If you were invited to a casual get-together party at your friends’ house in your home country at 6 p.m., what time would you show up to their place? If the party was in Japan, the Japanese people would probably show up at 6 p.m. on the dot, or even earlier. This is how the Japanese keep their “promises”.

Promises

Once you make a plan with a Japanese friend, most of the time, it will become a promise. They will mark their calendar and won’t change their plans unless it’s necessary. If they are not sure if they schedule a day or time, they most likely won’t make a plan – instead, they would just say “I don’t know”. Once you make a “promise”, and if you want to keep a good relationship with your Japanese friend, my advice is that you should keep your promise and show up on time.

In the Japanese education system, especially in the elementary school time, all Japanese are trained to be on time. Many teachers ask to their students to be ready for the next activities 5 minutes before, so that they can start their activities on time. If some one is late, she or he is considered as a slacker. Japanese are in general forgiving and nice, so if you show up late a couple of times, they would say it’s ok. But in their mind, they are not 100% happy with you being late. If you showed up late every single time, they eventually might not ask you out anymore.

Japanese like being ahead of time. Especially after finishing university, their day-offs from work are very limited. So when they want to meet up with their friends, sometimes even with their boyfriends/girlfriends, they like to make “promises” way ahead of time. Some of my Japanese friends asked me many times when is a good time to meet up for a dinner a month in advance, and when we know what day is good for the both of us, we mark our calendars. Many times, one of us will decide the restaurant to go and make a reservation (予約) in advance.

In case you are late!

Well, nobody is perfect. What should we do when we are late? The key is “in advance”. If you are meeting your Japanese friends at 5 p.m., and you are running late, give them a heads-up before 5 p.m. so that they can expect how long they have to wait for. Make sure to give them a call or text BEFORE the meeting time.

Japanese are in general very nice to their foreign friends and they try to understand cultural differences. They would probably forgive you even you are very late. Although, if you want to do it in the Japanese way, be on time or early! This way you can keep your friendships with your Japanese friends smooth and happy. That’s one of the first steps to act like the Japanese – respecting time and “promises”.

Japanese has three writing systems which are combined and used everyday: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. Kanji was brought from China around 5th century A.D., and at that time only men were allowed to learn and use it because men had a higher status than women. They said it was too hard to learn for women with their intelligence level, and women were allowed to use only Hiragana. Yes, Kanji is hard and there are many characters to learn, but if you learn them step by step, learning is doable for anyone. Also, knowing Kanji helps you read faster because each one letter has meanings!

In this article, I would like to introduce you to 10 basic Kanji characters that you will encounter in your daily life in Japan.

1. Big and Small – [大 and 小]

You often see these on food menus and at toilets as well. If you go to a fancier restroom with TOTO (or equivalent brand) Washlet toilet, nowadays they don’t even have a handle bar to flush, but instead you will see two buttons for 大 and 小 on the top of a little screen for controling the Washlet. 大 on toilets represents “number 2” and 小 is for “number 1”. This is just a difference of the amount of water used when flushed. If you had only “number 1”, you can push the button of 小 so that you can save water for the environment. Some toilets are automatic, so when you are finished, it automatically flushes. These two Kanji are only used for more modern sit-down toilets so this doesn’t apply to men’s stand-up urinals.

For food sizes, especially for drinks, these are also used. For example, beer sizes are written 大 or 小 for bottle beer or draughts, and many times they have the medium size with the Kanji 中. Draught beer is called 生ビール (nama biiru) or more commonly called just 生 (nama). When you want to order a big draught beer, you can say 大生(dai-nama), or for medium size 生中 (nama-chuu). This is a very casual and local way of ordering beer in Japanese. As for food, espeacially at fast food restaurants, these size Kanji are not used normally but they use S, M, or L (for small, medium, and large) instead. For example, when you order small fries at Mc.Donald’s, you can order saying “ポテトのS (poteto no esu)” or “ポテト のSサイズ (poteto no esu saizu)”.

2. Man and Woman – [男 and 女]

You see these Kanji for onsen/public bath or sometimes at restrooms as well. You don’t want to get confused by which one to enter, otherwise you will receive a weird glance from other people!

The 男 kanji is made of two different characters. The top one is 田 and this means rice field. The bottom one is 力 and this means power. As you probably know, the main diet of the Japanese is rice, and rice cultivation started long time ago back to sometime in the mid-Jomon period (Jomon period is from 145 B.C. to 10 B.C.) The people who worked at the rice field were mainly guys, since it was physically demending labor. This is how the kanji 男 was created. For 女, here is a story about ninja. Mostly ninja are male, because they have to be phisically fit for their spying duties, and sometimes they had to fight against samurai soldiers. However, there were some female ninja also. They were called くの一(kunoichi), since the Kanji for woman 女 can be broken down with three strokes of 1) Hiragana “ku” く, 2) Katakana “no” ノ and 3) Kanji “ichi” 一.

