みんなの日本語初級I本冊

Not for -absolute- beginners, but a great book to start with.

The book is similar to Genki but uses quite a lot more hiragana and katakana. If you've already started the learning journey its a good alternative to Genki. I went through it with a native Japanese teacher and could follow along well enough. There are lots of questions in the companion book to sample as well. I think its good if you want to level up your basic reading and comprehension but the grammar explanations are quite dry. Even as an editor I had some trouble catching their meaning from r

Great book to get started

I think みんなの日本語 has a great structure and requires you to use ひらがな and かたかな right from the start, which I think is the best way to learn, so you get used to it right away. Also the grammar-book has great explanations for all the grammar-points. Things that I wish this book would do:

• Cover pitch accent
• More listening exercises
• Not teach conjugation based on the ます form of verbs, but the dictionary form
• Combine more learned grammar in exercises to force you to write more complex senten

Requires knowledge of Hiragana and Katakana to begin reading it.

Genki might be more approachable and cheaper to audiences, since it doesn't require the separate grammatical notes book, however, I enjoy the way Minna is set up, the amount of exercises in the book itself are very good, and they are based on pattern of sentences. It does lack a lot on prompts to write your own or translating back and forth, though.

Despite being a bit of a difficult entryway for self-learners, I still feel it'