If you’re visiting for a cycling holiday, is it worth learning Japanese? Now ideally you’d be so fluent you could chat to locals, decipher any menu and phone innkeepers to tell them you’re arriving late. Just as you’d like perfect weather and a tailwind too, right? Realistically Japanese is regularly cited among the hardest languages to learn, and there are no hacks or shortcuts. Just knowing a few words can go a long way, and I can make a few suggestions if you want to go further.
A tourist visiting the sights of Tokyo and Kyoto can get by with English, Korean or Chinese. The touring cyclist is going to visit smaller places where English isn’t spoken so much. Of course you could strike it lucky and find someone who spent a decade as surgeon in Los Angeles and now runs a campsite. Or perhaps you speak German and come across a chatty Beethoven and Mozart fan? But these are the memorable exceptions. It’s pretty normal that people speak Japanese only, especially in rural places. It’s probably the same in the countryside where you live too, people don’t need a second language much.
For cycling some road signs are bilingual, with pictorial kanji and the Roman/Western alphabet, so you can get navigation cues. But the smaller the road, the more remote the place the less chance of this. Using GPS device for navigation helps with the route so you don’t have to read the signs but it’s worth noting the kanji for your destination each day in case the batteries run out.
Just knowing a few words like hello, thank-you, goodbye, yes, no and excuse me goes a long way. My tip would be to learn a few more words so you can order a dish, a beer, a coffee. We’re not talking conversational Japanese with to-and-fro, more “this one please” as you point at the menu. If you need a coffee in the mornings, learn the word “kō-hi” (コーヒー).
A second tip would be to learn a few words and a handful of kanji, the pictorial characters used for many words. Just learning a few can help, “road closed”, “mountain pass”, the four points of the compass, bicycle or railway station. The main one is “stop” as the triangular road signs can be mistake for yield signs. If you plan to enjoy an onsen hot spring along the way then learn the kanji for that too, (it’s 温泉). You don’t even have commit it to memory, a note on your phone with some of the key words helps, it’s like solving a puzzle and giving yourself with some clues.
One big help will be having a phone with a data connection for your trip and use translation apps. There are no shortcuts to learning but these will do a lot of the work for you. Google’s Translation app scans a menu for you, or you talk in your home language and out comes Japanese audio. It’s impersonal but works although rely on this and of course you won’t get a signal on that remote forest track. These apps have come a long way and work really well but still have some glitches, Google often calls a cyclist a runner, to ride 100km is “to run 100km”. But they really help.
Learning Japanese
As for learning more Japanese, it’s a massive personal investment for a cycling trip. If you go for it my tip would be to find what works for you. Now you may know someone learning a new language thanks to an app, a book, a youtube channel, or whatever. If this works for them, great, but it doesn’t mean it’ll work for you.
We all learn languages differently: some people like to learn the rules, the grammar to provide a structural framework; some learn better by listening to phrases and repeating them; others by learning words and some via linguistic osmosis from constant exposure, whether it’s living in Japan or through TV or audio. These are caricatures, for most of us there’s a mix here. The trick is to find the balance that suits you.
Also, start a course you’ll learn things like “I have three cousins” or “the bank is next to the hospital”. But cycling you really want to ask an innkeeper if they have room, or to ask a local if that forest road is open. But the broad base will help with a range of things.
Travel tips
- “Yes”, “no”, “please”, “thank-you” and “excuse me” can go a long way
- Add some more phrases with travel and bike specific terms
- Learn things you like, if you want sushi, beer or an onsen, note down the words and kanji
- Note the kanji term for your destination each day so you can spot it on roadsigns
- Translation apps are useful in town
- If you want to learn a language, find the method that works for you
