The Genki Textbooks - My progress with them and a short review

I bought the second edition Genki textbook about a year ago from Amazon for around £50. Though it is expensive for a textbook, and there are definitely cheaper alternatives to be found, I think the splurge was worth it. The Genki 1 textbook teaches absolute beginner Japanese and is helpfully divided into 12 lessons, and then subdivided in each lesson to cover vocabulary, grammar, practice, cultural notes, and finally writing Kana and Kanji. I also purchased the accompanying workbook which just provides further questions and practice and helpful grids to practice drawing kanji. My only problem with the textbook and workbook is that the answer key for both books has to be purchased separately for an additional £13 (-＿-). The book is definitely more geared towards Japanese language students spending their first year abroad, with the first vocabulary lists introducing words such as Anthropology (じんるいがく）and International relations (こくさいかんけい）before basic colours, days of the week etc, that you would find in a traditional textbook. That aside, the textbook is so far doing a great job of keeping me motivated and the layout and language of the book is so clear and easy to understand. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to start learning Japanese.


So far, I am still working through chapter one (the chapters are pretty long) and I have been learning around 30 words a day on average. I am supplementing my learning using the free internet downloadable program "Anki". I had already learned Katakana and Hiragana prior to working through the textbook and I would suggest to anyone else who is buying the book to do the same. Right now I can not form any sentences other than things like "hello", "my name is", "that is a cat" and so on so I think it may be a week and a bit before I start writing a short passage in Japanese. I have just learnt about the counters for hours, minutes and years old. Today I think I shall finish off chapter one of the textbook by reviewing what I have learnt and so hopefully, I will be ready to start chapter 2 tomorrow.