r/Glasgow Tools

I’m assuming you’re on a budget? If so, prioritise accordingly as lessons ain’t cheap. A resource I’d definitely recommend is the book “Kana can be easy” Kunihiko Ogawa. A second hand copy is about £6. The Japanese have three writing systems - Katakana, Hiragana and Kanjii. The book teaches you to read the first and write the first two which is immensely helpful. Katakana is the first writing system learnt by children, and combined with it’s written to use Western words means a lot of the signage is written it. You can usually figure out the meaning of a word simply just saying it aloud to yourself as the spoken translation is fairly close. Hiragana is the next one and is used for writing Japanese words.

Get yourself a copy of Pimsleur Japanese Basic Course (under £20 second hand) too - it’ll give you a good grounding in some of the basic conversational phrases you’ll need.

Add in a phrase book once you’re over there, and that gives you a pretty decent starting point for under £30.

The first time I went I managed with just Katakana, and some basic phrases such as “hello, how much is this? One of those please” Where is that? Excuse me, please say that again, and some time telling (and learning to understand the responses).

Good luck on your language Journey!