Extended Living In Japan Without Reading Japanese -- How Viable/Unpleasant

Factual Questions
1

The second thread from my recent Japan trip.

I have to/get to visit fairly frequently on business. And I can skate by despite not speaking more than a few bits and pieces and being able to eavesdrop on a few more to sometimes get the gist of 15% of a conversation. Some combination of laziness, not having time, and being spoiled by usually having native speakers who are decent in English and can interpret for us in work settings as chaperones most of the time has allowed me to think I can get by in most situations. I’m not a Japanophile or anime dork so I’ve never had any ulterior motivation to make a significant effort to figure out reading the language, especially the damned fiendish (to me) kanji.

Except – now it’s come up as a possibility that instead of just periodic work visits, it may be advantageous/necessary for me to take an extended residency in Japan – think months/year(s).

Which changes things more than a bit. I wouldn’t be only mostly in business hotels and Western-friendly professional settings. I am pretty confident it’s possible to live as an ex-pat without ever learning a word of the language, spoken or written (IIRC Kobe Bryant’s dad has been coaching there for 30 years and still relies on an interpreter), but that sounds (a) probably expensive and (b) defeating the point to a large extent, as well as sterile and isolating. God knows I don’t want to be limited to eating McDonalds or bad versions of Western food.

So my current take is that it would inevitably be an isolating tough experience, but that faced with the motivation, I could rather quickly do a good bit to supplement my spoken proficiency and maybe learn most or all of the kana. But I’m not sure how quick I could do that, and trying to figure out the kanji while working full time, years after being out of school – geez, is this just a non-starter?

The catalyst for my pessimism was taking a one mile walk to try to get some lunch. This is in a part of Central Tokyo that is very close to the business areas, but doesn’t happen to have any attractions that would draw tourists or business people (near Meguro station, to be exact), so other than at the handful of hotels or chain restaurants, there’s no real incentive to make things English friendly (which I hasten to add, is of course their right). And – they do not (again, why would they?). I walked a mile of commercial streets and walked into three restaurants only to walk out after abortive attempts to make myself understood or find an English menu. 85% of the restaurants or cafes, I couldn’t even figure out what kind of restaurant they were. Signage and menus just about exclusively in Japanese. And given that restaurants are often up or down a few flights of stairs, sometimes I didn’t even make the effort.

I was more than a bit discouraged. Got some snacks at 7-11 and moped in my hotel room. Now, this was in the throes of jet lag, exhaustion, and other travel stress, so my comparatively-complete despair may have been not entirely endogenous. But good Lord did I never feel more hapless and illiterate. Led as well to such reflections as, even if I ever did learn kana or God forbid kanji, half the signs and menus would be illegible because naturally they love to do swoopy stylized calligraphy to make their menus/signs look cool, and the printed kanji may not look anything like their fancy brushstroke version. Those kanji just kill me because there’s no workaround. Even in Poland or somewhere you might have a shot at faking out what the words mean. Random kanji, I got nothing.

So, those with experience: just how bad a time would I have trying to just get by daily existence (professional stuff is fine as everyone has to use English though obviously being able to not be the resident total illiterate would be a bit nicer) without living in a complete ex-pat bubble and getting nothing out of the experience?

2

You can learn the kana in a weekend. Learn Katakana. That will get you quite a ways since many words written in Katakana are English words.

I spent quite a bit of time in Japan and found it pretty useful to learn as much Kanji as possible. You don’t have to deal with the intricacies of grammar to learn the “do not enter” Kanji or the “no parking” or “no smoking” kanji. Practical things like that.

It may seem intimidating at first, but once you realize that Kanji are not just random strokes (there are a limited number of roots that get used over and mixed together a lot), it’s not so bad.

3

I lived in China for two years with rudimentary hanzi skills-- basically I could tell directions, numbers, local city names and a handful of random characters. My city didn’t have a lot of expats and no western establishments except a single KFC.

It was a pretty much a non-issue.

You can usually know what kinds of food a restaurant will have- in the US, a diner is going to have a two-egg breakfast, a Mexican restaurant is going to have enchiladas, and a Chinese restaurant is going to have General Tsao’s Chicken. It’s the same elsewhere- a noodle shop is going to have a standard set of noodles, a sushi joint is going to have the same sets of fish, etc. So I learned how to say my favorite dishes for different kinds of restaurants, and could order those without looking at a menu. When I first got there, I also carried around a little phrasebook style menu of my own with standard dishes written in English and Hanzi, and I could order by pointing.

