Making Out in Japanese: An Oral History of a Seminal Text

“Would you like to get morning coffee together?”

In 1988, a new text for learning Japanese arrived and quickly emerged as a go-to resource for English-speaking students: Making Out in Japanese. To set the stage, the US was locked in a trade war with Japan, few Westerners visited the country for fun, and Japanese classes were few and far between. A 1980 Washington Post profile of my high school’s Japan…