The Japanese language is one of the most challenging parts of being in Tokyo. There is so much that could be written here, but I will not attempt to do anything comprehensive. Check out the recommended web links for more information.

You don’t have to learn any Japanese at all. Many people from overseas don’t. Most people in hotels speak some English at least, and usually several people are perfectly fluent at the larger (more expensive) hotels. Many restaurants, particularly in downtown Tokyo, have English speaking people. Depending on the type of restaurant, everyone may speak English -- particularly at curry places or at some Western chain restaurants. And, pleasantly enough, if you stand by a map in a subway station and look a bit lost, usually someone will stop by and help you in English. 

However, if you are a bit more adventurous, or if you want to venture out of Tokyo and the major tourist areas, and if you want to save some money in the long term, you may want to learn some Japanese. It’s not easy, but even a little bit helps a lot.

In short, Japanese is about as different from English as it would be possible to be. Japanese sentences are constructed with the subject of the sentence at the beginning, but the verbs at the end. All the prepositions, direct and indirect objects, and such are in the middle of the sentence. This makes it nearly impossible to do simultaneous translation, and also means that for non-fluent speakers of either language, you end up speaking very slowly while you try to reconstruct the whole sentence into a different format.

As an example, if we rearranged a very simple sentence into Japanese order, it would read like this: 

That Restaurant the Roppongi in is. (Kono restauran wa Roppongi ni arimasu = That restaurant is in Roppongi.) This makes it hard to learn much Japanese very quickly. 

On top of that, there are two syllabic alphabets with about 40 characters each, as well as 6000 major Kanji (Chinese characters). To make things even harder, many Japanese “words” are made up of two or three Kanji characters as well as maybe some characters from one of the syllabic alphabets. This makes Japanese nearly impossible to read without years of practice. 

The one saving grace is that Japanese is relatively easy to pronounce, once you learn the rules. Most Westerners don’t learn the rules, and if you don’t know the rules, you will be nearly incomprehensible to most Japanese people. 

One very important general rule about pronounciation: use a small mouth. Westerners use large mouths, talk loudly and exaggerate their emphasis on syllables. Japanese use smaller mouths, talk quietly, and have almost no accent on syllables. My Japanese teacher once told me that I spoke Japanese like someone from Kentucky. When I talk more Japanese style, my pronounciation is much better. 

Some suggested tips or ideas:

1. Get a quick guide to the Japanese language. In Japan they have some good books that are        “point-and-speak”. You might find them in a large bookstore in the US also. They are written in English and Japanese with pictures, so you can just point to the picture you want and the Japanese speaking person can read it in Japanese. This avoids any problems with pronounciation or writing. At least one book has some colorful phrases that would cover pretty much any social situation I can imagine (and some I can’t). Other options are a Japanese phrase book and a dictionary. I have a handy pocket Japanese Oxford dictionary (but, see below about the syllabaries) and a couple good Japanese phrasebooks. Most any book will have simple phrases and should work well.

2. Make sure at least one of your books has the Japanese syllable alphabets. There are two: the hiragana, used for Japanese words and word endings, and the katakana, used for any non-Japanese words (and there are a lot of words borrowed into Japanese from English).  One of the books we have says that “the Japanese syllabaries are easy enough so that you can learn them on the plane ride over to Tokyo”, a claim so ludicrous we still laugh about it. For someone from outside Asia, all of the characters look like random squiggles, so there is no carry over from the Roman alphabet like there is from, say, Russian or Greek. However, with a little practice and some flash cards, you can teach yourself in a few days maybe, and that is useful.

One reason the syllabaries are useful is that Japanese words in the dictionary will usually be in Japanese alphabetical order. (This is also true for things like CDs in the record store, books in book stores, etc.) So it helps to learn a, e, u, e, o, ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, ta, chi, tsu, te, to, etc. 

3. Learn the 10 most helpful words or phrases in Japanese. These vary person to person, but here are the most useful from my experience:

Count to 10 in Japanese: ichi, ni, san, shi (or yon), go, roku, shichi (or nana), hachi, ku, ju. There are about 20 different ways to count things, each with different words, but these will do and people can usually figure them out. Fingers work also. Hyaku means 100, sen is 1000, and man is 10,000. 

Thank you: Doumo arigatou. (Check your phrase guide for pronounciation!)

Excuse me / can I get some help here/ sorry for bumping into you: Sumimasen

Is that OK? Is there a problem?: Daijoubu? This is a useful word and is commonly used in Japan.

Hello (first thing in the morning): Ohaiyo gozaimasu!

Hello (other times): Konnichiwa!

Pleased to meet you (for the first time): Hajimemashita.

How much does it cost?: Ikura desu ka? By the way, that also means, “Is this squid?” so can be a bit confusing in a sushi bar if you point to the wrong thing.

For taxi drivers: “(place name) onegai shimasu” means “take me to (place name). Or just the place name usually works if you pronounce it correctly. There was the time when the taxi driver took my family to the Hiroshima Gas Company when we wanted to go to the “Hiroshima Castle”. They do sound quite a bit alike in Japanese, though why three Westerners would want to go to the Hiroshima Gas Company we can’t figure.

Also for taxi drivers: migi (right), higashi (left), massugu (straight), and tomatte kudasai (please stop).

Ok, enough Japanese language for this website. For a great comprehensive Japanese language website, use Jim Breen’s website.  For a Japanese word processor including a dictionary, I use NJStar which works great on an English-language PC. And for drilling Japanese, including the katakana and hiragana, I swear by KingKanji on the Palm Pilot.