Amazon.com description: Product Description: Yookoso!, meaning welcome in 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, writing) and to be accompanied by a full complement of ancillary materials. Grammar is treated as a tool for developing the ability to communicate in Japanese, not as the focal point of the text. The illustration program (photographs, line drawings, realia) and the two-color, hardcover format is unique in this field, providing an attractive context for language learning.