Faremax: Travel Forums

I'm thinking of going to Japan next year. Can anyone recommend any sites for learning 'tourist japanese' - like recognising common signs, and spoken japanese?

Any help greatly appreciated!

I wish telegraph.hill came back.  He spent some time in Japan and I am sure he would answer all of your questions.  If anybody knows where he is let him know that we miss him here

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"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." - Albert Einstein
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Thankyou for those thoughts, Faremax! I'm back now as you can see. I was on holiday in Croatia, (see my Croatia thread).

As for learning Japanese - I haven't used the web so much for learning Japanese, as I learnt it in Japan, from books, lessons and talking to people.

I would start by learning hiragana, and also some basic words and phrases. Also you could see if there is a Japanese person in your locality who might help you. There are also some good CD-ROM's available.

Now that kind of experience I envy :) Actually, I had a Japanese friend at school, but lost touch with her, and typically she is one of only three people out of my class that haven't registered on Friends Reunited :( Thanks for the tips - actually, can you comment on if Anime is a good way to learn? I've heard some people say that the speach, and subtitling of Anime is the less formal, spoken way of Japanese - would that be useful for someone intending to travel, or is it better to learn the more traditional forms first? Hope you enjoyed Croatia! Off to hunt for that thread now.

I think you would be better off learning from a standard beginners' textbook than from anime.

Most libraries have a beginners' Japanese course with tapes.

I heard other Japanese people never speaks English? They used their own language namely Niponggo? Do you think it's good idea to know first the basic language of the country before travelling or it depends?