Nakama 2: Japanese Communication, Culture, Context Review

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(More customer reviews)I used both Nakama I and Nakama II for the first four semesters of university Japanese classes, and Nakama I was brilliant--the early introductions to hiragana and katakana, the mnemonic devices, the themed vocabulary lists. I felt that it gave us a great start, but Nakama II went downhill.
I have two main gripes with this book: the bizarre choices for kanji in each chapter and the selective information given about grammatical structures. Nakama II does not teach the most common kanji or kanji with common elements that will be more useful with further study; it takes the idea of "themed" learning and creates situations where, say, you can write all of the kanji in yuubinkyoku (post office) before you can write "migi" (right) and "hidari" (left). This problem extends to the vocabulary lessons as well--light on basic everyday-use verbs, for example, but heavy on less-necessary words.
Frankly, I also didn't get the approach Nakama II takes to grammar--the idea that "here is a grammatical structure, usable only in the narrow context it's presented as a part of, with no further explanation." We learned the "nakereba naranai" construction a good two chapters, I believe, before we learned what the "ba" form was at all. When the more complete explanation is given, it's treated like an entirely new concept.
Nakama II is not all bad, by any means; in fact, it's superior to other textbooks I've purchased, and I'm not quite sure if there is any one Japanese textbook helpful in all areas. But if you attend a school that uses Nakama, keep your fingers crossed that you get as lucky as we were to have a teacher who was intelligent and helpful, or that you can be extremely diligent in filling in the gaps left by this text.
And if you have decided to study Japanese, I wish you the best of luck. ^_^

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A two year proficiency-oriented program that emphasizes practical communication and the development of listening, reading, writing, and speaking skills. Twelve thematic chapters focus on high-frequency communication situations. Chapter dialogues illustrate typical daily events in Japanese life and provide realistic contexts in which to learn vocabulary and grammar.

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