The katakana shortcut
Japanese is written in three scripts — hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Travelers hear that and assume reading is hopeless. It isn't. The script that unlocks the most useful text fastest is katakana, because it's used for words borrowed from other languages — and most of those are borrowed from English. When you read コーヒー as kōhī, you're reading "coffee." The work is learning 46 sounds, not memorizing thousands of words.
So this guide goes in order of payoff: the loanwords on menus, then station signs, then the konbini. Learn to sound these out and you'll read a surprising slice of a real trip — no kanji required.
At the train station
A handful of signs cover almost every station in the country.
Station names are usually printed in kanji, hiragana, and romaji on the same board, so you rarely have to decode them cold — but matching the hiragana to the romaji is the perfect place to practice. Lines that show up in katakana (the メトロ — metro) read just like the menu words above.
At the konbini and supermarket
Convenience-store shelves are a katakana playground.
The one native-script word worth knowing here is おにぎり (onigiri, rice ball) — written in hiragana, and the best cheap snack in the building.
Survival katakana cheat-sheet
The loanwords you'll see most, signs and shelves alike.
Practice before you go
Two free tools to lock this in before your flight. Learn the katakana sounds on the chart (with audio and a printable PDF for the plane), then paste any sign you see into the converter to read it back.
Ready when you are
Read any word, not just the easy ones.
Kanapow breaks any Japanese word into mora with tap-to-hear pronunciation, so the kanji menu items become readable too. Free on iPhone — and the Japan Trip pack works fully offline, for when you're underground on the metro.
Download on the App StoreTravel reading FAQ
Do I need to learn kanji to travel in Japan?
No. The fastest win is katakana, used for foreign loanwords — coffee, beer, taxi, hotel and hundreds more are spelled phonetically, so you can read them the moment you know the sounds. Big signs also carry romaji and English, and a few kanji like 出口 (exit) are worth memorizing as symbols.
Is hiragana or katakana more useful for travel?
Katakana, by a wide margin. Menus, packaging, café and konbini items, and many place names lean on katakana because so much is borrowed from English. Learn katakana first to read the most travel-relevant text fastest; hiragana matters more once you read native words and grammar.
Can I get by with only English in Japan?
Mostly — major stations and tourist areas have English. But reading a little kana turns the untranslated half of Japan, like a neighborhood ramen shop's menu or a vending machine, from a guess into something you can navigate.
How long does it take to read enough kana for a trip?
Recognition is far faster than writing. Most people can recognize the 46 base katakana well enough to sound out loanwords in a week or two of light practice with a chart and audio.