If I felt adventurous, I’d ask the waitress “what kind of chicken do you have?” or “What is your restaurant’s speciality?” or “Do you have those spicy oily peanuts” and order that (although it helps to also learn the words of offal, so you avoid accidentally ordering a plate of rabbit heads and sheep hearts). I also wasn’t above looking at what other people were eating and saying “I’ll have what those guys are eating.” I’d go out with local friends pretty often, and they’d, of course, introduce me to new restaurants and be able to order a wider variety of dishes. If I ate something with friends that I liked, I’d have them teach me how to say it and write it down. Every expat also has their own repertoire of dishes they know how to order, and I’d learn from them. It didn’t take long at all to expand my food vocabulary to the point where I could order a pretty wide range of food.

It would still be intimidating to go to some completely unknown restaurant solo, but I’d expand my circle of “known” restaurants by going out with local friends, and eventually I had a range of 30 or so street stalls, restaurants, noodle joints and the like that I was completely comfortable ordering in.

The only time it was tough is when I was travelling, especially if I got to a region where they didn’t have the kinds of dishes I knew (might be less of a problem in Japan). Knowing how to get on the right bus and train was sometimes an experience. You have to be bold enough to be willing to ask people “Which of these is the train to XYZ?” If I knew I was going to have a difficult language situation, sometimes I’d get a friend (or hotel desk clerk or whatever) to write out what I needed- for example, you could have a desk clerk write out the name of the place you need to take a taxi to, and you can just show that to the driver.

4

I second the opinions expressed so far. I worked in Japan as an English teacher for a little while and could only read hiragana and katakana. For restaurants and shops, the phrase “kore o kudasai” (“please give me that”) handled about 90% of my interactions. Eventually, you’ll learn some of your favorite items so you can switch to, “(something) o kudasai”. (“Katsu donburi o kudasai” is excellent value when you’re low on cash, if you like porkchops and eggs on rice.) When you get more advanced, you’ll start to recognize common kanji like chicken (actually bird) and beef so you can be a little more sophisticated in your ordering. I know it can be discouraging, but gambatte!

5

I had the opposite of your experience. I had studied Chinese for years, so when I got to Japan I found I could read a lot of the Kanji, but had no idea how to pronounce it. I could say the word in Chinese, or English, but not Japanese. It absolutely baffled my Japanese friends when we would go to a restaurant and I would read the Japanese menu to them, translating it to English, and yet I couldn’t order from it in spoken Japanese.
As others have posted, learn kana, especially katakana. It is really easy. The words in katakana will be mostly loan words from English, and once you learn how the Japanese pronounce English loan words (they will sound nothing like the original English words) you have an instant vocabulary of thousands of words. Kanji will seem really difficult at first, but learn to recognize the common characters, and notice how they are built from standardized radicals, and you will begin to recognize more and more of them.
Gambatte, ne?

6

I know multiple people who have lived in Japan for years and have never needed to read Japanese. I know at least one couple who has been living in Tokyo for the last 6 years and neither have even the basics down for speaking Japanese.

7

Your experiences were identical to mine when I visited for three weeks last year. I was fortunate to have a Japanese friend who showed me around and ordered the food for me when we went out to eat. When left on my own I mostly ate out of convenience stores too. I agree that it’s pretty intimidating when you can’t read anything and the best you can do is point.

8

Lived in Japan for 9 months now. I can read hiragana still learning katakana (should have learned kana first). Theres some excellent iphone apps for learning kiragana and katakana.

It’s no problem to function without any at all. You can get trains anywhere (all the signs are in english as well as Hiragana). I eat all the time in restaurants with no english menus, I just point at things, if all else fails point at something someone else is eating. Anyway you can learn the names of common dishes in about a week.

just learn to say “namma biru aragatou gozaimasu” (draft beer please), and some types of ramen, sushi, sushimi, etc. There’s also excellent cheap Izakaya chains where every dish is 280 or 290 yen (look for the big 280 or 290 signs) where all the dishes have pictures and you can just point at things.

Go for it, I am also many years out of school (moved here at 39) and no regrets at all, I’m loving it.

