9Yookoso! An Invitation to Contemporary Japanese is the first volume of a two-volume series for beginning Japanese courses. Based on modern principles of second-language acquisition, it was the first beginning Japanese text to integrate the teaching of all four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) and offer a full complement of ancillary materials. In this text, grammar is treated as a tool for developing the ability to communicate in Japanese, rather than as a focal point. The rich illustration program--including photographs, line drawings, and realia--provides an attractive context for language learning.