Minna no Nihongo 大家的日本語 - Review

Recently I am trying to learn Japanese by myself, because I can no longer stand the low quality Chinese teacher at the "Labor Union Club". What can one demand though for a class with 12 x 1.5 hr lessons for 400HKD?! However, I had better spent that mere 400 HKD buying learning materials... :p My friend told me Minna no Nihongo 大家的日本語 is the textbook used by everyone, and I thought it is a book of "good reputation", and the stories go... I bought the textbook coming with a CD, and then discovered I also need to buy a supplementary book with (Chinese)-translations. I listened to the CD, and then discovered the enclosed CD only contains listening exercises. If I want to have the audio of the text, I need to buy another CD. This time, I downloaded the CD from the internet, and then I discovered even that CD doesn't cover everything in the textbook. You need to buy the "teachers' version" of the book to learn everything... What's worse, there is no clear grammar explanation within the textbook. So this book is designed in a way that you must learn Japanese from a teacher, and you are not expected to fall asleep in class. I found the grammar explanation from this site much clearer, but also due to the fact that the complications are not explained here (at least not in the early lessons). A first gaze at Japanese grammar makes me feel it is not that regular. Btw, a French class at 60HKD/hr at Alliance Francaise is a much better choice. As a comparison, my German class at Goethe Institute cost 200HKD/hr. As a result, I used up all my CEF.