My dad said that after I graduate high school, I have the ability to pick one place I want to travel to and he would buy me a ticket to go. As the title implies, I have chosen Japan, but I do not want to be like a clueless tourist. Starting with the new year, I have begun to try and learn basic Japanese conversation as well as useful Kanji. Does anyone have advice on what to or what to not do in preparation for the trip? Also, is Kanji the way to go? Can I actually read Japanese by learning Kanji? Sorry if I sound ignorant, but well, I am on this matter.
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Preparing For A Trip To Japan(Summer '16)
- Thread starter Professor Birch
- Start date
If you're just starting out in that language, just forget kanji. There's thousands of that stuff and you need to memorize a couple hundred just to fit in with the average grade schooler. Also you probably already might be doing this but do make plans.. when I went there, we planned on winging a lot of stuff and ended up spending like half our time in train rides.
edit: you can learn hiragana and katagana in a week, they are that much simpler.
edit: you can learn hiragana and katagana in a week, they are that much simpler.
What about money management? How much should I expect to bring or be spending on essentials?
Edit: Also, again probably stupid, but what would one learn in order to read common Japanese? Is it Hiragana, Katakana, or both?
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Both I believe. Although I think katakana is mainly used for foreign words.
I'll post later about things you should do/research for your trip. But first a quick post on language.
Definitely katakana first. What you really need to learn is how sounds work in Japanese and how the 2 alphabet systems fit with them.
Hiragana: basic alphabet of Japanese
Katakana: set of characters that look slightly different from hiragana but function identically. Used only to spell foreign origin words.
Kanji: Chinese characters used to emphasize meaning in a sentence. Without kanji readingjapanesewouldlooklikethis. A minimum knowledge of around 2000 kanji is needed for fluent use of the written language. This is why it's considered unreasonable to study without full dedication.
In truth, hiragana won't be any use either without knowing some Japanese grammar and vocab.
That said, the ability to read katakana, and a comfort with basic Japanese phonetics and sounds will go a LOONG way.
I mean that Japanese who would be too scared and nervous to help you find a "train station" will jump right in and help you find a "tore-n sute-shon". No one can help you find a taxi to get to your hotel, but just about anyone can help you "getto takushi fo- hoteru."
People say Japanese are terrible at English, and they are-- but their English knowledge of vocab can help you a long way as long as you can pronounce English on their terms.
Likewise, the biggest complaint from Chinese learning Japanese is "too much English vocab to remember!" The Japanese use a LOT of words that come from English-- it's just not written in English.
You'll have a much easier time when you see トイレ, know that it's read "toire", and can guess it means toilet. Or see ビール, read it as "bi-ru" and order yourself a beer. And when sick of a Japanese food, find a マクドナルド, and know that makudonarudo is mcdonalds.
English words are everywhere as long as you can interpret katakana. Yes there are Chinese, Russian, German, and Portuguese words written in katakana as well, but over 90% of the time you see katakana, you know it's actually some English word, and it's just a matter of taking an educated guess.
As I said, Japan can be a lot more accessible language wise to the English speaker just willing to learn katakana and get comfortable with the way sounds are pronounced and written in Japanese (not at all difficult tasks).
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Cresselia~~
Junichi Masuda likes this!!
No offense, with this, you are not going to be able to learn conversational Japanese by the time you go yo Japan.
Forget about Kanji unless you know Chinese.
Just memorize simple vocabulary and the Katakana so that you can shove the vocabs into people's face. People will understand and point you or give you the item.
My father went to Japan without knowing any Japanese and did petfectly fine. He just pointed at stuff and give people a whole pile of money. Japanese people sre honest and will give you the correct change.
However... hiragana may help for you to know which train station to get off.
Forget about Kanji unless you know Chinese.
Just memorize simple vocabulary and the Katakana so that you can shove the vocabs into people's face. People will understand and point you or give you the item.
My father went to Japan without knowing any Japanese and did petfectly fine. He just pointed at stuff and give people a whole pile of money. Japanese people sre honest and will give you the correct change.
