James W. Heisig

Impressively effective teaching of the hiragana. I liked the author's memorization techniques, which involve creating mental pictures that reference both the shape and the sound of the hiragana. About half of his mental pictures didn't click for me so I ended up creating my own, and this worked out just fine because I was still using his technique.

One thing to note is the claim of teaching oneself the hiragana in 3 hours. I followed the time instructions, and I truly did learn the hiragana show more in about 3 hours, spread out over a couple days. However, I also practiced off the clock, and since completing the book I have practiced a lot to keep the information imprinted in my memory. I think that this is key: the book will teach you the hiragana in 3 hours, but to truly know it you will need to practice practice practice. show less

Uno de los mejores libros que han pasado por mis manos en mi época de japonés autodidacta. Usa el método mnemotécnico de la memoria imaginativa, siguiendo un orden específico para aprender el silabario.

A mi me resultó realmente útil y ameno.

The first part, learning the hiragana, was pretty useful. I managed to learn that syllabary in 4 days (without intense training, just the half hour per lesson).
The second part though was a different story. For the first 3 lessons there aren't any useful mnemonics and that's about half of the syllabary. I quit trying to learn the katakana with the Heisig method and learned the rest using other resources and setting up my own mnemonic devices.

I borrowed this from my library as an Interlibrary Loan, so I didn't have much time with it. However, I had enough time with it to know that this isn't the study method for me. Much of the book was useful, however the method just isn't my learning style. I actually prefer learning the kanji, the meaning, and the pronunciation all together, and it seems to work well that way for my brain.