Basic Japanese

An introduction to Japanese through authentic, commonly-used sentences.

This best-selling Japanese textbook is a user-friendly guide for beginners designed for use in a classroom or self-study. It adopts a very different approach from other Japanese language books—teaching you the underlying sentence structures and patterns of Japanese along with essential vocabulary and phrases so you can attain basic fluency quickly. The emphasis is on acquiring a working knowledge of simple, everyday Japanese sentences.

This new edition has been thoroughly updated and expanded to reflect the way Japanese is spoken in Japan today. Manga illustrations have been added to each dialogue along with the latest jargon for the internet, social media, cellphones, and IT, and a bidirectional dictionary is included at the back.

Each self-contained lesson presents a simple four-step method:

Step 1: Basic Sentences: Each lesson begins with a few simple sent