Ever tried to learn Japanese and found it too hard? Bestselling language coach Paul Noble has a quick and easy way to get you back on track with his unique tried-and-tested method.

Making Sense of Japanese is the fruit of one foolhardy American's thirty-year struggle to learn and teach the Language of the Infinite. Previously known as Gone Fishin', this book has brought Jay Rubin more feedback than any of his literary translations or scholarly tomes, "even if," he says, "you discount the hate mail from spin-casters and the stray gill-netter." To convey his conviction that "the Japanese language is not vague," Rubin has dared to explain how some of the most challenging Japanese grammatical forms work in terms of everyday English. Reached recently at a recuperative center in the hills north of Kyoto, Rubin declared, "I'm still pretty sure that Japanese is not vague. Or at least, it's not as vague as it used to be. Probably." The notorious "subjectless sentence" of Japanese comes under close scrutiny in Part One. A sentence can't be a sentence without a subject, so even in cases where the subject seems to be lost or hiding, the author provides the tools to help you find it. Some attention is paid as well to the rest of the sentence, known technically to grammarians as "the rest of the sentence." Part Two tackles a number of expressions that have baffled students of Japanese over the decades, and concludes with Rubin's patented technique of analyzing upside-down Japanese sentences right-side up, which, he claims, is "far more restful" than the traditional way, inside-out. "The scholar," according to the great Japanese novelist Soseki Natsume, is "one who specializes in making the comprehensible incomprehensible." Despite his best scholarly efforts, Rubin seems to have done just the opposite. Previously published in the Power Japanese series under the same title and originally as Gone Fishin' in the same series.

Many students of Japanese find learning kanji to be the hardest part of mastering the language. Not just the characters themselves, but also how they are used, seems quite complicated and mysterious.This book is designed to clear up that mystery, giving the kanji learner insight into what is really going on with the characters, and most importantly, building a solid foundation for learning, that makes mastering thousands of characters not seem like an impossible task.The book thoroughly covers the way that the characters were created, and also how they are used in the writing of the Japanese language, and is a great asset to any student of Japanese.

For anyone who wants to deal with or has already invested in Japan, 'Unlocking Japan's Markets' illustrates the business, policy, and academic perspectives needed to form a single, comprehensive, integrative approach to success in the world's second-largest (national) market.

This book combines the cute and crazy world of Alice in Wonderland with a scientific method of learning (SRS) to introduce you to a wide range of basic kanji (all first-year Japanese school kanji, all JLPT N5 kanji). You'll learn how kanji are constructed, how they fit together to make bigger words, how they are pronounced, and much more, in a form that makes them uniquely memorable-a story in which the kanji themselves are characters and adventures.

Urushi, Japanese lacquerware, is perhaps the oldest and most sublime of all the Japanese arts and crafts. Its history goes back more than 7,000 years and it is still vibrantly alive in the twenty-first century. It is practiced by craftsmen working in time-honored techniques and by modern artists forging the future. Valued for its utilitarian durability, Urushi developed into an incomparable art, adorning a objects from luxurious palaces, to lavish murals, to exquisitely crafted fountain pens. This book includes some fifty full-color illustrations of masterpieces honored by history and works by the author himself.--adapted from publisher's description.