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I just can’t believe that other people rated this most confusing book was helpful for learning Katakana and some Japanese words. my child is 5 yr old, 1/2 American, 1/2 Japanese, and lives in USA, she has not been surrounded with Japanese speaking environment as you can imagine, and I am the only one who speaks Japanese around her, so I had to teach her how to write and read Japanese. I successfully have taught her how to write and read Hiragana by reading her Japanese books (Hiragana are mainly used for Japanese children’s books), but Katakana is bit different, since it is for writing words from foreign words mainly, (such as words ; Banana, Radio, we don’t have Japanese words for those, so Radio is Radio, Banana is Banana even in Japanese, and Katakana letters are for such words to write), not many baby or toddler books from Japan use Katakana, so I was looking for something to show her what Katakana look like, and saw this book here on Amazon recently.
As I complained now, this book has been rated with 4 1/2 stars, and the animation-like fun illustration on the cover and each page looked fun, and I thought my child would like it, so I ordered one.

But from native Japanese person’s view, this book is very confusing, and disorganized. The first time I opened the book with my child, I ran into so many non-sense in this book that was so difficult to explain to child.
For example; each letter on one page with example word on it. like ; letter “Ku”- as “Kurisumasu”(christmas), the Ku= Kurisumasu is fine, but some letter and example such as letter “Fu” is as “Golf”, (words start with letter “Fu” can be found, such as “fight”(Fuaito) or “Fax”(fuakkusu), right?) then why it says letter “Fu” as “golf(Golfu)? children can’t understand it. Yet this book does not cover “Dakuon letters” Dakuon are; Ga, Gi, Gu,Ghe, Go, Da, zi,zu,de,do, Ba, Bi, bu,be, bo… so the word starts with one of those letter Go(as Golf), is not good example for beginners.

Also there are so many unrelated stuff on this books, those stuff confuse us.some pages are with explanation, some are not, like the page for letter “Ke” with example word “Cake”(keiki), there are picture of some Cakes, green one(green tea cake, looks like), brown one (chocolate cake, looks like), strawberry one(exactly), Eclair(it is, the picture of long cream puff chocolate coating on top), and stripe cake(don’t know what kind of), anyway, there is allow near each cake pics and except Strawberry one, those are called “Cake(keiki)”, and only the allow to Strawberry one says “Ichigo”(means strawberry) and yet the word “Ichigo” is written in Hiragana, not Katakana. (so the problem is if someone is trying to learn both Hiragana and Katakana at the same time, and can not recognized all letters in Hiragana and Katakana yet, this kind of example are super confusing).
And what is the example of the letter “Mi(me)”=”Mini”?? , Mini-what? the pictures on the page shows the monkey wearing a long maxi length Mink coat with mitten, and a girl with artificial tan in Mini skirt and with allow to her hair with the unfamilar word “Manba”(never heard of, I don’t know what it is-I am Japanese, born and lived in the country for 28 yrs, never heard of the word, probably something new and trendy word, but if so, needs explanation, but on this page, no explanation).

And suddenly in the middle of the book, human anatomy appears (actually it’s monkey’s anatomy) and kindly with words of each parts in Japanese, but mostly those words are in Hiragana.(this book is supposed to teach you Katakana),
and don’t know why it has to be there in the book. (my child got intrests in the anatomy pages and it got all her attention, and she liked the page better than each letter pages. Thanks-A lot!!! is this book helping her to learn Katakana or discouraging? and one of the reasons the anatomy page got her attention was because mostly written in Hiragana, she can read with confidence, so she probably likes, even so, I wanted to teach her Katakana with this book and thought this book was helpful, so this unexpected intrruption was not welcome).

This is for advanced leaners and travelers, I think. But at least my child can see all letters in Katakana clearly. Thanks, but not recommended for kids and beginners.

Help answer the question about learn japanese writing
How Do i learn Japanese in the most simple sense?
I am trying to learn Japanese, the writing AND the language, kind of like a learn japanese writing kid from japan growing up, what do they learn first? i know they have two or three different writing styles, I'm wondering which one i should use, and how i should go about learning this language, ( alone on my own time) please let me know, many thanks

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