9

Oh yeah, one of the chains is called “tori-zokou” (http://tori-k.jp/) which apparently means “brotherhood of the honorable chicken” :wink: And yes they do excellent chicken yakitori and especially try the chicken hearts yakitori.

Another one is Royal Road Izakaya, there’s a bunch more. every dish at these places is 280 or 290 yen including Beer or Shochu drinks. Once you learn to recognise the signs for these chains, they are everywhere, you’ll never want for good cheap food.

10

From the OP:

11

and one more incredibly useful word. “moriawase” means combination platter, so you can walk into any izakaya and ask for “moriawase yakitori”, “moriawase sushimi”, “moriawase sushi” or “moriawase tempura” and get a tasty sampling of lots of different styles of whatever.

12

Living in Japan without reading Japanese is totally doable. Thousands of people are doing it right now, I bet. And after a few months, with just a little effort in the course of your daily comings and goings, you may surprise yourself with how many characters you have learned to recognize.

Last time I was in Tokyo a couple of years ago, I felt like, “Jeez, why did I bother to study Japanese? All the signs are in English!” Of course that is an exaggeration, but there is more and more bilingual signage going up in the cities, especially in conjunction with transit systems.

If you make only a small effort, within a couple months you will learn to recognize a lot of basic kanji just by virtue of living there and paying attention to your surroundings and context everyday. For example, look at bilingual signs and note what kanji go with what English. For example, iriguchi (入口) and deguchi (出口) are common signs in train stations, meaning “entrance” and"exit". Maybe somewhere along the line you get clued into knowing that the common character in both (“口”) means “mouth” or “opening.”　You might then figure out “入” has to do with “going in” and “出” has to do with “going out.” Later, you see a food package that says “ごま入り”. Well, you happen to remember “ごま” means sesame…aha! maybe “ごま入り” means this product contains sesame! Sure, that is a happy little bullshit story that sounds a little too convenient, but you get the idea.

If you are riding the train, look at the station names on the bilingual maps above the doors that list the station names in Japanese and English. Place names won’t help you understand the meanings of kanji, but at least you can learn the readings for a lot of kanji this way. Of course you will also find out that kanji usually have multiple readings, and that sometimes kanji in place names have unusual readings that aren’t used elsewhere. But just by doing this you can probably build up some familiarity with a couple dozen kanji just by virtue of riding the train everyday.

I know there are apps, Nintendo DS dictionaries and even dedicated electronic dictionaries with touch screens that allow you to write a kanji on the screen and it will attempt to recognize it and give the meanings, readings, etc. There may even be something that lets you take a picture of a kanji with a camera phone or an iPad or something, and give you candidates for the matching kanji and its meaning, etc.

The more motivated and curious you are, the more you will learn, but even without trying very hard you will be surprised at how much you pick up.

Bujt even if you never learn to read kanji, you will be able to get by, especially if you don’t mind needing to sometimes rely on a helpful Japanese acquaintance or even a stranger for assistance. Plenty of Japanese are happy to try to help a confused foreigner if asked, or at least find someone else who can.

13

Meh. A common complaint among ex-pats is that their grand plan to really hone their languages skills by living in total immersion gets ruined at every turn by people wanting to practice their English. It’s completely possible to have an active social life that is primarily in English without being in an expat bubble- especially if you are around universities or other situations where there are a lot of English learners. Language skills are awesome and help a lot, but a gregarious, adventurous, creative, intellectually curious person can have a very rich cultural immersion experience with fairly limited language.

14

Yes, not being a Japanophile, or a gasp, anime dork, certainly would make kanji learning difficult. If you think you could find it in yourself to learn the language of the place you are being forced to visit though, you would find it do-able for sure. Since you are mainly concerned at being able to understand the meaning of the kanji characters, I imagine Heisig’s method would be perfect for you. I imagine with diligence you could get the basics down in a few months, or even all the 1800ish daily-life kanji down within a year. If you want to brush up your vocabulary or practice really anything related to Japanese, download an [del]SSRI[/del] SRS program like Anki and have at it.

Tentative apologies for the snark as well. I am probably imagining disdain where there is none. As an ex-anime-dork and current Japanophile who lives in the country and is having a blast, I just got my feathers a little ruffled 'tis all.

