Tom visited Japan for 3 weeks in April 2007.


I recently returned from a 3 week trip to Japan, in which we travelled to Osaka, Kyoto, Tokyo, and spent a lot of time in Aichi near Nagoya.


It was my third time in Japan, but only my first since starting Japanese lessons with Udagawa Sensei.


I was pleased to discover that my work had paid off, and found that I could understand a lot more than I had expected.


Conversation was still incredibly slow but I knew this would be the case.


My biggest regret is that after initially learning Katakana, I had let it slip a little to the point where my reading was far from fluent.


This really showed in Japan, as I hadn’t anticipated how useful it would be there.


So many bars, restaurants and shops use Katakana and it was quite frustrating not being able to read things fluently.


A good example might be if you visited a coffee shop, you would probably be faced with something like this:

コーヒー
  • アメリカンブレンド

  • カプチーノ
  • カフェモカ
  • エスプレッソ
    • >



    紅茶
  • ストレート
  • ミルクティー
  • レモンティー



    • ジュース
  • オレンジジュース
  • グレープフルーツジュース
  • コーラ<



    • ケーキ
  • シフォンケーキ
  • ショートケーキ
  • チョコレートケーキ


    • This is my best tip.
    For people going to Japan (particularly big cities like Tokyo), as in 90% of cases there is little need for any vocab/grammar understanding when reading Katakana as you’ll be reading English/Western words anyway.


    Being fluent in Katakana (or at least a little faster than me), is a very good survival tool and I will make sure I brush up for next time!