I hope that these stories will help you remembering these gender characters, but don’t worry too much. Usually there are color coordination for male and female – blue/black and red/pink. At onsen facilities, usually the entrance is covered with “noren” curtains, and they are usually in those colors for each gender!

3. Enter and Exit – [入and 出]

Most of the time, the same doors are used for entrance and exit, but sometimes, there are designated doors only for entrance or exit purposes. For example, public buses and street cars can have separate doors for entrance and exit, because one side has a payment system. When to pay is depending on the bus/tram companies. Usually, if the line is for the flat rates, you pay as you enter. If not, you pay when you exit because the price would vary depending on how far you go. The kanji meaning “to enter” and “to exit” are 入and 出, and for entrance and exit, they add 口 after them. 口 literally means “mouth” but in this case it means like “gate”. So entrance is written as 入口 (iri-guchi) and the exit is 出口 (de-guchi).

By the way, 入 Kanji is very similar to 人Kanji for “person”. It’s almost same and hard to see the difference especially in the computer fonts, but here is the tips to see the difference. The Kanji for enter is with the longer right stroke and it’s over the shorter left stroke. The person Kanji is with the longer left stroke and it’s over the shoter right stroke. These two Kanji are a little bit confusing, but this small difference makes totally different meanings, so watch out!

4. East, West, North, and South – [東西北南]

You usually can find these Kanji at train stations. Once again, the month or gate Kanji in this context is 口, so you see the conbination of these direction Kanji with 口 after them. For example, the JR Shinjuku station in Tokyo has 8 exits/entrances. Two biggest exits are 東口 (higashi-guchi) and 西口 (nishi-guchi). JR Shinjuku station also has Central-East, Central-West, South, New-South, South-East, and Southern-Terrace exits. This massive station is one of the most confusing station with so many exits (especially because it is a massivle conbination of the JR, subway/metro and other private train companies) – if you are not too familiar with the station, I would suggest NOT to meet up with your friends at the Shinjuku station and choose somewhere less confusing.

These directional Kanji are also used for names of places. For example, Tokyo is written as 東京. The second Kanji is from 京都 (Kyoto), which means “the capital”. Since the original capital was in Kyoto (in the Japanese history, the capital of Japan started from Nara, Kyoto, then moved to Tokyo), and since Tokyo is the new capital which is in the east Japan, it’s written as 東京, meaning “east capital”. As another example, the two biggest regions in Japan are called Kanto (関東) and Kansai (関西). Kanto incudes Tokyo, Yokohama, Chiba, Saitama, etc. and Kansai includes Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Kobe, etc. As you can see in the map, Kanto has the 東 Kanji in it because it’s located in the east Japan, and Kansai with 西 because it’s in the west.

Another example is that the northern island is called Hokkaido, and it’s written as 北海道. Now you can see why it has 北 kanji in it.

By the way, going back to the capital kanji (京), do you know whether there is any northern capital or southern capital in Japan? The answer is NO. But there are places with those Kanji in China! 北京 for “northern capital” is the Kanji for Beijing, and 南京 for “southern capital” is for Nanjin. For some reason, there is no 西京 – but there is a Chinise city called 西安.

These are some of the Kanji I recommend you to learn to make your daily life easier. Kanji are pictorial characters – once you know more characters, you will become much quicker reader because you can get the meaning right away by even looking at one character! There are many more to learn but it will help you to remember many of them by connecting them with daily life or stories of the Japanese history.

There are several unique sports that originated in Japan such as Sumo, Karate, Aikido, Judo, Kendo (Japanese fencing), Kyudo (Japanese archery) etc. In this article I would like to introduce you to sumo, the sport of Japanese wrestling.

相撲（すもう）- Sumo is one of the traditional Japanese sports which is viewed and enjoyed by many Japanese people. Generally, sumo is a sport more popular with older adults than children. I was born and raised in Japan, and I started to have interested in watching sumo in my late 20s. Sumo has simple rules and each game is short (at longest 4 minutes), so it is easy to understand and enjoyable for many people.

The basic rule in sumo is: the competitor who is forced out of the ring first, or who touches any body parts besides feet on the ground first is the loser. Sumo techniques include, Oshi-dashi (push to the outside), Uwate-nage (grab the mawashi, or loincloth belt, from the top and throw), Hataki-komi (push down the oppornent’s shoulder or back when he approaches in the low position) and many more. There are fouls like punching with a fist, grabbing hair on purpose, poking eyes, kicking chest or stomach, etc. It’s very rare but if the sumo wrestler’s mawashi falls off, it is considered a foul and results in an automatic match loss for him.

