This text is for foreign students who wish to acquire an everyday-life conversational proficiency as well as the ability to read Japanese..."Japanese for Today" is just the thing.
When I first began to study Japanese seriously in 1975, I used this book together with the tapes. It offered everything what I could use around my postgraduate scholarship at a renowned Tokyo university. I did not need to study Japanese professionally, but basically wished to improve my conversational skills. In addition to conversation I wished to increase the number of kanji for everyday use that I could identify. I liked the lessons and felt that I slowly got a better grasp of everyday Japanese. I actually managed to eventually translate 5 short stories of a well-known writer all by myself with the help of a dictionary.