If, however, you don’t plan on learning the language fully or more than a smattering of phrases just to get along (which includes tourists here for just a week or two) then katakana is outrageously useful while hiragana really isn’t useful at all since even if you get some furigana above the knaji hiragana will be mixed with you still won’t understand the word.

I suppose, at first, I used to get annoyed by people who didn’t spend much time learning the language. But, after the months started to turn into years, and I saw how transient the Japan experiences of so many people were, I realized it was pretty pointless for them to spend much time learning more than just survival Japanese. I mean, if we’re just talking a year or so, that’s pretty much an extended tourist’s stint. Enjoying one’s stay as much as possible and not letting guilty feelings about minimal Japanese skills bring about stress and frustration is a better way to go for people who have a relatively quick exit-from-Japan plan.

That being said, people who spend 5+ years in a foreign country without gaining some measure of ability to communicate in that country’s language are pretty hard to understand.

David,
Thanks for the extra tips! A Denshi Jishou is a great idea for checking labels in shops or deciphering those little things that come in the mail, like failure to deliver notices for packages. I have one that I bought online from a lovely expat here in Japan who puts together systems especially made for English speakers. I found this system far less frightening than the Japanese ones for which you need a slightly higher than beginner skill to use with confidence. I wrote a review of mine a few months back. Thanks for the reminder!

-Japanese dubs of American TV. Take your pick of American primetime, and it’s probably on Japanese cable, with the voices entirely dubbed over. You’ll get the plot enough to be able to put their speech into context, and if you stick with it, you’ll get darned good at aural comprehension.
-Rikaichan. Google it. A firefox plugin that displays a reading and definition for moused-over Japanese anywhere on the internets.
-Denshi-Jisho (electronic dictionary) or Nintendo DS. Write a kanji in (your strokes don’t need to be perfect), and it’ll look it up for you. While you’ll just get frustrated if you try to sit down and read a newspaper, for stuff like deciphering shop and place names, it’s indispensible.
-Heisig’s “Remembering the Kanji.” It’s pretty counter-intuitive, and kind of a waste if you’ve already got a good number of Kanji under your belt, but you can literally go from zero experience to being able to get meaning out of a newspaper article in the space of 6-12 months (dag!). I wish I had found it way earlier in my studies.

Good luck!

Great post. Very useful info.
Adding your blog to 2JPN, hope that’s ok.

Cheers,
Rick

Makes me wish I had kids though so I could take advantage of the structure in their language education which by the way is a great tip.

I have at last managed to pump out another in my Moving to Japan series, this time on how much language you really need to move here. As usual it is aimed at the only semi-voluntary crowd of expat wives (lol) but should be useful to others, too. …