Sumo tournaments are held in Japan every odd month: January, March, May, July, September, and November, and each lasts for approximately 15 days. Tournaments are held in Tokyo every other time, and the other locations which host tournaments are Osaka, Nagoya, and Fukuoka. When it is in Tokyo, they have the tournament at Kokugikan (a.k.a. Ryogoku-Kokugikan). Kokugikan is an arena specifically made only for sumo tournaments, so I recommend going to a match at Kokugikan if you can. For the people who cannot go see the matches live, the matches are also broadcasted for free on TV on the NHK channel (usually the channel 1) from 3:15 to 6pm.

Check out the finals from the most recent 2011 July Sumo wrestling tournament here.

Sumo matches start early in the morning. Depending on the day, the tournament usually starts from either 8 or 10am and finishes around 6pm. The order of matches are based on individual sumo wrestler’s ranking and scores. The more advanced and stronger sumo wrestlers’ matches usually start later in the day from around 3:30 to 4 in the afternoon. There are places to buy food and eat in the sumo arenas, or you can even bring your own food/drink from outside. The food available inside is mostly Japanese food, so if you’d like something different, it is better to buy beforehand. Your ticket is good for the entire day, so you may leave and come back at any time you please. Make sure to have your tickets stamped for re-entry at the exit before you leave.

If you leave the stadium, you may bump into sumo wrestlers who are coming to the games or going home after their match. If you like to take a picture with them, simply ask them friendly. Most sumo wrestlers are willing to take a picture with you, unless they are in a hurry. Make sure to thank them if they are generous to spare their time for you. Seeing a sumo wrestler in real life if a unique and fun experience.

Tickets – You can purchase tickets before or on the day of the game. The ticket prices vary depending on the seats. The closest section is called “Tamari” seat, and one seat costs 14,300 yen (as of September, 2011). The cheapest ticket is 2,100 yen. All the seats are assigned, and you are supposed to sit at your assigned place. However, if you go early enough before a lot people come in, it is possible to go closer to the ring and watch or take pictures of the games. You should stay in the area with the seat cusions (zabuton) and stay clear of designated areas for officials or judges.

You can reserve most the types of the seats online or buy tickets at convenience stores in advance. You can also buy tickets on the day of the match at the ticket counter of the site. The cheapest tickets can ONLY be purchased the day of the match and are only good for that day. If you are planning to go on weekends or in the final days of the tournament, buy your tickets in advance because there is a good chance that all tickets could be sold out. Especially during the final days of the tournament, the best remaining sumo wrestlers will be trying to win and be crowned the champion so tickets on these days are usually the hardest to get. You should go early in the morning to reserve seats. If you purchase tickets in advance at a convenience store, you will need to use a computerized ticket machine (e.g., Loppi at Lawson). You may need to ask assistance on how to buy tickets from the workers, but they are usually very helpful.

Sumo is a very unique and traditional sport in Japan. I recommend you go to a live match once and watch the matches as close to the ring as you can. Sometimes the sumo wrestlers come right at you when pushed out of the ring and being so close to the action is very exciting. If you have the opportunity to see a sumo match while in Japan, make sure to bring your camera and some of your favorite snacks to enjoy the matches!

As a full bilingual of Japanese and English and Japanese teacher, I would like to recommend what I view as the best way to learn Japanese. I think these methods will make you become fluent in Japanese sooner than usual. Here are some methods I recommend to become more proficient in Japanese.

Study grammar Contents One by One

This sounds very classic and maybe obsolete, but knowing grammar will help you so much in understanding and also making correct sentences. Choose grammar book(s) which start from simple to more complicated sentence structures, and understand them. The important thing is output after input. Once you understand the concept(s), you should use them in your own writing or speech as often as possible. If possible, check if your usage of the new grammer is correct or not by a native speaker or a highly proficient person. Repetition is very important when you output. The more you use what you learned, the better it will stick to you and become your own knowledge. Just like the old adage – Use it, or lose it!

Vocabulary

Having a greater amount of vocabulary is very helpful. Knowing basic/simple vocabulary is un-avoidable and crucial to your path to fluency. You should know commonly used verbs and nouns at the very least. However, don’t worry too much about remembering enormous numbers of words. A word alone cannot make communication. In a real life, you always face to new words, even in your own language. When you encounter a new word and don’t understand what it means, or you want to say something but don’t know how to say it, just ask someone, or look it up in a dictionary, or on the internet.

Asking questions enhances your communication, especially when you ask in Japanese. You may use:

… wa douiu imi desuka? (What is the meaning of …?)
… wa nihongo de nan desuka? (What is … in Japanese?)
… wa eigo de nan desuka? (What is … in English?)

Or in casual speech with your friends:

… tte nani? (What does … mean?)
… tte nihongo de nani? (What is … in Japanese?)
… tte eigo de nani? (What is … in English?)

Becoming like a native? – Be a Copy Cat!

