A Semester in Japan: One Gamer's Life

[hatmoza]

Zlejedi said:

hatmoza said:

radishhead said:
As far as tourism goes, how difficult would it be to visit Japan while knowing no/very little Japanese?

I rarely bumped into someone who didn't speak English, in major cities at least. Boy did I ask a lot of strangers for directions though. As a matter of fact, that's all you need to do is ask for directions or help when at doubt. Train stations drove me nuts! But I remember a kind police woman explain to me  colors of signs correspond to different trains or something. This was four years ago and I forget.

 

Actually asking in english typically gives much better results.

I asked once on the train station "does this train goes to Akibahara station " in japanise and got twenty sentence long explanation instead of "no go to the next track" ;)

bwahaha! That's why I never pretended to speak Japanese.I got scolded once for trying. I used to frequent a privately owned coffe shop every morning and a couple of girls there would try to teach me words. All I remember from their lessons is one of them telling, "don't say 'seyenora', it's rude. Say matane"