LapLap

I watched ‘Lost in Translation’ and thought – if that girl is so darn smart, why doesn’t she just learn a few Japanese words. She never even said thank you once. Maybe it’s just me, but I used BBC’s tiny ‘Talk Japanese’ book and learnt about 50 words, and Tokyo just opened up for me.

Here’s a technique for learning Japanese words – the trick is to close your eyes and picture the image/situation and concentrate for at least ten seconds.

And don’t get too lost! Buy Kodansha’s excellent bilingual map of Tokyo.
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Essential vocabulary:

YES
Hai
- High

NO
Iie
- Yeah

THANK YOU
Arigatou
- Arid gateaux
A cake without cream from a hot, starving desert country. If you are offered some, you should be very VERY thankful.

EXCUSE ME / SORRY
Sumimasen
- Sue me, mass end
You’re sorry enough to invite somebody to sue you. You’re especially sorry because you are at church at the time. Sue me (at) mass end

WHERE IS IT?
Dochira desu ka?
- Dot Cheerer Desk Car
You’ve heard of polka dotted cheerleaders and their cute little desk top cars. You REALLY want to know where they are so you can get one.
Tricky one this as I need to explain first that Heck is often substituted for Hell
RAIL STATION
Eki
- (H)ecky.
Shinjuku train station is pretty Hecky (Hellish)

TOILET
Otearei
Remember "Hot hair Ray" (Pronounce it Cockney style: 'Ot 'air Ray) who whizzed on the electric fence

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Useful vocabulary:

GOOD MORNING
Ohayou
- Ohio

HELLO
Konnichiwa
- Gone itchy, wah!!
Stupidly, you paid for sex the night before. It’s morning now, and there’s a horrible rash on your groin. This is your reaction.

SORRY / I APOLOGISE
Gomen nasai
- Go men, as I (pronounce it slightly better saying: ‘Got men as I’)
You’re very very VERY sorry. You say: “Go men, as I…. must cry”

PHRASE OF THANKS BEFORE STARTING A MEAL
Itadakimasu
- Eat a duck in mass

CHEERS – when drinking
Kanpai!
- Canned pie!
Nothing goes better with a drink than a lovely piece of canned pie.


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How to be polite:

Gozaimasu
- God, same as…
(Say this after good morning or thank you to be polite
Ohayo gozaimasu
Arigatou gozaimasu)

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Weather words (instant small talk - how to be a hit with older Japanese folks)

HOT (weather*)
Atsui
- (H)at, swee(t)
Sarcasm - When it’s hot, your hat is really not so sweet at all

HOT AND STICKY (weather*)
Mushiatsui
- Mushy (H)at swee(t)
When it’s hot and humid, that sweaty sweet hat of yours gets pretty mushy too

COLD (weather*)
Samui
- Sam Wee
When it’s cold and he hits the streets, Sam really needs to wee

LOVELY DAY (weather*)
Ii tenki
- Eat Ten Quay
Oh it’s such a beautiful day, I’m going to down to the harbourside to eat at the Ten Quay restaurant.

HORRIBLE DAY (weather*)
Iyana tenki
- Eeh! Anna Ten Quay
Eeeeh! Anna is at the Ten Quay Restaurant. How horrible!
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nice to know:

DRINK
Nomimono
- No, me mono
You’re sitting in the airplane with a drink watching a film. Some one asks about your headphones: “You stereo, yes?”. You reply: “No, me mono”.

WATER
Mizu
- Me zoo
What do all the animals at the zoo drink? Water! Me zoo!

EXCUSE ME (alternative version - useful to draw attention to yourself, i.e. entering an Inn)
Sh!tsurei shimasu
- Schitz! Your eye shimmers!
Excuse me, it's not my place to tell you but; Schitz! Your eye shimmers.

DELICIOUS/DELECTABLE
Oishii
- Oh, is she?
You're fed up with an acquaintance telling you how delectable a certain lady is. Dryly you reply "oh, is she?"

PAIN/IT HURTS - please see post #5

room for one more:

SET PHRASE OF THANKS AFTER A MEAL
Gochisosama desh!ta
- Got cheese(?) Aww. Some are dish tar. (pronounce dish as 'desh')
At the end of a delicious meal, you're looking forward to the cheese board. You can't contain your disappointment ('Aww') when you're presented with a dish caked with hard lumpy bits of yellow stuck to the bottom. That's not even cheese you think to yourself, that's dish tar.

.

Pickles

Painlessly?

LapLap

Ah well... learning a language is like losing weight - there aren't really any true 'quick fixes'.

Still, the examples above have worked for a couple of friends of mine, and it shouldn't take anybody more than half an hour to learn the 15 or so words and phrases described above (the flights over are plenty long enough). The memory principles involved are well established. But, agreed, they won't work for everybody.

I was compelled to send this in as both you and I are aware of someone who's been in Japan for nearly a week who is still stymied because of the language barrier. And it's such a shame, you can get so far with such small vocabulary there.

Pickles

Agreed. My view is that "hello", "excuse me", and "thank you" are all you are going to really need to get around in Tokyo.

