This article is a companion piece to one that appeared in the January 2001 issue of TLT which discussed qualitative factors negatively affecting the development of the Ministry's EFL word list for lower-secondary schools into Ministry-approved textbooks. Those factors were shown to detrimentally affect textbooks' inclusion of the most common meanings and uses of prescribed words and, thus, learners' exposure to them. In this article, Monbusho's list and first-year Ministry-approved textbooks are examined quantitatively, with respect to the number of important high-frequency words found in them. The findings point to inadequacies in the quantitative aspect of the Ministry's overall approach to vocabulary which may be seriously disadvantaging public lower-secondary school learners in reaching the EFL pedagogical goals Monbusho sets for them and in meeting their future EFL needs and objectives.