Quick answer

You'll be fine. Learn "sumimasen" and "arigatou gozaimasu", install a translate app with camera and offline mode, and expect English mainly in transport. Outside big cities it gets thin, so the app matters more.

I don’t speak Japanese beyond a few polite words, and we got through Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Kanazawa and small places like Shirakawa-go without ever being truly stuck. But it takes a bit of preparation, not luck.

The words that actually mattered

  • Sumimasen → excuse me, and how you get someone’s attention.
  • Arigatou gozaimasu → thank you.

That covers most daily moments. Politeness goes further than vocabulary.

The honest part: Japanese is spoken fast, and the reply is rarely made of words you know. A few times I just froze. Knowing a word and using it naturally are two different things.

The translate app did most of the work

The camera mode was my most-used feature of the whole trip:

  • Menus
  • Station signs
  • Ingredient labels, when we were checking for meat or fish stock

Conversation mode worked well enough for bigger questions, like at a car rental counter.

Download the offline Japanese pack before you go. Rural stretches have dead zones.

Where you’ll find English

  • Transport → the one place you can count on it. Big stations have English signs and announcements, ticket machines switch to English, and Shinkansen platforms are clearly marked.
  • Everything else → a lot of shop signs, boards and labels are Japanese only.
  • Smaller towns → even less. Around Amanohashidate and the fishing village, staff were friendly but English was minimal.

Shopping is its own challenge

Many products have their name in English, but the details underneath are Japanese only. Inside a busy konbini or drugstore, with hundreds of similar items on one shelf, you can’t translate everything. Recognising a couple of key words saves a lot of time.

Ordering food

  • Plastic food displays or photo menus → just point.
  • Ticket machines at some restaurants → you pay first and hand the ticket to staff. No talking needed.

What I’d tell a first-timer

  • Learn sumimasen and arigatou gozaimasu before you land.
  • Install a translate app with camera and offline mode before the trip.
  • Point at menus without feeling awkward. It’s completely normal.
  • Save common phrases (food needs, hotel address) as notes on your phone.

The language barrier is real, but it’s friction, not a wall. It mostly makes things take a bit longer.