If you are aiming to become fluent in colloquial Japanese, the best way to learn is to become a good copy cat! In another words, copy expressions, vocabulary, pronunciations, tones, etc. from a native speaker. The key point to this though is that you should choose the right person/people to copy. If you want to learn standard Japanese and you are a male, choose to emulate a person from Tokyo or surrounded area (who is also preferibly male). Matching age, gender and personality would help you to get the right feeling of the language for someone of your age. Many times when you learn a language from the opposite gender, especially in casual speech, you will end up sounding like your opposite gender. You’ll want to avoid this because if you remember, Japanese has male and female reserved styles of speech. So by choosing the right person to copy and becoming a pro copy cat, your language will become dramatically fluent.

Kanji

Learning kanji is a nightmare for many Japanese learners. There are too many characters to learn to be proficient in Japanese. Japanese school kids study 2000 kanji for over 9 years. How can you catch up with the natives….

My suggestion is that you should start with the kanji for the words which you are familiar with already. Especially the ones you would use or see often in your life – those are the best starter kanji. It’s much easier to memorize this language and associate the character to its meaning, by studying the kanji with the meaning you already know.

Once you know a few kanji characters, use them in your writing! The easiest way of writing is by using a cell phone or computer. When Japanese type, they use their romaji knowledge. When your set-up is for the Japanese language, as you type the romaji, they will automatically change into Hiragana. Then if you want to change them into Kanji, you will push the space bar, then you will see the selection of the kanji characters for the sound.

If you prefer writing by hand, you can write short sentences using the kanji you learned. The important thing is that you practice it in sentences, This will help you to learn how to use the kanji in the right context and if the kanji needs okurigana after it. For example, the Japanese word for big is “ookii” and the kanji for big is 大. But when you write ookii using kanji, it’s not only writing 大, but you need to write 大きい. The きいpart is called okurigana, which follows after kanji character(s) to complete a meaning of a word. In this case, きい is necessary to write after 大, because the reading of 大 in this context includes only “oo”.

Conclusion

The key to success in learning Japanese or any other foreign language is repetition. You need both input and output, and especially in output, you will need to use them as much as you can, until it comes to your own knowledge. After you study new grammar concept, word or kanji, make sure to use them in actual speech or writing again and again. The more you see and use them, the more you will become familiar to them, so keep that in your mind when you study Japanese! Now that you know the methods for the best way to learn Japanese good luck and check out some other articles around the site for more help!

Good news – It’s relatively easy to learn how to speak. Bad news – reading and writing are time consuming and Japanese characters are often difficult to memorize!

Japanese is a Unique Language

You may have heard that there are “language families” and languages in the same family are somewhat similar and easy to learn. For example, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French are all in the Romance language family. Within this family, Spanish and Portuguese are categorized as the Ibero-Romance languages – that is why these two languages are very similar to each other.

The Japanese language is under the Altaic language family, which includes Turkish or Mongolian. However, Japanese does not have other languages in its subcategory. This means that Japanese is an isolated and uniquely unique language.

Is Japanese Hard to Learn?

So, is Japanese hard to learn? As a Japanese teacher, I would say speaking Japanese is not difficult compared to many other languages. First of all, the pronunciation is relativly easy for English speakers. In English, there are 11 vowels (or 12 depending in regions), whereas Japanese has only 5. Those 5 vowels are almost identical to the Spanish five vowels. Once you acquire how to pronounce those 5 vowels, [a] [i] [u] [e] and [o], the only thing you have to be careful of is pronouncing the “length” of those vowles and hearing the differences.

Pronunciation Tips

One of the common errors that Japanese learners make is not making a difference between long and short vowels. The pronunciation is exactly the same. It’s only the matter of the length. For example, “Obaasan” and “Obasan” means two different things. The one with the long [aa] sound means “old lady” or “grandma”, and the one with the short [a] sound means “mid-aged lady” or “aunt”. When you try to say “obasan” and if you mistakenly say “obaasan”, people might get upset! (They wouldn’t show that in their face, but in their mind, they could be offended and upset!). So these two differences are quite important.

As for consonants, you need to be careful for a couple of tricky ones. For example, there are no “F” “V” “th” or “R” sounds in Japanese. They have katakana spellings for [V] (ヴァ、ヴィ、ヴェ、ヴォ) but they appear only in the loan words from foreign, especially western, languages.

The pronunciation of “F” sound as in “family” is not the same as English. When you want to make a sound of “fa”, you make your lips round and try to say the first part of “who”. Do not say [oo] but instead, say [a] after [wh]. Then it sounds like this: “famirii” .

The [V] sound is very simple. It is replaced with [B] sound. Names like “Las Vegas”, “Venice” or “Victor” become “Rasu Begasu”, “Benisu” and “Bikutaa”.

