Customer Reviews:
Decent but could be improved
First of all, don't bother with the Romaji version - get a good Hiragana book (Mitamura's Let's Learn Hiragana or the one from Tuttle Library). You should be able to learn all hiragana within a month. When I first picked up this book, being all kana was a little scary, although now that I've been working with it for 2 mos. it's not bad at all. This book has a lot going for it, although now I wish it had some kanji in it so I could start getting used to seeing it. The vocabulary and dialogues in this book all seem very useful and I can envision myself needing to use the vocabulary, which is good. You don't want to waste time learning words you're not likely to use. The bad news is that (at least for the first few chapters) the exercises are not very challenging - they are all substitution exercises with the words you're supposed to replace already in Japanese so you could successfully complete the exercises without fully comprehending what you're writing. There are no translation exercises, nothing to really challenge your understanding. Vocabulary (and grammar) as stated in the book has been thinned down to 1/3 that of a typical college course, and I feel that there really could be more vocabulary included (e.g. when you're taught colors, you learn a total of just 4 colors, although if you look in the back of the book you'll find some more that are not incl. in the text). Although it's stated that this book is for the self learner as well as the classroom, the self learner may find that the grammar explanations are a little thin. I do like how the chapters are organized into units (2-3 chapters/unit) with a one-page grammar summary at the beginning of ea. unit (so you can see what you're getting into). The incl. CD is good although be forewarned that it starts out at breakneck pace right from the beginning, and the woman on the CD has a habit of swallowing her "g" sounds (don't know if this is a regional variation). So, I guess if it's not quite as challenging as it could be then it truly is for Busy People.

Really Good!!
This is a really good series. It teaches you how to write also. I taught myself Japanese with this series.

Great Japanese Language Study Tool
I bought this book as a coupling to the Romaji version I had for my course. I initially bought to sharpen my Kana reading/writing ability. For a beginner like me, it is very useful and help me to achieve my goal in learning Japanese.

I definitely will recommend this book for people who are working full time and have limited time to study, since it teaches Japanese bit by bit from the simplest possible basis. However it might sound tedious for people who want to learn it quick.

Better texts available
I have used this text for my introductory course, and must say that compared to Genki, I find Busy People I to be lacking. The vocabulary is alright, and if you get the kana version it is superior to trying to muddle through with the romaji crutch. However, I find the exercises to be repetitive and non-educational. For each exercise, an example is given. All the student is asked to do is fill in the blanks to repeat the same thing with different people / places / things for the 3 exercises that follow. That is great for practicing writing kana--but not much else. A person can literally complete the exercises without learning the grammatical point that is supposed to be learned in the section.

Unless your class requires this book, I'd suggest looking at Genki or Minna no Nihongo--both far superior books that I've relied on as supplements. An added advantage with those texts is early introduction to kanji.

effective time-saver
First of all, this book/series is mainly aimed at two sorts of people:
1. business students learning Japanese with hopes to work in Japan or work for a company who do business with the Japanese
2. working professionals who do not have 2-3 hours to spend each day on learning Japanese and want to learn the most important bits as efficiently as possible

The three books in this series cover pretty much the same things as Japanese For Everyone (JFE) and Genki I+II.
It has audio-material that has to be bought separately.

The vocabulary it covers emphasizes professional vocabulary such as business terms, as well as practical vocabulary for actually living and working in Japan. It is aimed at mature learners who either plan to work in Japan or do other business there.

If you get the Kana versions there is no romanization at all, not even the vocabulary lists are in romanization - just Kana and English. Therefore you need to know how to read and write Hiragana and Katakana before you start with this book.

But you can easily learn Kana in just a month, so don't panic !
I recommend either Japanese for Busy People: Kana Workbook Incl. 1 CD or the (usually) cheaper Guide to Learning Hiragana & Katakana (Tuttle Language Library).

The exercises are varied, in each chapter are word substitution, reading comprehension, translations etc.
The grammar is explained in a straight-forward manner, but it does not go into the same depth as JFE and Genki. It shows you the most important bits and moves on to the next part.

What distinguishes this book from the others is that you can go through one chapter within 30 minutes and "master" it within a week. So if you can only spend 30 minutes a day studying then this series is a good option for you.

The appendix of each book has tables of all verbs, adjectives etc. covered in the book - which is good for those who like to have everything in one place.

There are extra workbooks that accompany the main ones if you have more time to spend, but they are not essential in my opinion.

Another thing that distinguishes this series is that it is directly aimed at self-learners as there are no group-exercises: it only contains exercises that you can do individually.

Also, there are no audio-exercises in the books, so not buying the audio material will not affect you when using the textbooks. This is different to JFE and Genki, which have extensive audio exercises in each chapter.

This series takes a slower/more gradual approach than Japanese For Everyone, so if learning the Japanese language feels intimidating to you then this series could be a good option.
For example, Kanji are not taught until the second book in the series, this is to get you confident in reading hiragana and katakana first.

The other two books in the series explain both individual Kanji as well as compounds: words made up of one or more Kanji characters, and Kanji + hiragana words.

Many people really like this gradual approach, but others complain that it feels too slow, especially with introducing vocabulary and Kanji. There are also complaints about the grammar-topics being too spread out across the books.
It is true that the chapters in the books do not focus on a specific grammatical concept - like most language books do. Instead they focus on the dialogue-situation: giving a gift to someone etc.

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