"For a quarter of a century Eleanor Jorden’s Beginning Japanese has been a colossus bestriding the narrow world of Japanese-language teaching, a monument to the endeavors of linguistic pedagogy. For thoroughness it has been virtually without rival, and few among the current generation of US and even European scholars of Japan can fail to have come under its influence. Now we have a new colossus, under a new name, even larger, more impressive and more magnificently panoplied than its predecessor."—Penny Francks, Journal of the British Association for Japanese Studies