First-Time Japanese: Speak Confidently on Your First Trip to Japan

Anissa Rankin is a language educator, travel writer, and founder of Speak Easy Languages, a platform dedicated to helping travelers gain practical communication skills for real-world situations. Over the past fifteen years, she has taught Japanese to more than three thousand students ranging from corporate executives and diplomats to backpackers and retirees—all united by a desire to connect meaningfully with Japan and its people.

Rankin's approach to language teaching is rooted in a simple belief: you don't need fluency to have authentic conversations. She developed the "First-Time" language series after noticing that traditional phrasebooks overwhelmed beginners with vocabulary they would never use while neglecting the phrases they actually needed in critical moments—ordering food, asking for directions, handling misunderstandings, and expressing gratitude. Her method focuses on high-frequency language, cultural context, and the confidence to speak imperfectly.

Rankin lived in Tokyo for six years, where she studied Japanese linguistics at Waseda University and worked as a translator and cultural consultant for international business clients. She has traveled to all forty-seven prefectures of Japan, often returning to rural areas that rarely see foreign visitors, and she draws on these experiences to prepare her readers for the moments that typical guidebooks miss—how to behave at a local festival, what to do when you're invited to someone's home, and how to navigate conversations when neither party speaks the other's language fluently.

Her writing has appeared in *Lonely Planet*, *The Japan Times*, and *Matador Network*, and she has been a featured speaker at the Language Learning Summit and the International Travel Writing Conference. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her Japanese rescue dog, Mochi, and returns to Japan at least twice a year—partly for research, and partly because she still hasn't run out of things to discover.

*First-Time Japanese* is her fourth book in the "First-Time Language" series, following guides to Spanish, French, and Mandarin Chinese. She is currently at work on *First-Time Korean*.