Traveling to Japan for work in a couple months. I’d love to learn just a little basic Japanese like key words and phrases and such. I have no expectation of having a useful grasp of the language in this short amount of time but I just always enjoy traveling internationally more when I have at least a small understanding of the language.
Where should I start? Any app recommendations? Something I can do easily for like 10-30m a day.
Thanks!
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There is the very good (and expensive; check your library if they have it for free) Pimsleur audio course. It is a 5 month program @ 30 min/day specifically for someone travelling to Japan with a focus on only speaking/listening. It might be more intense than what you want, but I can recommend it.
And then there are easy apps, specifically Duolingo and Busuu. For serious learners I always recommend against them, but they are a good fit if you want to just casually pick up some Japanese without any ambitions of eventually becoming fluent.
And of course there are also simple [travel phrase books](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=japanese+travel+phrase+book&crid=2BPVY1BC0ZYXW&sprefix=japanese+travel+phrase+book%2Caps%2C196&ref=nb_sb_noss_1). Those don’t really teach you much Japanese, but they are full of phrases you might actually be able to use.
You have no chance of talking to a Japanese in 2 months, not least for work! Accept that and abandon this quest.
However, you can (you must) learn to recognise street signs, street food, toilet signs, train symbols, anything that can help you if you are stranded. For that, watch vlogs that take you throughout the country. [Akane](https://www.youtube.com/@Akane-JapaneseClass) does a wonderful job at that.
All Japanese words that you hear, type them in [Jisho.org](https://Jisho.org), a fabulous dictionary you can type English words, Japanese words (Hiragana, Katakana, Chinese Characters), or even Japanese Latin spellings (like ‘watashi’) it gives you the meanings.
Also use Google Translate’s Kanji Input, where you can draw Chinese Characters with your mouse it recognises it.
Have a physical notebook you can write and save all your words and flip through the pages and be on the constant revision. Revision is key!
I used japanesepod101. Was really useful.
This will sound weird, but in addition to the other advice you get here, if you learn to speak English with a Japanese accent almost everyone will understand you.
This won’t work for a full conversation or anything, but will get you through things like food, directions, etc.
Learn how Katakana works and try to internalize how English words are spoken using Japanese sounds. I can speak some Japanese but any time there’s a word I don’t know I say it in English using Japanese pronunciation and I’m almost always understood.
Learn how to read katakana. In this timespan that is by far the best bang for your buck you can do. This advice flies in the face of basically every book / youtuber / conventional advice so I expect this will be downvoted but if you take my advice I promise you won’t regret it.
After that learn basic phrases like “Where is ___” / “This one please” / thank you