Japanese survival kit

About this kit

Japanese may seem intimidating at first, but Japanese people are incredibly patient with foreigners who try. This kit gives you the tools to survive in Tokyo, Kyoto or Osaka, even without a single kanji under your belt.

Japanese is spoken by roughly 125 million people, mostly in Japan, with sizeable diaspora communities in Brazil, the United States, Peru and East Asia. It is a language isolate, with no clear ties to other language families, which makes it uniquely structured. You will quickly discover three writing systems used at the same time: hiragana (syllabary for native words), katakana (syllabary for foreign words) and kanji (Chinese-origin characters for nouns and roots). Learning a few hiragana and katakana before your trip will boost your autonomy enormously. Japanese grammar relies on particles (wa, ga, wo, ni, de, e) that mark the role of each word, with a subject-object-verb order. Keigo, the polite and honorific register, shapes every interaction: depending on your interlocutor, their age and status, you adjust your phrasing. As a traveller, the polite -masu and -desu register is more than enough and will be warmly received. Social codes matter as much as the words themselves: bowing punctuates greetings and thanks, silence on the subway is a sign of collective respect, and attention to elders remains central. This kit will guide you through Tokyo and its electric neighbourhoods, the temples of Kyoto, the markets of Osaka and the snowy landscapes of Hokkaido. A few well-pronounced phrases, a smile and a small bow will open unexpected doors wherever you go.