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

A repost of an interview with the creators of a hugely influential guidebook series.

I ran this interview before switching over to Substack, so the content will be new to most of my subscribers. Stay tuned for more new content later this week!

In 1988, a new kind of text arrived for learning Japanese, quickly emerging as a go-to resource for students of the language: Making Out in Japanese. To set the stage, the US was locked in a trade …