimicked the speaker even a little. This program also does very little to teach grammar rules.

Basically, if you already know some Japanese and you're just looking for a vocab builder, it might be worth getting it cheap. You can cheat the speech system, but if you really do try and read the graphs, you can tell if you're actually getting it right or not. It's a sub par tool, but a tool none the less.

9 of 12 found the following review helpful:

Good programMay 30, 2003
By Ryan Green
I work for a company that gets large amounts of business from severl Japanese companies. Japanese Now was able to help me learn how to speak to my company's clients but also taught me a valuable skill. At the start I learned the basics through the program and learned situational dialogues as well. Many games and activities are featured and allow for practice and review which is crucial in learning and retaining a new language. One of the best features I saw was being able to check if your pronunciation of a certain word(s) is right. Japanese Now also allows for you to practice real conversations that have real world implications. This language learning tool is irreplacable to me and I would recomend it over any of the other language learning software.

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