i have tried all different methods of learning japanese. rosetta stone is really good at teaching by emersion. it basically trains your brain to recognize things and know what they are without having to translate in your head but it does not explain certain things about that language that you should know. pimsleur is good for practicing speaking and responding to/asking questions in real life scenarios. but you have to imagine the situation and have nothing visual to relate it to. i try to use all of them. pimsleur for parctice conversations. rosetta stone to improve my vocabulary and textfugu to get down to the real nitty gritty of the language.