Japanese, The Spoken Language; Part 1

This is an excellent textbook for learning spoken Japanese. The book does NOT teach written Japanese (katakana, hiragana, etc) so you would need to supplement this text with a Japanese writing textbook, but this text does deliver on the promise in the title: it will teach you the SPOKEN language. The book can be used to teach yourself to speak Japanese, but you will need the audio programs that go with it. Fortunately for students, the audio programs are currently available for FREE download on Ohio State University's Digital Language Lab, located at http://languagelab.it.ohio-state.edu/