Helen Gilhooly worked for 25 years as a Japanese teacher and languages director in secondary education, and for 10 years as a teacher trainer at Nottingham University. She continues to write Japanese language teaching materials and to audio-edit Michel Thomas language courses.

Niamh Kelly is an Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics in Dublin City University, where she has taught Japanese language and translation for over 20 years. She has lived and worked in Japan.

Michel Thomas (1914-2005) had an amazing life. Born in Poland, he spent his early years in Germany and then in France, where he studied psychology at the Sorbonne in Paris. When war broke out, he fought with the Resistance and suffered imprisonment in labour camps. At the end of the war he joined the US liberation army and later settled in the US where he established his world-famous language school. Languages, being his strength and passion became the focus of the next 50 years of his life that he spent developing a method that he hoped would change the way we teach and learn - so that everyone could succeed. He developed this method 'that works with the brain'. After creating several courses of his own, he passed on his method so that other teachers might use it too.