Minna no Nihongo textbooks

Hello everyone,

A quick bit of background - I'm a British guy studying Chinese in China. I'm reaching a high level now, and have always wanted to start learning Japanese, since it has been a lifelong interest. Call me a bit crazy, but my plan (experiment, more like) is to study Japanese using Chinese textbooks, to lessen the effect of learning Japanese on my Chinese proficiency and help maintain it.

Anyway, my question is just about the Minna no Nihongo textbooks, which I have decided to use to study, as I can't get Genki here, and I'm going by the fact that MnN is quite trusted. I know that normally, the books have a distinct design:

Book 1 - pink
Book 1 grammar - grey
Book 2 - blue
...and so on

But walking into my local Chinese bookstore today, I was taken aback by the sheer number of varying textbooks with the Minna no Nihongo name. The original designs were there alright, but so were these:

http://search.dangdang.com/search_pub.php?key=%B4%F3%BC%D2%B5%C4%C8%D5%D3%EF1

That's a Chinese online bookstore, and if you look down the list, you'll see the original designs. But what's this - there are other books with the same name and textbook structure with totally different designs. Since the info is in Simp. Chinese, I'll explain:

--The first 2 books under the original pink one are Book 1 - Study Guidance Book, follower by Book 1 - Textbook (with MP3). Fair enough.

--Go down a lot lower and you'll find a bright green Book 2 - Study Guidance Book. The original book 2 grammar book I presume?

--Just under the first 3 books are 3 blue and green books - the first blue one is ''Listening 1'', followed by...

--MnN Intermediate 1, followed by Intermediate 1 - Study Guidance Book. What are these? Level 2, or further than level 2?

--Go down a little further and you'll see a yellow one named MnN: Standard Exercises.

--Finally, closer to the bottom you'll see a green one with a sunset design, named MnN: Grammar Summary.

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So basically, can anyone shed any light on these books? I have seen them personally in my local bookstore and the material of Book 1 appears to match the original pink Book 1. Which of these books should I choose? What's the business with the ''Guidance'' books, and the separate Grammar and ''Standard Exercise'' books?

Sorry if I seem to have so many confusing questions. What I want to do is buy the ones I need to study - i.e. the Book 1 collection and the Book 2 collection. I have no idea which is which now. Also, can anyone give me some guidance on how to use these books for self study? I'm rather experienced in self studying Mandarin, so I feel I can handle it and improvise even if the textbook is better used in a classroom.

Many thanks in advance!

The books are printed in a variety of languages, so the "guidance" books you mentioned will be basically a translation as minna no nihongo is purely japanese so you buy the main textbook which is all japanese, then the guidance which gives translations in English, mandarin, french etc..you get the idea :) the guidance books usually consist of a direct translation from each "story chapter" a list of vocabulary in your chosen language and then grammatical notes about usage within the chapter. Also in the series you can purchase kanji renshu and of course the accompanying CDs (contained within a seperate book) so yes there are many books in this series! personally I have like ALL the books but I HATE this series it is SOOO boring :P good luck though if you choose it.