Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
31
7
DEALING WITH THE LANGUAGE BARRIER
Without a doubt, the hardest part of being
in Tokyo is the language barrier. Suddenly
you find yourself transported to a crowded
city of 12.5 million people, where you can
neither speak nor read the language. To
make matters worse, many Japanese can-
not speak English, and signs, menus, and
shop names are often in Japanese only.
Realizing the difficulties foreigners have
with the language, the
Japan National
Tourism Organization
(JNTO)
puts out
a nifty booklet called
The Tourist's Lan-
guage Handbook,
with sentences in Eng-
lish and their Japanese equivalents for
almost every activity, from asking direc-
tions, to shopping, to ordering in a restau-
rant, to staying in a Japanese inn. In
addition, a glossary of common phrases
and words appears in appendix B of this
book. For more in-depth coverage, there
are many guide books geared toward trav-
elers, including
Japanese for Travelers,
by
Scott Rutherford (Tuttle, 2009), with use-
ful phrases and travel tips.
If you need to ask directions in Tokyo,
your best bet is to
ask younger people.
They have all studied English in school
and are most likely to be able to help you.
Japanese businessmen also often know
some English. And as strange as it sounds,
if you're having problems communicating
with someone, try writing your question
instead of speaking it. The emphasis in
schools is on written rather than oral Eng-
lish (even many English-language teachers
can't speak English very well), so Japanese
who can't understand a word you say may
know all the subtleties of syntax and Eng-
lish grammar. If you still have problems
communicating, you can call the
Tourist
Information Center
(
&
03/3201-3331
).
And if you're heading for a particular res-
taurant or shop, have your destination
written out in Japanese by someone at
your hotel to show to taxi drivers or pass-
ersby. If you get lost along the way, look
for one of the police boxes, called
koban,
found in virtually every neighborhood.
They have maps of their district and can
pinpoint exactly where you want to go if
you have the address with you.
THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE
No one
knows the exact origins of the Japanese
language, but we do know that it existed
only in spoken form until the 6th century.
It was then that the Japanese borrowed
Chinese characters, called
kanji,
and used
them to develop their own form of written
language. Later, two phonetic alphabet
systems,
hiragana
(used for Japanese
words that aren't written in kanji) and
katakana
(used for all foreign words),
were added to kanji to form the existing
Japanese writing system. Thus, Chinese
and Japanese use some of the same picto-
graphs, but otherwise there's no similarity
between the languages; while they may be
able to recognize some of each other's writ-
ten language, the Chinese and Japanese
cannot communicate verbally.
The Japanese written language—a com-
bination of kanji, hiragana, and katakana—
is probably one of the most difficult
systems of written communication in the
modern world. As for the spoken lan-
guage, there are many levels of speech and
forms of expression relating to a person's
social status, age, and sex. Even nonverbal
communication is vital to understanding
Japanese, since what isn't said is often
more important than what is. It's little
wonder that Saint Francis Xavier, a Jesuit
missionary who came to Japan in the 16th
century, wrote that Japanese was an inven-
tion of the devil designed to thwart the
spread of Christianity. And yet, astound-
ingly, adult literacy in Japan is estimated
to be 99%.
A note on establishment names:
Many
hotels, restaurants, and sightseeing attrac-
tions in Tokyo now have signs in
romaji
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