I'd recommend the Coscom.co.jp website. They have some good free resources, and if you're willing to shell out 4900 yen, their "Building Up Japanese Conversation" is a nice alternative to some of those textbooks. You get online access to the materials, you get a choice of Romaji, kana or kanji, and you get pretty much everything else you'd get in a textbook, without the textbooks. It's sort of a mix between Shadowing and a good first-second semester Japanese book. They have other stuff, too.

EDIT: I'd also recommend the Point and Speak Japanese Food phrasebook. Full of survival-level stuff, and will give people new to Japan an idea of just what the heck they're eating. Comes with Romaji, kana, kanji, pictures, and English explanations, too. Great book.

As for survival Japanese, my friend taught me the most important phrase: 「これはいいpornですか」.

In fact, you don't need to know any phrases at all. All you need for survival can be bought on vending machines. Beer, tobacco and porn. Oh Gods, how I come to love Japan.

tokyostyle Wrote:Tzadeck how did this go?

Hopefully well! The presentation went fine, and they seemed happy to have the information about their appliances. Most of the people were still pretty tired during the presentation, haha. About 10 of the 15 people I presented to had arrived on Sunday, had two days of orientation on Monday and Tuesday in Tokyo, went into Kyoto on Wednesday, then had Kyoto orientation on Thursday and Friday. I presented on Thurday, which means that they were still jet-lagged and were tired from all these orientations, haha.

I would like to get more feedback about how much it actually helps them in the long run.

I will see some of them against at a seminar at the end of this month. I also gave them all my e-mail.