Japanese for Busy People is the most popular Japanese language textbook series in the world. With over 20 components including texts workbooks CDs videos & teacher's manuals it is also one of the most comprehensive. Now a decade after its first revision the entire series has been redesigned updated & consolidated to meet the needs of 21st-century students & businesspeople who want to learn natural spoken Japanese as effectively as possible in a limited amount of time. The book features not only a sleek new design but also a unit structure that groups thematically linked lessons together making it easier than ever to learn Japanese. Moreover it now comes with a CD containing audio for the dialogues & listening exercises from the text. The exercises in the book have also been thoroughly revised to incorporate more comprehension & production tasks. Many of these exercises are illustrated making for a stimulating learning experience & the purpose of each one is clearly stated. This first of three volumes introduces survival Japanese"-the absolute minimum amount of Japanese needed to live in Japan. Thus the vocabulary & grammatical items it introduces are limited to about a third of what is typically introduced in a first-year course. In addition the book features notes on Japanese culture intended to expand the learner's understanding of Japan its customs & people. Japanese for Busy People I is available in two formats: romanized & kana. The Romanized Version uses romanized Japanese throughout with kana in the Opening Dialogues of each lesson. The Kana Version-exposing students to hiragana & katakana from the very beginning-uses only kana. The content of the two books is otherwise exactly the same. The companion volume Japanese for Busy People 1: The Workbook for the Revised 3rd Edition contains a variety of illustrated exercises for mastering the basic sentence patterns presented in the main text."