However... hiragana may help for you to know which train station to get off.
breh
強いだね
You can probably learn hiragana and katakana in a day flat for each (maybe faster) if you put your mind to it. Don't half ass it / be lazy; just force yourself through it and you'll find you can remember them pretty well. Those you can't recall, make silly reasoning for them (the hiragana nu has one more curl than me just like Nui from KLK has really curly hair). Although you might not get them perfect the first time around, keep at it and practice. After memorizing their appearance, you'll find that you can find a lot of random japanese in a lot of places; try to use these things to keep your knowledge up to speed but, in general, avoid forgetting hiragana / katakana. When you learn them, be aware that their english representations (romaji) are of limited accuracy; for example, ふ / フ (hiragana / katakana) are typically romanized as either hu / fu, but the sound is, to paraphrase my book, made by forcing air through unrounded (i.e. flat) lips you've brought together.
I wouldn't suggest focusing too hard on kanji until you get a good grasp on any grammar / basic sentence structure you might wanna learn. This is something that you should get a textbook for; try to make sure you're also listening to people speak simple sentences as you learn. On the topic of kanji, some have a fuckton of ways you can read them that depend on the surrounding characters (off the top of my VERY inexperienced head, 下 is used in down, to lower, and in 下さる (kudasaru; you may be familiar with kudasai (imperative conjugation)) and interpretation often relies pretty seriously on context (again off the top of my head, the two kanji 心中 together (alone, heart and inside) can mean either double suicide or true intentions). Slightly different meanings of kanji often come with different pronunciations, too, so be careful! With all of hiragana / katakana / kanji, be sure to keep stroke order in mind. It may seem legalistic when you start out, but it helps to remember how everything is written. It can get obnoxious at times (for example, the two strokes on the left in 右 (right) and 左 (left) are written in opposite order), but for the most part, it's not that bad and stroke order does have rules. Although kanji may seem scary at first, they're only composed of so many small parts (called radicals, sometimes also kanji when standing alone; for example, 土 (earth / ground) and 起 (wake; it's in the upper left)) and the radicals they're composed of start to get familiar fast. If you're a senior at the moment, don't worry too hard about kanji / grammar unless you really wanna devote yourself to learning Japanese.
You won't really be able to read / speak common japanese without a solid knowledge of hiragana / katakana (arguably the least difficult to understand) / kanji / grammar. The katakana will stick out like a very sore thumb for you, though (it is often straight english), and will be very much readable even if you have no japanese knowledge.
Oh, last note, don't use anime as a major source of learning. You might learn some bits of knowledge by chance but it doesn't substitute for anything serious.
(if I said anything incorrect / unrealistic here, feel free to correct me :))
I wouldn't suggest focusing too hard on kanji until you get a good grasp on any grammar / basic sentence structure you might wanna learn. This is something that you should get a textbook for; try to make sure you're also listening to people speak simple sentences as you learn. On the topic of kanji, some have a fuckton of ways you can read them that depend on the surrounding characters (off the top of my VERY inexperienced head, 下 is used in down, to lower, and in 下さる (kudasaru; you may be familiar with kudasai (imperative conjugation)) and interpretation often relies pretty seriously on context (again off the top of my head, the two kanji 心中 together (alone, heart and inside) can mean either double suicide or true intentions). Slightly different meanings of kanji often come with different pronunciations, too, so be careful! With all of hiragana / katakana / kanji, be sure to keep stroke order in mind. It may seem legalistic when you start out, but it helps to remember how everything is written. It can get obnoxious at times (for example, the two strokes on the left in 右 (right) and 左 (left) are written in opposite order), but for the most part, it's not that bad and stroke order does have rules. Although kanji may seem scary at first, they're only composed of so many small parts (called radicals, sometimes also kanji when standing alone; for example, 土 (earth / ground) and 起 (wake; it's in the upper left)) and the radicals they're composed of start to get familiar fast. If you're a senior at the moment, don't worry too hard about kanji / grammar unless you really wanna devote yourself to learning Japanese.
You won't really be able to read / speak common japanese without a solid knowledge of hiragana / katakana (arguably the least difficult to understand) / kanji / grammar. The katakana will stick out like a very sore thumb for you, though (it is often straight english), and will be very much readable even if you have no japanese knowledge.
Oh, last note, don't use anime as a major source of learning. You might learn some bits of knowledge by chance but it doesn't substitute for anything serious.
(if I said anything incorrect / unrealistic here, feel free to correct me :))
Smog article I originally wrote to help members read/play the Pokemon Black/White games when their Japanese versions came out before the English ones:
http://www.smogon.com/smog/issue12/japanese
http://www.smogon.com/smog/issue12/japanese