Features:  

Instant Immersion has a great progress tracking system which allows you to see which areas of your Japanese language education are strongest and which need more help. You can also customize your learning regimen in any way you want, but conversely, there is very little structure regarding where to start. However, we found this to be fun and liberating. We had the ability to choose what subjects we wanted to learn next.

The Instant Immersion audio lessons that are included with the program are also useful because they can allow you to learn on-the-go. The software makes transferring lessons to an iPod or MP3 players easy.

We would have liked to see this program offer online chat with native speakers like our top rated product. The closet thing Instant Immersion offers to this is the audio and video clips which are done by native Japanese speakers, but that is just not as effective as chatting with a real person.

Fundamentals:  

Instant Immersion teaches all the fundamentals you need to learn Japanese, though the learning curve is pretty steep at first. While images and voice clips are used to teach vocabulary, the program relies heavily on grammar texts for teaching how the words are used. Conversation and pronunciation are practiced through the Instant Immersion speech recognition program, which is useful but not as accurate as the ones in other language versions of Instant Immersion.

Instant Immersion is broken down into three levels, two discs per level. In the first level, students will go over the basics of the Japanese language. Learning to read and say simple words, as well as their plural forms, will get your education off to a smooth start.

The second level is focused on common Japanese phrases. This level also implements dialogue practice accompanied by video and audio teachers. This section, although helpful, doesn’t really teach you Japanese; rather it focuses on common questions and answers you might encounter as a tourist.

The third level is a more advanced level two, with harder phrases and dialogue. Instant Immersion also comes with three bonus discs which include a DVD game to be played on a TV, an audio disk so you can transfer your lessons onto an iPod or MP3, and a computer game where you’ll be asked to solve a mystery using only your recently acquired Japanese language.

Ease of Use:  

Instant Immersion is a relatively easy program to use, although it does take some getting use to. Because of the excessive amount of discs, many of which have varying formats, we had to spend extra time becoming familiar with each one. This proved to be tedious and annoying. However, once we figured all that out, we had no trouble using the program. We also appreciated how easy the program was to install. Within five minutes we had the box open and were already on our first Japanese lesson.

Teaching Tools:  

Most of the teaching is done through images, audio of native speakers and the speech recognition system. However, Instant Immersion adds in some video with narration in Japanese, which is nice for breaking up the routine. Instant Immersion also has quizzes and games at the end of each disc so you can test and see where you stand before moving onto the next level.

Word Tools:  

We were actually pretty discouraged with the lack of word tools Instant Immersion offers. They do have a reference tab in the program, but the information isn’t very helpful.

Tech Support:  

Instant Immersion’s manufacturer, TOPICS Entertainment, has pretty poor technical support compared to other Learn Japanese programs. Instead of an FAQ section they have a horribly convoluted database of various documents about the program. The only way to retrieve additional help is to log a question and then receive a list of suggested documents that may or may not answer your question.

Instant Immersion Japanese is a great alternative to our top rated products; and at a fraction of the cost, you really can’t beat it. We were extremely please with Instant Immersion’s many features and teaching tools, although we would have liked to see online chat with native speakers, and some better word tools. We were also very disappointed with this program’s technical support; however, it is highly unlikely you’ll need them.

Overall we think Instant Immersion Japanese is a great language learning program, but if you want a program with great technical support and extra features check out our top rated product, Rosetta Stone Japanese.