Japanese for Travelers Phrasebook & Dictionary: Useful Phrases + Travel Tips + Etiquette + Manga

Packed with expressions and information for every travel situation, Japanese for Travelers Phrasebook & Dictionary helps you to get around and communicate more effectively during your time in Japan. This book includes hundreds of tips and phrases for the following situations:

Asking directions

Shopping and asking about prices

Ordering food and drinks

Getting connected to the Internet

Taking a subway, bus or taxi

Asking for help

Daily conversations

Helpful illustrations demystify Japan’s complicated rail system and provide handy information on ferry travel as well. The text offers tips on where to look for a cheap, comfortable night’s sleep (you’d be surprised) to whom not to stand behind when in line at customs, as well as essential things to purchase for your Japan trip before you leave your home country and how to say you do not eat fugu (poisonous pufferfish!).

At first glance, Scott Rutherford’s creation seems like a carbon copy of any other resource geared toward helping travelers avoid or limit communication miscues. And certainly, the book lists the standard customary helpful phrases for visitors to Japan trying to navigate the local hotels, airports, restaurants, etc. But Japanese for Travelers provides plenty of useful advice about conducting good Japanese etiquette (e.g., what to do when invited to someone’s house) and culture (the section devoted to Japanese naming culture is interesting). Although the guide doesn’t intend to be the most thorough tool for language learners, it does include an English-Japanese glossary and numerous grammatical tips. And perhaps most importantly in this technologically reliant time, Rutherford dedicates a chapter to advising readers about how not to get tripped up by technology in Japan. JQ Magazine