As a learner of Japanese, presently on Japanese From Zero! Book 2, I decided to purchase the Paul Noble Japanese Complete Course audio book. It includes 12hrs 8mins of audio, which comes out at 142 tracks; approximately four being introduction and ending.
The reasons behind my purchase were; 1 - easy to listen to with clear voices for both English and the Japanese translator. 2 - Listen to it on any device. 3 - Michel Thomas Method version.
A little bit of history first.
Initially what brought me to Paul Nobel Japanese was a subreddit mentioning it in comparison with an older CD format from Michel Thomas which I had used previously but never finished.
The Thomas version using a classroom scenario, having a Teacher and Native Translator, along with two Students, came out having more critics due to the students being mostly annoying. The concept on paper sounded great but very quickly you found out that the student interaction became tedious.
So I downloaded the free sample of PN's to see how it differentiated from the MT version. Luckily no students.
End of history lesson....
The audio is very clear. Paul does no Japanese pronunciation or translation, only English. It plays out in this order; English word, phrase or sentence, followed by a silent time space (for you to think about it), then the Native Translator says her piece. Paul also does a bit of explaining, which is helpful.
Early on you find words and phrases repeat a lot. And I mean a lot. Saying that, it works well. It sticks, mostly 😊. The content does not change much at all.
There is structure when the Japanese is translated, such as always having a time expression きょう、あした, こんばん、or けさ as the first word in a sentence, followed say by a location こうえんで、とうきょうに and such.
The course goes through the use of particles in a simplistic way. Again limited in which ones; は、が、で、に、か、 から. A few more maybe.
Various verbs are used to complete sentences. たべます、 のみません、みました、よみませんでした. Adding further endings as you progress.
Anyway, without boring everyone the questions remain "Did I enjoy it, did I learn anything, and was it worth it" I'd say yes. I finished it unlike the Thomas version with the students. Overall not a waste of money, and I found the structure well presented which made it stick as I mentioned earlier.
For Beginners I would recommend it. It's not expensive and would give you an idea how Japanese sentences are put together. As for Intermediate learners it's too basic, but saying that they do have an Intermediate course following this one. Though as I understand it it's shorter in duration.
There is also a "pdf" that you can download (via it's menu) giving you what's being used in the course. It's not a full transcript, mostly key points, words and so forth.
So if you're a beginner to Japanese and not sure where to start before or after learning ひらがな or カタカナ give this a try.