The English “th” has two different sounds as in “bath” or “weather”. The first one is unvoiced – and this becomes [s] sound. When you say “bathroom” in the Japanese loan word style, it becomes as “basu ruumu” . The second one is voiced – and for this, use [z] instead. So “weather report” will become “wezaa ripooto”.

For [R] sounds and additional explanation for [F] sounds, please refer to F & R Sounds for more information.

Speaking Japanese

Same as learning other languages, knowing vocabulary and basic sentence structures will help you a lot! If you are a beginner, don’t be shy to use your Japanese. Most of the time, Japanese are very nice to foreigners, and they will try to understand you very carefully. The point is that you should speak up and say things clearly. When speaking in a foreign language, people tend to speak too soft or not clear enough, because they are not confident in their speech. Japanese are always happy to hear when you speak Japanese, even a little. They will praise you for saying even simplest things in Japanese.

Here are some useful expressions for beginners:

• … wa nihongo de nandesuka? (What is … in Japanese?)
• … wa eigo de nandesuka? (What is … in English?)
• sumimasen (Excuse me/ I am sorry.)
• mou ichido onegai-shimasu (Please say it one more time.)
• wakarimasen (I don’t understand.)
• nihongo ga yoku wakarimasen (I don’t know Japanese much).

For more useful and common expressions complete with audio, try this Japanese phrases page.

Reading and Writing Japanese

When asked is Japanese hard to learn? Most people will tell you the hard part of learning Japanese is reading and writing. Japanese use three alphabet sets in their daily life – hiragana, katakana and kanji (Chinese characters). In any written materials like magazines or posters etc., you see the combination of all of them. To become proficient in reading and writing in Japanese, you will eventually have to know all of them.

In almost all Japanese classes, teachers introduce you to hiragana when you start learning Japanese. However, when it comes to language for survival, I recommend you to start with katakana. Katakana is used for loan words from foreign languages. By learning how to decode each katakana letter, there is high chance that you understand what is written much better than knowing hiragana letters. However, those loan words are spelled in the Japanized pronunciation, so you will need to be familiar with how the Japanese pronouce foreign words. Here are some examples.

• カメラ　ka me ra →　camera
• ワインバー　wa i n ba (long vowel) → wine bar
• スポーツカー　su po (long vowel) tsu ka (long vowel) → sport car
• ハンバーガー　ha n ba (long vowel) ga (long vowel) →　hamburger
• タワー　ta wa (long vowel) →　tower
• マクドナルド　ma ku do na ru do →　McDonalds

Japanese like to use shortened words, such as パソコン (personal computer) エアコン (air conditioner) or スタバ (starbucks) as well.

Kanji Letters

Kanji is the most ticky part of the Japanese writing. Japanese students are required to learn almost 2000 kanji letters (!) in the elementary and junior high school levels. You do not have to be able to write all the kanji, but recognition is what’s most important. When typing in Japanese on computers or mobile phones, you don’t even need to know how to write each kanji stoke by stroke, but you will need to be able to recognize and select the kanji you want to use. Japanese has a lot of homonyms (same sounds but different meanings). For example, the sounds “kai” have the following meanings depending on the context and kanji characters.

• 会 group/meeting
• 回 times (once, twice, etc.)
• 階 floor
• 海 ocean
• 貝 sea shell
• 界 world/field of
• 買い buy
• 下位 lower rank

If you want to master kanji, basically you will need to study them all one by one. You can start from simple kanji, then you can move onto more complicated ones. Most kanji have radicals, which often shows the basic meaning of the character, so knowing radicals first will help your understandings of many kanji charaters.

Keigo – Polite speech

Japanse culture has a seniority system. They are respectful to olders or more experienced individuals. This respect is also found in customer services as well. When Japanese speak, they use different levels of politeness based on who they are talking to and who they are talking about.

Keigo is the Japanese word for respectful speech. There are three types of keigo: teinei-go (simple polite form), kenjou-go (humble form) and sonkei-go (honorifics form). If you are aiming to work in Japan, it is helpful to know all of them, and you might want to be able to speak in keigo. Otherwise, it is especially helpful to know sonkei-go, since you are more likely to be talked to in sonkei-go in customer service situations.

For example, if you ask someone where the washroom is, normal conversation and keigo conversation answers are different as following:

You: Otearai (or toire) wa doko desu ka?

Normal answer: Asoko desu. (It’s over there.)
Keigo answer: Achira ni gozaimasu.

However, if you did not understand what they said in keigo, you may simply ask again or say that you did not understand. They might adjust their speech simpler for you (knowing you are a foreigner).

Japanese is one of the most complicated languages to master. It is for sure a long way to become completely fluent. Although, the good thing is that Japanese are very generous for foreigners and they will try to understand you and forgive your mistakes. There are numerous ways to study and practice Japanese, even for free! The best way to learn a foreign language is having knowledge about the language and culture, and use your knowledge in actual speech. So, is Japanese hard to learn? Yes and no. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Your daily study/practice will make your language skills strong! Good luck.

