Up and Down (Japanese and English Edition)

I absolutely LOVE Up and Down! I wish there were more books like this. It’s perfect for anyone learning Japanese, I’m 30 and I read it to my baby to build a foundation in the language. The book starts with simple sentences that focus on one subject-object-verb at a time, and gradually introduces slightly more complex structures that are still very easy to follow. I especially appreciate the clear hiragana and English, it makes practice so much easier. The clean design and engaging illustrations are a bonus! A fantastic resource whether you’re learning yourself or sharing Japanese with your little one.

It can be very helpful for anyone learning English or Japanese

It’s a smaller, hard book but perfect for my daughter and I (we’re both learning Japanese). It’s help me learn to read it and her to read both English and Japanese. At first I was worried because one of the reviews said it was “flimsy” and cheap, but it’s just fine. It’s perfect size for her and easy to pack in her day bags.

This is my favorite book to read at bedtime. I am learning Japanese myself and I genuinely enjoy reading it each night.

Teaches my kid the opposites in simple vocabularies and sentences. It is a board book (other US published Japanese bilingual books are all cheap paper books) and the price is right (not hijacked like other Japanese bilingual books).

I love the bright high-contrast colors, and that the pictures are clear and realistic. It's great for my three month old who is just getting into colors, and loves grasping the cardboard pages. I enjoy talking about the various animals and objects with my baby in conversational japanese. I'd say I'm an upper-level beginner in the language and this feels very comfortable for me. The sentences make sense with the pictures. However, the Japanese translation above the English text uses katakana in weird ways. "Horse" is in hiragana, while "cow" and "rabbit" are in katakana. I think these should all be in hiragana; I thought maybe given my inexperience I was just wrong, but then I saw that "cat" is almost always in katakana, except for on one page where it's in hiragana? Surely that doesn't make sense, and makes me think that they didn't have a fluent speaker check the translation. Overall I like it but wish modeled the language correctly.

Cute pictures that help teach opposite words in English and Japanese.

Very cute book. Focuses on very basic Japanese and teaches it in a way adults and children can learn. It’s been a fun way to introduce Japanese to my son.

Es pequeño y manejable, por su tipo de ilustración no necesita ser más grande. Los textos son claros; el japonés sólo viene escrito en hiragana. Aunque no tiene una historia como tal, enseña diferentes situaciones y con la ilustración uno mismo puede encontrar más cosas que describir de las mismas.