The Japanese always appreciate it if international visitors make an effort to learn a few words of Japanese, even if it’s just greetings and saying thank you!

Here are some basics - JNTO Learning Japanese

JNTO has prepared a Tourist’s Language Handbook that may also prove useful. It has words and phrases written in Japanese that you can show to locals.

Japanese is a lot easier to learn to speak than it is to learn to read and write.

Want to Study Japanese in Japan?

Macrons

As much as possible, we’ve stuck to the standard practice of putting macrons (lines) above vowels to indicate a long vowel when using Japanese names and words written in what the Japanese call romaji (Roman script).

Plurals

In general, Japanese words are both single & plural without an ’s’ added - so ‘geisha’ can be both singular & plural. We stick to this convention, though you may see some American-English translators add an ’s’ (as in 'geishas’) elsewhere.