1. Take off your shoes indoors
Japanese have strong concept of “uchi” (home/in-group) and “soto” (outside/out-group). From that, at Japanese people’s houses and traditional Japanese hotels called “ryokan”, most likely you will need to take your shoes off when entering. Many times, you will be offered slippers to wear inside. In that case, please use them. Some people do not like guests to walk around without slippers. If you are invited to visit a Japanese person’s house, please wear socks since going into someone’s house bare-footed is not polite (especially for a semi-formal or formal invitation).

Here are some tips about indoor slippers. 1) Take your slippers off before entering a “tatami” room. You are not supposed to wear any shoes on tatami. 2) If there are separate slippers in the washroom, wear them only in the washroom area. The separation is important! Keep the house slipper out of the bathroom and the bathroom slippers in the bathroom!

2. Eating in public
This also abides separation of “uchi” and “soto”. There are things you are not supposed to do in “soto”.

Generally speaking, Japanese eat or drink in designated areas only. In most public areas (e. g., at public transportation: trains, subways, buses etc.), you are not recommended to eat something noticeable. For example, eating a rice ball (onigiri), fruits, or drinking canned sodas are not recommended. However, something small to eat, like candy or gum, or drinks with bottle-caps would be acceptable.

For long-distance travels, eating and drinking on Super Express or Bullet trains is normal and accepted. You may bring a bento box, drink beer, and basically enjoy any food or drink you like. There are often places on the train platform to purchase food or drink to bring with you on your journey. However, you may want to be careful not to eat strong smelling food. Consideration to others would be highly appreciated.

3. Talking loud in public places
In general, English speakers talk much louder than Japanese speakers. In places like coffee shops, restaurants, buses or trains, even if you are speaking in a normal level of voice, it is usually considered very loud to most Japanese. However, it varies depending on the situations, so please look around and check if it is somewhat quiet or not, then please be careful about how loud you talk. Most of the time people will not say anything, but there is a chance you might get yelled by a Japanese person (especially old grouchy ones!) to be quiet.

4. Eating Sushi – Using soy sauce properly
One of the most popular Japanese food is sushi. There are different kinds of sushi: nigiri-zushi, gunkan, maki-zushi (roll), te-maki-zushi (hand roll), chirashi-zushi (various sushi in a box with rice on the bottom), etc. Here I would like to explain how to use soy sauce when you eat nigiri and gunkan sushi.

Nigiri is the most popular sushi among Japanese – when they hear “sushi”, they would think about nigiri-zushi. This is the one with rice on the bottom and raw fish or other ingredients (called “neta”) on top. When you eat nigiri, either hold the sushi with your chopsticks or in your hand, and apply soy sauce from a separate small plate that is provided. When you do this, do not soak the rice part in the soy sauce! Your sushi will have too much soy sauce and the rice will fall apart. The correct way is to flip the sushi over, and put the fish into the soy sauce. Basically you do not want to have your small soy sauce dish have any rice in it at the end of the meal.

“Gunkan” is a similar to nigiri in shape but it is characterized by a small piece of dried seaweed wrapped around it. For Gunkan, you want to pour soy sauce directly on the sushi, so that you don’t lose your “neta” by flipping it over like when eating nigiri.

Now you are a pro sushi eater without a messy soy sauce plate with full of wasted rice!

5. Soy sauce on steamed white rice
Steamed white rice by itself is boring with no real taste, right? Let’s pour some delicious soy sauce and make it tasty! W-R-O-N-G! This could make Japanese feel grossed out! Write rice is supposed to be pure and clean. Making your rice and rice bowl dirty with anything is not a good manner, unless it is already mixed before it is served (like fried rice). So how do Japanese enjoy plain steamed rice?

Usually, Japanese meals contain a main dish, some side dishes (called “okazu”), soup and rice. Japanese eat okazu with rice. Eat okazu first and while it is still in your mouth, add some rice as well. They mix okazu and rice like this. If you like, you can have rice first and add okazu right after. One thing you want to remember is that it is considered good manners to eat each dish little by little. Do not finish only one dish first then move onto another one. Eating little by little shows respect and appreciation for each dish. So remember balance everything when you eat your meal.

If you are invited to a Japanese person’s house for a meal, try finishing everything. If you cannot finish, you shuld to tell them that you are full (“onaka ga ippai desu”), that it was very delicious (“totemo oishi-katta desu”) and that you appreciate their served a meal for you saying “arigatou”.

