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Learning the language before you go travelling is a sensible option-even if you do find that many people at your destination speak impeccable English. Studying Linguaphone Japanese in Action 2 CD-ROM is based around life in Japan-there is an excellent travel guide to some of Japan's most famous tourist attractions, linked together with video footage that gives a real flavour of Japanese life and is quite thorough. Although the CD-ROM is packed with enhanced video content, the first port of call for most students will probably be the basics of the language that are imparted through the grammar guides and example dialogues. This is not a package for advanced students-the vocabulary of 5000 words, while enough for most purposes is not tailored to unusual situations and the best place to begin is with the basic phrases in Japanese that show the contexts of various words and parts of speech through sentence examples and then role-plays. The phrases are emphasised with colour-highlighting of key parts and boxes below explaining their meanings in English and to which part of grammar they belong. There is also a separate grammar section in the package which will break down the points arising from these set-piece dialogues. As with every good language-learning software package, the Linguaphone Japanese in Action 2 comes with the facility to compare your pronunciation with that of a native speaker, and so will help with speaking and listening as well as with grammar and sentence-construction; on the downside, however, the test of pronunciation is inevitably somewhat standardised, and does not cater for the large variation of accents in Japan. That aside, this is a good package for anyone who wants to learn or improve upon their Japanese before embarking on their next trip abroad. -Toby Green.

Adiboo The Mysterious Music Machine imaginatively introduces children aged 4-7 years to musical instruments and sounds. Adiboo and his pals arrive in a strange world and are surprised to discover a bee that doesn't buzz but sounds like a horn. After a short boat trip they find a bird that imitates a helicopter and a leaf that explodes. They have arrived in the land of the mysterious music machine. In a conversation with Adiboo, the sad music machine admits he's feeling miserable because he has lost his sounds, the unusually named zicabongs, and as a result all the inhabitants of the land have started to make strange noises. The aim of the game is to help Adiboo bring back all the zicabongs to the music machine so he can play his tune again and restore the proper sounds to the land around him. Children are encouraged to find their way around the colourful and imaginative land and carry out various tasks before they can successfully retrieve the zicabongs. In one of the challenges, you have to drag a singing shell through a set of pipes that play different noises; and in another you have to assemble an animal band who play different instruments. Games can be set at different levels and there is a booklet to guide you. Children will learn how to put low and high sounds in the right order; how to distinguish between rising and falling sounds and they are encouraged to detect the tones of instruments which are being played at the same time. [+]