Language

Do you know Japanese?

There are foreign travelers who admired that Japanese are very kind to them, even many Japanese hardly speak English well. They try their best to communicate in English, using lots of body and sign languages together with handy Japanese words.

When you look for someone who speaks English, try young students(gakuseisan,学生さん), staff at train stations(Eki-in san,駅員さん), or police officers(omawarisan,お巡りさん), etc. It seems that you have more chance to come across to whom speaks better English even at the rural area.

I recommend to use notepads to write something down far better communication for understanding. In the most case, Japanese are better in reading and writing, more than hearing and speaking in English.

Try to speak Japanese!

Since you are aggressive enough to come to Japan, don't waist your time for looking for somebody who can speak English. Let you try to speak Japanese, so that you can feel Japan more and more close. Here is a small set of Japanese.

Japanese Vocabulary for Bikers

• Japanese words for cyclists
  • UTF-8(Unicode) text version

Japanese Phrases for Bikers

• Japanese Phrases for cyclists
  • UTF-8(Unicode) text version

How to display a Japanese character on your PC

• Nihongo-ok! .com(for windows)
• Amherst College Information Technology - OS9 Language Setup
• In MacOS X, you already see Japanese characters on this page.