6. Hot springs (onsen) is only for your clean bodies!
Onsens have a couple of clean rules to follow since everybody is sharing the same water in the tub. The basic rule is that only clean bodies can go into the tub. When you go into the onsen, first go to the washing area and wash your body (and hair if you like – body soap, shampoo, and conditioners are almost always provided). Once you are clean, you may enter the hot water baths to soak. You might have small towel with you, but do not soak it into the bath water. If you have long hair, tie it up with a band or towel so that hair does not go in either. You do not want to see anybody’s floating hair in the good-feeling hot tub!

If you are sharing the tub with someone else, make sure not to disturb the others by splashing, staring at others, or swimming! (If you want to swim around little, do it when nobody is around you.) When you go back to the changing area, try to towel off quickly to avoid leaving too much water on the floor.

7. Which side to stand on an escalator?
Even Japanese sometimes get confused about this one, but taking an escalator differs in different places. During rush hours (crowds of people going or returning from school or work), people are in a hurry and you will make a huge line behind you if you are standing on the wrong side. In Japan, people in a hurry always walk up or down on moving escalators. Please be sure to either walk with those in a hurry or stand on the side with the people just riding. You will need to look at which side to wait or walk on because the sides differ in two major areas!

In Tokyo, if you are not in a hurry and do not walk on the escalator, stay on the left side. Stand all the way to the left to make sure that you give enough room for someone to pass on the right side of you. In Osaka it is opposite. People stand and ride on the right side. In any other place – you can remember that most of the places follow Tokyo. Some international places like Kyoto, it could be right or left depending on who is on the escalator. So just look around and see which side you should stand, if you are not sure about it.

8. Women only cars on the train
In big cities like Tokyo, there are women only cars in the train/subway system. This is only applicable during rush hours in the morning and evening as well. The reason for separate women only cars is for preventing “chikan” (pervert) problems – someone touching random women (or men!) in a highly crowded area or in the train. On the platform, they have signs for women only cars on the ground, usually with an easily recognizable pink sign, so as on the train body. Nobody would give you fines if you accidentally hopped into one of them, but you might get an un-approving look by women. Check to see if the car you are riding is for only women or not, before riding a train. It should be easy to see.

9. “Foreigners never apologize! (angry face)”
Foreigners have bad reputations for not saying “I’m sorry” when the Japanese think they deserve an apology. Rather, they say foreigners make excuses and try to justify what you have done. Japanese consider an apology and saying “I’m sorry” (“Gomen-nasai” or in casual, “gomen-ne”) as very important. By hearing an apology first, you will appear sincere in their eyes and can be ready to start forgiving you. If you did something wrong, big or small, apologize first and then move from there.

If you want to explain why you did something, explain after you say sorry. Still, remember to have a sorry-ness in your speech. If you show the attitude that you are trying to justify yourself without sorry-ness even after you apologized, the argument could go longer. Make sure to show that you are truly sorry for a longer time than you think it is necessary, and apologize more than once. That helps for you to finish the argument smoothly.

10. Be on time! Be on time! Be on time!
Japanese are very punctual since they are expected to be in every situation. Buses and trains operate on precise schedules and so do people who are meeting with you. They are trained to be on time from their elementary school life – schools often teach kids “five-to” rules. If you are meeting someone at a station at 5pm, many of them show up around 4:55.

So does this mean that Japanese are never late? Don’t worry! Japanese are also human. They could be late for a meeting of course. But here is a common courtesy for those who run late. If you are going to be late, call or text before the planned meeting time, and inform the person you are meeting where you are and/or how late you will be. This is common courtesy so they do not have to wait and wonder if you are lost or how long they have to wait for you. Giving a heads-up helps a lot, but make sure you do that before the meeting time. Also, avoid being late too often since people may start to think that you are not punctual and cannot be trusted to keep an appointment.

Japanese have a lot of “regulations” but they are usually generous when foreigners make mistakes. So do not feel too stressed about the rules in Japan, but Japanese would be delighted to see you try and show that you want to act as the Japanese do. “When in Japan, do as the Japanese do” is my best advice for your successful Japanese life.

When you go to a restaurant in Japan, there is a different culture depending on the type of restaurant. Some of them have a ticket system – mostly soba/udon/ramen noodle or “don”s (e.g., beef bowl), Japanese versions of fast food. At those places, you usually purchase tickets at the vending machine before or at the entrance, and give them to the server or cook. You have almost no conversation at this kind of restaurants. Most of them don’t have English menus but if you want to try, as your buy tickets you may want to ask, “Sumimasen, osusume wa?” (“Excuse me, what do you recommend?”) Anyone will kindly help you to select a ticket matching the recommended dish!

Seating at a Japanese Restaurant

In a regular restaurant, you will wait to be seated by a waiter/waitress at the entrance. Their first question is usually about how many people you have in your group. If you want to answer in Japanese, say hitori (by yourself), futari (2 including you), san-nin (3 people) etc., and it is helpful to show how many with your fingers as well. If you prefer not to say anything, you can just show your fingers and they will understand you.

