Hi,
I will be travelling to Japan for a couple of weeks in June so I have roughly 4 months to learn as much Japanese as I can for my trip. My aim is to learn enough common day phrases for my travel such that if I get lost I can ask for direction, ordering food, thanking people, checking/out in at hotel.
Any recommended resources that you can share?
Thanks!
3 comments
Pimsleur would be pretty good for that I think. It is made specifically for this purpose. It is not cheap but your library might have it for free.
For starters, I would say it’s essential to at the very least learn hiragana and katakana – essentially the japanese alphabets.
Lots of signs are written in katakana to represent English equivalents, (トイレ=TO-I-RE=Toilet). You’d be surprised how much you can read if you know English and can read katakana.
As far as grammar and understanding converstations, I would highly recommend trying to get through at least the first half of the [Genki I textbook](https://www.amazon.com/GENKI-Integrated-Elementary-Japanese-English/dp/4789014401?ref=d6k_applink_bb_dls&dplnkId=1b087151-a475-4829-ae95-f0cc8287d634) which will cover all the basics.
Once you have a general understanding of grammar and sentence structure, that’s when I would recommend trying to load up on tourist-focused vocabulary. Hope this helps!
https://www.erin.jpf.go.jp/en/ skits are fairly practical.