Hello people of Reddit,
so I am planing to make a Japan trip in 2024 with my girlfriend and we recently learned that communicating in English is quiet difficult in Japan and additionally if possible mostly focused on tourists.
We would like to eat the „original“ food and not targeted for tourists and also travel across the country and not only visit Tokyo which is why I started researching how to start to learn Japanese (native German, English pretty fluently).
So far I learned all the Hiraganas from Tofugu and learned about Wanikani which I just started Level 1.
I am wondering if this is a good path to take for my goal or if there is a better way?
Thanks in advance 🙂
3 comments
phraisebook is probably the easiest thing and might be the best option for you
Also, if you just wanna use a phrasebook, you don’t need wanikani
Learning hiragana/katakana is a nice short-term commitment which doesn’t take long and has high return value, so may as well.
If you want to be a serious student, you can get a textbook like the rest of us and get studying, but you probably don’t need that. That said, your English is impressive and you might enjoy studying Japanese with us, if so let me recommend a book called “Genki”. GL
I mean, most of the food you’ll find is “original,” it’s just that the places that target tourists are marketing it to you in your language and charging a premium. That said, hiragana and katakana will get you most of the way there on reading typical menu items (and for the rest, I just use Google Lens).
Learn phrases for how to order food in restaurants I guess. Becoming conversational in Japanese isn’t exactly a walk in the park even if you have until 2024… if that’s something you wanna do then focus on vocabulary, listening (especially) and speaking.
Reading won’t help you that much except for hiragana. Don’t even bother with kanji. Reading menus will also not be so easy in smaller, “original” Japanese restaurants, many are hand written for example, hated those. You might need to ask the owner to read it to you.