After being seated, you might want to check if there is a button/bell on the table or a phone to call waiters (if you have a private room, they might have a phone). Restaurants like izakayas (a Japanese restaurant and pub) or family restaurants (e.g., Denny’s) usually have a button/bell system. If that’s the case, simply push the button and someone will quickly come to your table to take your request. In case of phone, you just pick up the phone then it will connect to the server.

If your table doesn’t have those devices, you will get to use your Japanese to flag a worker down. To get attention from a waiter, you call out loud saying “Sumimasen (or Suimasen)”, meaning, “Excuse me!.” Suimasen is more casual than Sumimasen, and it’s easier to say it when you have to raise your voice. Please don’t be shy to say it loud, so that they can hear you. Raising your hand and try to make eye contact helps too. If nobody comes to you, it’s most likely that your voice was too soft. Simply do it again with a louder voice – almost coming to a shout at times. That’s the Japanese way – Don’t be shy to say it loud since it’s not considered rude.

Ordering at a Japanese Restaurant

Some restaurants have English menues. If you would like one, you can ask by saying “Eigo no menu (ga) arimasuka (Do you have an Engish menu)?” Most of the Japanese restaurants have menues with pictures so it’s easy to see what you are ordering, even with a Japanese menu. When you order, you can point at the picture on the menu, and say “Kore onegai shimasu (This one, please).” Hitotsu is one, and futatsu is two. If you want to order two of the same thing, you can say “Kore futatsu onegaishimasu” and show two fingers. If you know the name already, you can just say “… onegaishimasu.” Ordering one beer would be “Biiru hitotsu onegaishimasu” (notice sentence order – what you want, how many, please).

Here are other useful phrases: When you want to ask what the things are, you can say “Kore wa nan desuka?” for “What is this?” Make sure you point at the name or the picture of the food/drink when you say this so that they will know which “kore (this)” you are talking about. For vegetarians, you may say “Bejitarian no tabemono ga arimasuka?” (Do you have food for vegetarians?). One notable thing about vegetarians in Japan is that they don’t consider fish as meat, so if you don’t want fish either, you may say “sakana mo dame desu” (fish is also no good). If you are vegan, you can use the words like “tamago” (egg) or “gyunyu” (milk) as well.

When you thank them for their service as you leave, you can say “Arigato” (Thank you) or after eating “gochiso-sama deshita” for “Thank you for the food” (literary meaning, it was a feast). Japanese people will appreciate when you use Japanese, so don’t be shy and use these phrases. You will have even a better time when you dine out!

Note: At high-end restaurants, the manner is the same as the western culture – You do NOT want to call the waiter out loud.

I bet many times you have seen Japanese words or place names with the letter F, and many times people pronounce it as the F sound in English. No idea why the government decided to use the letter F for that particular sound, but the truth is, there is no F sound in the Japanese language.

Pronouncing F in Japanese

When you see the words like Fukushima, Fukuoka or furikake and pronounce those names with the English F sound, people would understand you. However, that makes you sound totally “a foreigner”. If you want to become more hip and more native-like, I recommend you should use the following way.

Think of when you blow off the candles on a birthday cake. You make your lips round and exhale, right? Make that lip shape and say “hu”! That’s more like the sound Japanese would make. It’s more similar to H sound, rather than F sound. So Fukushima is more like Hukushima. Mt. Fuji (Japanese call it Fuji-san) is more like Mt. Huji, or Huji san.

The reason the government used F instead H is probably (I might be wrong) that they considered of the people who speaks languages with silent H sound, such as French or Italian. However, if you are an English speaker, replacing F with H works.

Pronouncing R in Japanese

Another troublesome pronunciation is the R letter. You probably have heard of that the Japanese speakers cannot make differences between L and R, and that’s totally true.

When you see R letters in a Japanese word, that R is more like “D” sound or “L” sound. Technically speaking, the Japanese “R” is the exactly same sounds as the “flap” sound in American English. Think of the sound of the “tt” part or “dd” part of the words such as “better”, “butter”, “ladder”, etc. in American English, that’s the Japanese R sound! For most people, it should sounds close to “D” sound.

But it is actually difficult to extract those “tt” or “dd” sound and apply it to a Japanese word, especially because it’s not really a D sound! If it’s very hard for you, it’s much closer to pronounce “L” sound, instead of “R” sound, if you didn’t want to sound totally foreign. So when you say “Thank you” in Japanese, don’t say “ah-ree-gah-tow!” but more like “ah-lee-gah-toh!”

If you change these sounds as recommended, your pronunciation will become much better and you won’t sound as foreign as before. One more important thing to make people understand your Japanese is to speak loud enough and clearly! Most of the time, people are too shy to speak foreign language feeling it’s embarrassing to make mistakes, but talking with confidence is the most important thing. Good luck!