RichardInSF

The Japanese word for "excuse me" is one of the most useful words in ANY language, simply because in Japanese you are allowed to yell this at the top of your lungs in any restaurant to get attention from the waitstaff and IT ISN'T REGARDED AS RUDE!

I sure wish we had the equivalent in English; hopelessly semaphoring with one's arms is a sorry equivalent.

The word for "pain" is "ee-tie." I have found that I can frequently get something helpful in a Japanese pharmacy by saying "ee-tie" and pointing to the area that hurts.

LapLap

Also agreed.

But you can have SUCH a nice time with the obaasans (older ladies) when you can reply to their comments on the weather. Those little chats, and recognising a heartfelt 'Gambatte' - loosely translated as 'way to go!' or 'good luck' - gives me so much pleasure when I go to Japan.

Thank you for the tip on pain RichardInSF, I shall lock it into my memory by thinking of a badly tied neck tie that is nearly strangling me. I can barely talk and all I can say is: Eeh! Tie! while I gesticulate wildly for help.

slippahs

それに、日本語を読めるのも大事だと思う。
And for those of you who can't read that (View->Encoding->Japanese (Auto-Select)...
Sore ni, nihon-go o yomeru no mo daiji da to omou.

aloha (aroha)

Pickles

Well, yea, then you wouldn't really need to speak it to get around, eh?

slippahs

Yes, which would be my point.

aloha

LapLap

Knowing the kanji for lady, man, (otearei) in, and out (for finding your way out of Shinjuku) are certainly important.

It would be nice if people tried saying a few words first, and then maybe look at taking it further. People are already intimidated enough as it is by Japanese
And I'll spare you my tedious and convuluted techniques for learning characters - in my head 事 really is a hand holding a brush. It's a scary place.

someotherguy

The "Heisig method" for learning Kanji is based on these kinds of memory tricks (Google for "Heisig kanji"). It's controversial with real scholars, who think you need to know the real origins of the characters, but is great for those who just want to get a smattering.

In my experience, it's worth learning a few dozen kanji, not only because they are useful in themselves, but because they familiarize you with the radicals, and that makes it easier to temporarily memorize new characters (like those for the streetname of your destination).

It goes without saying that you must also learn Hiragana and Katakana, but they take only a couple of days.

There's a useful Palm app called "Hanabi" that works as a set of electronic flash cards for Kana and Kanji (the free version does only the first couple of hundred, but that's enough for these purposes).

LapLap

Thanks so much for that. I've just ordered his first volume from Amazon.
I've been using Len Walsh's 'Read Japanese Today' which has been incredibly useful. I have a natural tendancy to add Mnemomic stories, so Heisig may be better suited to my own style.

One last word verbal mnemomic now. (I promise!)
It's another way to say excuse me - most useful when pushing past people in the subway.

Schitsurei shimasu (but remove the 'ch')
- Schitz! Your eye shimmers!
Excuse me, it's not my place to tell you but; Schitz! Your eye shimmers.

If you're in Tokyo, feeling alienated. I promise you, you can spend one or two hours in Tsukiji fishmarket in CONSTANT conversation with the locals using just three phrases.

Ohayou gozaimasu
Sumimasen
&
Schitsurei shimasu - (loosely - excuse me for making my way through)

LapLap

I originally opened up this thread thinking there might be somebody out there who I'd be helping.

In the end, I think the person who has benefited most has been me - thanks to SOMEOTHERGUY.
I received the book by W. Heisig he recommended just last Friday, started looking through it that evening and now it is late Sunday afternoon and I already can write and remember 200 new Kanji (that's in addition to the 50 or so I already knew).

And I have to admit to being a real klutz at picking them up - or so I thought. I more or less had learned Hiragana (about 10 still prove enigmatic), and despite learning and relearning Katakana, time and time again, they just haven't stayed - so I'm not exactly doted with photographic memory.

I actually believe I will have memorised the remaining 1,800 Kanji by Xmas (200 a week).
This is probably one of the most useful pieces of advice I have ever received. And I mean EVER.
If you are interested, the mnemonic systems Heisig introduces are not so disimilar to the ones I've described. But they are grounded (for the most part) on the actual meanings or etymologic sources - so there is a structure. If you violently hate the kind of memory props I've used to describe the words at the start of this thread, this might not be the system for you.
Personally, it's been a revelation, and I'm almost tearfully grateful for SOMEOTHERGUY's suggestion.

-One week later, another 200 kanji in the bag (400 now). It isn't a fluke! My Doraemon comics are starting to come alive!
Yasuki san, arigatou gozaimas-hita.

yasuki

Try your best!
(ganbatte kudasai)
頑張って下さい。

dhammer53

By far, the most important word you'll need to know when you navigate the subway system. The Japanese don't respond when you say excuse me in English. Now say it in Japanese and you catch them totally off-guard.

Imagine if you will, this New Yorker, with a somewhat LOUD voice saying, Sumimasen. They move out of your way every time!

Even better, try saying this to a Japanese tourist in your town!!