Japanese for Travel, Work and Study

In Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka the systems speak English even where people do not. Station signs, announcements on the Shinkansen and the main metro and rail lines, ticket machines, airports and the front desks of city hotels all work in both languages, and the big sights have staff who can handle a question. Conversation is another matter: the waiter in a neighbourhood izakaya, the pharmacist and the taxi driver will manage a few words, a picture menu or a translation app, and little more. Beyond the big three — a ryokan in the mountains, a country bus with a fare box beside the driver, a family restaurant in a small town, most of Shikoku and Tohoku — daily life runs in Japanese only.

Two weeks of daily practice buy the greetings, the polite request forms that carry most exchanges, numbers for prices and platforms, ordering and asking the way. They can also buy reading. Hiragana and katakana, two syllabaries of under fifty basic signs each, take days rather than months, and katakana alone opens much of any menu, since it spells the loanwords: “kōhī”, “bīru”, “hanbāgā”. Kanji, the two thousand or so characters of everyday writing, is the long road; a traveller learns a handful by sight — entrance, exit, the signs for men and women — and leaves the rest to a camera app.

The polite desu/masu form is the safe default with everyone, from a shop assistant to a stranger your own age; plain speech is for friends. Keigo, the honorific language of business and service, is what you hear from staff, and nobody expects a visitor to answer in it. “Sumimasen” does the work of excuse me, sorry and thank you for the trouble, and said aloud in a restaurant it brings a waiter. A small nod goes with a greeting or a thanks; deep bows belong to apologies and ceremonies, and a visitor who returns the nod has done it right. Tipping is not practised, and money left on the table tends to be brought back.

• English that is not English: Japanese makes its own words from English, known as wasei-eigo: a “manshon” is a block of flats, a “baikingu” (viking) an all-you-can-eat buffet, a “sararīman” an office worker, a “konsento” a power socket.
• Hai is not always yes: “Hai” often means I hear you or I follow the question. A drawn-out “chotto…”, literally a little, with the sentence left unfinished, is a polite no.
• Four and seven: Both have two readings: four is “yon” or “shi”, seven “nana” or “shichi”, and the word that follows decides — four o'clock is “yoji”, July “shichigatsu”. Counting on their own, “yon” and “nana” are the safe choice; “shi” also sounds like death, which is why some hotels and hospitals skip room four.
• Counters: Numbers take a counter by the kind of thing counted: flat things such as tickets “-mai”, long things such as bottles “-hon”, people “-nin”, with one person “hitori” and two “futari”. In a shop, the native series “hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu” fits almost any object.
• Family name first: Japanese names put the family name first, and people are addressed by it with “-san”: Tanaka Yuki is “Tanaka-san”. The honorific never goes on your own name.

Almost every company in Japan works in Japanese, from the head offices of Marunouchi and Otemachi in Tokyo to the manufacturers around Nagoya and the trading houses of Osaka, and so does every ministry, city office and court. English carries the work in the Japan offices of foreign firms, in the global divisions of some large exporters, in investment banks and consultancies, in research laboratories, in tech companies with an English policy — Rakuten made English its in-house language — and in parts of Fukuoka's start-up scene. Even there, the moment a Japanese client, a supplier or the ward office enters the picture, the work switches back to Japanese.

Business speech runs on keigo in three layers: teineigo, the polite desu/masu form; sonkeigo, which raises the other side's actions (“irasshaimasu” for comes or is there); and kenjōgo, which lowers your own (“mairimasu” for I go, “mōshimasu” for my name is). A foreign colleague is expected to hold teineigo steadily and to use the fixed sonkeigo and kenjōgo formulas of the telephone and reception; fluent keigo is admired, not demanded. Colleagues are “-san”, clients and customers “-sama”, and inside a company the title replaces the name: the department head is “buchō”, the section chief “kachō”, the president “shachō”, alone or after the surname, as in “Suzuki buchō”. The meishi, the business card, is offered and received with both hands, text turned towards the receiver, and stays on the table for the whole meeting.

An email opens with the recipient's company and name followed by “-sama”, then “osewa ni natte orimasu”, a set line of thanks for the ongoing relationship; a first message to someone new opens with “hajimete go-renraku itashimasu” instead. It closes with “yoroshiku onegaishimasu”, a request for goodwill with no English equivalent. Employers hiring a foreigner into a Japanese-speaking role usually set JLPT N2 as the floor and N1 for sales, client service and anything public-facing; some ask for the BJT, which tests business situations directly. English-only roles exist, but promotion into management generally assumes Japanese.

