Rosseta Stone Learning a Language

The trick to learning any new language is simply to have a place to practice it. Rosetta Stone is a good product and your child will pick up some vocabulary from it. That said, your child will likely not learn how to actually communicate in that language without ever practicing the language with people that speak it.
You haven't said how old your child is, but it's more critical that you find places for your child to use the new language (extra curricular programs, schooling in that language, friends that speak the language etc), unless you speak the language at home, in which case you can just simply start talking to your child in that language.
Good luck!

We totally love it! We work on it as a family, but we also chat on Skype and Facebook with friends. Usually, there is a language school that offers chat times, too, in major cities, for a charge, of course. I'm amazed at what my kids have learned. We started it at 3 for our older one, but put it on hold for a while, and have just started it up again. It's a fun game to him. Our younger son, now 3, enjoys watching and is learning a lot, too. GL!

We have also considered it.
Our student came over with a working knowledge of British English. She knew a lot of vocabulary but couldn't understand us for a couple weeks. I had to repeat myself and speak very slowly. She was dreaming in English though by the end of November and is now thinking English. She even has trouble with her German sometimes.
Get some Japanese music and maybe some books on cd in Japanese. See if you can find some children's books. I am assuming this is for your child you want to send to Japan. Look online for some Japanese tv shows. They are very funny. My son is over there with the Navy and loves to watch the Japanese game shows.
If you do purchase the Rosetta stone please post how you like it.

I work in a library... Very few libraries will have copies of Rosetta Stone in any language because they decided sometime in the last couple years not to allow libraries to purchase it for their collections. My library has one copy of the Spanish version from 2002 and it has 145 holds on it. You may want to check if your library has a language learning database. Because of the demand for it, my library just recently started offering Mango Languages and it has been a hit so far.

I have used Rosetta Stone, and love it. I have used other methods, too, which weren't nearly as good (tapes, books, CD's, online programs) As someone responded, the library has copies, but their newer version (which our library doesn't have), is worlds better than the old one. You didn't mention how old your child is, but I think that RS would be pretty straightforward for anyone over about 5 years old.

We used it last year as part of our Homeschooling curriculum (Spanish), and loved it! I was amazed at how quickly my kids picked things up.

I teach foreign languages for a living, and personally do not recommend Rosetta Stone. Like one of the other responders wrote, it will help with vocabulary acquisition, but not true acquisition and use of the language.

Also, I find that it is really easy to "guess" the correct answer on Rosetta Stone without really learning any of the other words or sentence structure. What I mean by this is that it gives you 4 choices to choose from (either reading or listening) but the choices are so completely different that if you just know 1 word from the sentence you could guess the correct answer and never learn any thing else from it without really working on it.

That being said, it can be fun and good for vocab building, but there are lots of other programs and options out there for learning a language as well. The web is a huge resource. I recommend www.livemocha.com which is a free program with classes, vocab cards, and even penpals. Also, the more you listen the better, so once you build up a little vocabulary, find cartoons, other TV shows, or podcasts. And look on meetup.com. You might find a language group on your city that meets once a week. And there are free resources at any library for Japanese.

Good luck!

Most libraries have copies... I'd strongly recommend checking out a copy and having your kiddo try it out to see how they like it before buying it.