New Horizon

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For other uses, see New Horizon (disambiguation).

For NASA's Pluto and EKBO exploration probe, see New Horizons.

New Horizon is an English language textbook used by junior high school students in Japan. It first came out in 1966.^[1] It is published by Tokyo Shoseki. There are three volumes, one for each of the three years of school.

[edit] Characters

There are several characters whose adventures centered around the fictional Wakaba Junior High School inspire the books' grammar and vocabulary lessons. These characters, updated in the revised 2006 edition of the text, are as follows:

Judy Brown - An African-American girl from New York.
Emi Ito (伊藤絵美 Itō Emi) - A young Japanese girl.
Shin Tanaka (田中慎 Tanaka Shin) - A young Japanese boy.
Mike Davis - A young Australian.
Lisa - Ms Green's sister who lives in Australia.
Koji (浩司 Kōji) - Lisa's Japanese husband.
Bill - Ms. Green's little brother.
Bin - Koji's friend.

Their teachers are a Canadian ALT named Ann Green and Kazuko Sato (佐藤和子 Satō Kazuko), a Japanese woman who is mostly ignored by the authors. The 2006 edition has only minor changes from the previous edition; e.g., there are T-shirts on sale instead of shoes, and the kids visit Canada instead of Australia.