Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I teach Japanese at the high school level. I was an exchange student in high school, as well as in college. I worked in Japan for 4 years after graduating college and would still be out there if it weren't for the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster. I mention this as background for my knowledge of Japanese. I would not recommend this book to anyone. It's quite obvious the editors and even the writers did not speak Japanese and used something similar to google translate for the words within the book! After buying this book and previewing it for my class I was very disappointed. Let me explain the verb section as an example. The verb to "look/watch/see" is "miru" under "watch" they have a picture of a kid watching other children play ball the English equivalent of the Japanese used for that picture is "to stand watch/to guard". It doesn't matter which textbook you use, to look/watch/see is one of the first verbs you learn. Under the verb "to sleep" the English equivalent to the word they provide is "to lie dead/to lay in repose/to be dormant" instead of the verb "to sleep" which is another verb you learn at the basic level. I flipped around the book and found other mistakes. I would give this two stars because it does have some correct words, however, if you are not someone who can speak Japanese it's impossible to find out if the words are correct or not. This book is simply riddled with errors. Instead I would recommend anyone interested in a book like this buy "The Usborne First Thousand Words in Japanese" book. That book had native speakers writing the meaning of each word and I couldn't find any mistakes. Also there is a quick section in which to teach the first 2 basic writing systems of hiragana and katakana as well as a section dedicated to proper pronunciation. It's worth the money, and miles better by far than this book.