15

Do what I did and find a nice local bar with a friendly bartender and/or waitress. Take your J/E dictionary and practice with them. You’ll learn a lot of useful phrases and vocabulary from local acquaintances. Japanese are very helpful if they see you making an effort to learn their language.

Just like another poster mentioned, learning kana (which refers to both hiragana and katakana) took a couple of 8-hour intensive study days in my room and a cheat sheet I would carry around. After a week, I didn’t need it anymore. It really does open up a whole new level of access in the country.

Good luck!

16

The great thing about speaking Japanese is that one can “read” it to a Japanese person and be understood. If you have a phrase book with sentences in English and Japanese (written using “English” letters), you can get around quite well. Remember, I said you’ll be understood. I did not say you’ll be speaking Japanese well. Your phrasebook should also have the sentences written in Japanese for times when for whatever reason you cannot make yourself understood.

This is how I traveled for 3 months in Japan in the mid 1970’s. I hitch hiked from Tokyo to northern Honshu, back down to southern Kyushu and back up to Tokyo. And if you think finding English speakers now is difficult, back then it was worse. This was especially true in some of the areas I ended up in while hitch hiking. I’m pretty sure some of the people in the towns I went through had never seen a foreigner.

17

I just want to say, don’t be too hard on yourself. Yes, it can be a shock to discover just what it feels like to be illiterate. But you were tired, jet-lagged, and in a strange environment, and it’s no wonder you ended up feeling discouraged. Japan can be quite demanding and disorienting. You still managed to wander around central Tokyo by yourself, enter several restaurants, buy some items, and find your way back to your hotel. That’s not nothing.

Other people have mentioned various strategies for how you could have coped better, in terms of restaurants and so on, but that’s for another day, when you’re feeling braver and stronger.
Now, as to whether you can get by in Japan without being able to read kanji, I’m sure you can. You will, despite yourself, start to recognise certain words and characters such as “stop”, kinshi, chuui, o-negai, yaki- and so on that are on signs everywhere around you. But my guess is that once you are living here, you will decide to make the effort to learn. Good luck either way!

18

Just a slight nit-pick; hiragana and katakana are both kana.

Back to the OP, Huerta88, for some reason, I thought your proficiency with Japanese was better than you’re expressing here. I guess I just associated your travel frequency with fluency.

Anyway, everyone learns differently but, contrary to what others have stated, I’d learn hiragana and katakana concurrently as you will need them both. They’re not that difficult to learn even when incorporating diacritics (i.e., dakuten and handakuten) to voice secondary consonants.

Kanji are difficult to learn, I won’t lie, but if you go at it methodically, instead of trying to learn every kanji you come across, you’ll have a better time of it. Concentrate on the 103 kanji that you need to pass the JLPT N5. Once you have the first 103 kanji down, you’ll find that you will have learned others organically.

19

Living in Japan without knowing the language - It is certainly viable as proven by many a foreigner. In fact, not knowing the language can be part of the fun in feeling like you are on some real adventure of discovery. Without interacting with the culture (other than minimally) you can sort of feel removed from it all - dreamlike almost. And having little moments of success, where you recognize some words or successfully navigate a long journey, are rewarding.

Unpleasant? It depends on you, but you will not be able to do certain basic things by yourself at the very start - like getting a haircut (how can you express that you want just a little off the sides, no shampoo, etc.) You’ll need someone to write it down on a piece of paper, most likely, and show it to the barber. What about ordering food by phone? Without instruction it will take you a few months to get comfortable with that. Booking holidays at small-ish hotels? You’ll most likely need someone to help you with that. Getting tickets for a concert? Same again. How are you going to work out which bills have been paid and which ones are requesting payment? Need help again.

Worse than the language skills, IMHO, are the differences in the way things are done. Time and time again you will come across situations where you think you know what’s going on, because it looks a whole lot like what happens back home, only to find out in the end that it works a little different here. Fun times.

Having said that, these days the internet is a great resource for the learner and every day more stuff accumulates to the vast pile of knowledge out there (in English and Japanese), so it’s only going to get easier and easier over time.

20

This is a good point. IF you decide to learn Japanese, it’s a good idea to set yourself a goal of passing JLPT N5 (then N4, and so on) and study for it. This will give you the motivation and structure to study.