eido wrote:What do you think of Minna No Nihongo? I know there's a fierce debate about the two of these books and there's much to be read on the topic, but I can't come to a good conclusion.
There is but I would say it's a matter of personal preference. Both Genki and Minna no Nihongo are good textbooks to start learning Japanese, it depends which one has got things you like better than the other. For me it ended up being Minna no Nihongo (finished the 2 volumes for the beginner level), it was the one I was able to stick with it. I only got to the 5th~6th chapter with Genki.
dampingwire wrote:Ask if they have the answer key in the book.
Minna no Nihongo includes the answers to exercises in the textbook (and workbook as well). Genki is the odd one that decided to make and sell the Answer Key as a separate book.
Also, for beginner level, Minna no Nihongo series has got a lot of different books that focus on different skills. You've got:
main textbook,
workbook,
listening tasks, kanji (one book for learning, one workbook for practice),
grammar notes+translations (with vocabulary lists), reading tasks and writing practice (sentence pattern workbook). The ones in bold are the ones I used.
To end talking about Minna no Nihongo, if you choose to use it, I would recommend the audio for the 1st edition. It sounded much better to me. The 2nd edition sounded more dull (more like the person just reading the script).
There was another book I started using before Minna no Nihongo called Nakama (it's similar to Genki and it's also supposed to be a book for classroom). I don't see people mentioning it a lot, it seems hard to get and it's more expensive. But I really enjoyed their grammar notes and how they explained things. With other resources I would still have doubts and questions, but with Nakama once I read the notes I would feel like "I understood it and I have no more questions about it".
I'm probably not being helpful here since I'm adding more choices than answers to your question.
eido wrote:For all those intermediate Japanese learners out there, which book did you use to get there?
It's hard to say. I'm not sure if you're going from complete beginner to intermediate or if you're already in the upper-beginner and want to start intermediate. Also, if you're asking for a resource for a certain skill in particular or you want to understand (and maybe use) japanese in general