The first six foreign language courses in this series were concerned with West European languages, with relatively familiar cultural and linguistic systems from neighbouring countries. Our seventh course involves a journey to the East, to a country with a long and rich tradition unfamiliar to most of us and a language of new sounds, symbols and concepts to which we have no easy access, even on our radio network. Our course in Japanese, which is designed for adult beginners with or without a teacher, seeks to provide a realistic approach to the spoken language in the context of present-day Japan and the life and thoughts of the people who live there. Our other courses have introduced all the language skills of understanding, speaking, reading and writing, but in Japanese the main objective is the spoken language, and the student wishing to acquire an accurate grasp of the sounds of the language will need the accompanying cassette, on which native speakers have recorded all the relevant material contained in the book.