Japanese universities teach in Japanese: the University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, Osaka University, Tohoku University, Waseda and Keio run their degrees in it, from the first lecture to the thesis. A growing set of English-taught degrees sits alongside. Waseda's School of International Liberal Studies (SILS) can be completed entirely in English; the University of Tokyo's PEAK programme teaches two years of liberal arts before a specialisation in Japan in East Asia or environmental sciences; Kyoto's iUP opens with half a year of intensive Japanese and moves its students on into specialist courses taught in Japanese. At master's and doctoral level, English-taught programmes are common in science and engineering.

For a Japanese-taught bachelor's degree, international applicants usually sit the EJU, the Examination for Japanese University Admission for International Students, run by the Japan Student Services Organization (JASSO); its Japanese as a Foreign Language section tests reading, listening and academic writing. Many universities also ask for JLPT N1, or N2 at the least, and hold their own interviews. Exchange students have more room: a semester in an English-taught exchange programme needs no Japanese, and host universities run Japanese courses from beginner level upwards.

A Japanese language school can itself be the purpose of the stay. The student status of residence covers language schools as well as universities, and the school, as the host in Japan, obtains the Certificate of Eligibility on which the visa is then issued; a two-year course is the usual bridge from beginner to the EJU and a Japanese-taught degree. The Japanese government's MEXT scholarship funds research students, undergraduates and Japanese-studies students, applied for through a Japanese embassy or a university, and its undergraduates begin with a preparatory year of the language.

The JLPT is the reference. Run by the Japan Foundation abroad and by Japan Educational Exchanges and Services (JEES) in Japan, it tests reading, vocabulary, grammar and listening at five levels from N5, the entry level, to N1. There is no speaking or writing paper, the candidate chooses the level in advance and passes or fails it, and the certificate does not expire. Employers and universities read N2 as working Japanese and N1 as full reading fluency. JFT-Basic, also from the Japan Foundation, is computer-based and judges whether a candidate reaches A2 on the CEFR. The BJT, from the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation, scores business comprehension from 0 to 800 and reads the score as levels J5 to J1+, with no pass or fail. J.TEST, from the Japanese Language Testing Association, grades practical Japanese from G up to A, and the EJU assesses Japanese for university entry as one subject among several.

Japan's work statuses name a level where language is part of the job. The Specified Skilled Worker (i) status asks for JFT-Basic at A2 or JLPT N4 or higher, and nursing care adds the Nursing Care Japanese Language Evaluation Test. The Highly Skilled Professional points system awards points for N1 and fewer for N2. Permanent residence has no language test; naturalisation has none on paper either, but its forms and interviews at the Legal Affairs Bureau run in Japanese, and the applicant's everyday reading and writing are judged there. The working holiday visa asks for no Japanese at all.

Japanese is among the slowest languages for an English speaker: the US Foreign Service Institute puts it in its hardest group, at around 2,200 classroom hours to professional working proficiency, and kanji account for much of the gap. The JLPT sits twice a year at centres in cities worldwide and in Japan. JFT-Basic runs several times a year at computer test centres in Japan and in the countries that send most Specified Skilled Workers. The EJU sits twice a year in Japan and in a number of Asian cities.

Start with the scripts: learn hiragana and katakana from the opening chapters of Genki or Minna no Nihongo and give up romaji the week the kana are in, since every later tool assumes them. Genki suits self-study, with English explanations in the book; Minna no Nihongo, the course of many language schools, is written entirely in Japanese and explains its grammar in a companion volume published in many languages. Tae Kim's guide explains grammar the way Japanese builds it rather than by analogy with English, a useful second view when a textbook chapter does not click.

Look words up in Jisho, which gives readings, example sentences and the components of each kanji, and move them into Anki, starting from a core vocabulary deck of the most frequent words. WaniKani takes over kanji, teaching them through their components with mnemonics in a fixed order. From around N4, NHK's News Web Easy gives short daily news in simplified Japanese with readings over every kanji; before a JLPT sitting, the official sample questions show exactly what each level asks.

What no tool does is correct your pitch, hear the wrong particle, or keep you talking when the other person is about to switch to English.

Japanese courses train reading first, and many learners who pass N3 still freeze in conversation. A tutor reverses the order: regular speaking in which every wrong particle and every slip from polite into plain form is caught as it happens.

Use the trial lesson as an interview. Ask whether the tutor teaches in Japanese or in English and how that changes with your level; whether they work in kana from the first lesson or let you lean on romaji; whether they correct mid-sentence or at the end; what the first month would cover for your goal; and, for the JLPT, which levels their students have passed and which materials they drill with.