If they have access to the ITunes store, there are a few good apps I would recommend for beginners. Learn Japanese! by Howell Peebles covers Hiragana, Katakana and some grammar. Bunpo is an app to that explains Japanese grammar, which I personally found really useful. There is also Scribe Japanese which focuses on vocabulary but also includes some listening.
Although it’s not really a textbook, I would also recommend the book
I agree with this, especially for their priorities, but this is pretty unlikely (mostly a free time constraint). At best, they can work with podcasts and the like, stuff they can do on their own time during or between other things, and I’d just help them wherever I can. Thanks for the suggestion, though.
Nobody in our house uses iTunes (or Apple products) anymore 
I’ve heard people talk about this before and I think it’s on Android too, so I’ll give this a look. The N5 vocab book will probably have to wait (if they make it that far, anyway).
I mentioned this in my original post, but another commenter up the thread said those books taught strictly business Japanese.
For what it’s worth, I went through all 3 of the Busy People books as someone who has 0 experience or interest in business and still found it super helpful. They are just more geared towards working adults as aposed to Genki which is geared towards students. The vocabulary and exercises are more business specific but as someone who is a bit older, I actually prefered this.
To be more specific to answering your original question, unfortunately there is so no perfect answer. Learning Japanese is a huge cliff to climb and it would be hard to do with limited time, although that could be said for any skill.
Thanks for the information on the series. I’ll probably take a look at their contents myself at some point and make a decision on it, but that’s good to know beforehand.
I know it’s likely that they might not get very far, which is why I posed the question for people who’re learning but are similarly busy with their everyday lives. I think if they can feel like they know more than just nothing, it might be good enough.
I had all the “Japanese for Busy People” books - the first book was OK, but I found the second to be very confusing, so they sat on the shelf for a looong time before I tried to pick up learning Japanese again. To put it in perspective, I have the accompanying cassette tapes! (Or had… they probably got tossed in the trash) I wouldn’t recommend the series - that said, I’m not such a huge fan of many textbooks.
For fast learning, I would second the advice to try Pimseleur. I don’t think there is a faster way to ramp up and get started, especially since it can be done in parallel with other menial tasks. I would also say for limited time to find and hire a tutor assuming time is more valuable than money. For time limited study, I would focus on speaking and leave out attempts to read, which will be much more time consuming.
I do like the idea of trying to leverage off time spent in the car - so podcasts can be OK, but honestly, resources like JapanesePod 101 are so one-sided that it feels more like you are learning about Japanese, than learning Japanese. Maybe some of the other resources that the pod is paired with are better now, but years ago the add-ons were trash.
That information is much appreciated! The tutor thing probably won’t happen (unless they’re sure they’ll commit), but I think I’ll see how much mileage they’ll get out of the ideas from this thread. Most likely, once they finish Pimsleur level 1, I’ll gauge whether or not they’d be willing to even start going through any of these other ideas (might suggest the podcasts before then to see if they like them at all).
Yeah, if they can’t manage Pimsleur, I’d question the whole motivation. It snapped me right out of any interest in learning Portuguese - I decided that I need to focus on Japanese only. (And plans to visit my company’s office in Brazil was cancelled further demotivating.)
One tip, you might be able to find it at your local library to borrow. I think the basic course is fairly inexpensive, so a modest investment might be all it takes to figure out if it is worthwhile. I had completed the course when there were only 3 levels, so I’m considering getting the other two.
N~ 単語 is one of my favourite books! I have all five of them. I recommend this book for anyone who wants to enrich vocabularies.
Also on Audible. So, not only on mobile devices, since Audible can be opened on computer too.
Cc @OmukaiAndi @timfreilly I haven’t bought Pimsleur yet, just want to share they’re on Audible too, but they’re on my Wish list. I haven’t decided which level that suit me best. Any levels below 3 seems too easy for me, like their Japanese is too slow for me to repeat, I can catch normal conversation from J-Drama if what they talk are in my vocabs/grammar belt, but not always when Native Japanese talk in normal everyday speed on TV. But I’m also afraid if I buy level 3, that level will be too high for me, just like what I felt when I did almost all exercises on Matome N5 and found my results below 100%. I hope I didn’t derail this thread.
Andi, did you finish ALL of them? Pimsleur and Thomas ?
i did 1-3 of pimsleur, 4 and 5 didn’t exist yet, and i did the michel thomas advanced course. it’s not really advanced, lol, only compared to the foundational one. it has rather simple grammar, but it was useful for me at that point.
i think you’re better off checking out japanesepod101 for listening comprehension, grammar and reading (their line-by-line audio is awesome imho).
pimsleur would work from start to finish, because it makes you produce speech, which is it’s own skill you’d have to develop even if your listening is flawless.
Also Japanese from Zero has a youtube channel. I usually listen to it when I cook.
I don’t know how helpful it is but it accompanies the books and it can be done in the background.
Thats different, the subscription gives you all the lessons (all 5 levels) for $20/month.
My biggest issues with the CDs was that it became easier to remember the sequence than how to actually produce the speech spontaneously… but it’s certainly miles better than no speech practice at all.
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