The Ultimate Japanese Phrasebook is an ambitious phrasebook for students who want to improve their speaking and listening skills. The book features 1,800 expressions for daily use, in English and Japanese, with the Japanese presented in both native script and roman letters.

Topics include basic greetings, self-introductions, talking about the weather, getting around, ordering at a restaurant, visiting a Japanese friend''s home, special events (birthdays, funerals, weddings, baby''s birth), and much, much more.

What sets this book apart from others is its focus on sentence-level utterances. Many phrasebooks present loads of useful vocabulary, but provide little or no guidance on how to use those words in actual sentences.

The Ultimate Japanese Phrasebook shows how Japanese sentences work. All the sentences are of the sort students are likely to use in Japan. Throughout the book, key vocabulary is listed along the bottom of each page, allowing learners to build on what they already know.

And there are notes and special columns on usage and communication strategies.

Best of all, the book comes with audio containing all the sentences read aloud, with feeling, in both English and Japanese. The audio is available for free from kodansha.us.

About the Author

KIT PANCOAST NAGAMURA, a Tokyo resident since 1991, has a Ph.D. in literature and has won various teaching and writing awards. She works as a freelance writer and editor, and as an acquisitions editor at Kodansha Ltd. She has authored or coauthored three English-language phrase books for Japanese learners of English. She regularly writes for the Japan Times and other media outlets.

KYOKO TSUCHIYA was born in Nagoya, Japan, and graduated from the Tokyo University Faculty of Liberal Arts, where she majored in American studies. She is a professional translator. Among the works she has rendered into Japanese are Emotional Intelligence (Daniel Goleman), Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (Rebecca Wells), and The Yearling (Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings).