Japanese Phrases That Actually Matter (Not the Textbook Ones)

Most travel phrasebooks front-load greetings and grammar. On an actual trip, roughly six expressions cover eighty percent of what you need, and one of them covers about a third of it on its own.

The one that does everything

すみません — sumimasen

Learn this before anything else. It works as:

• Excuse me (getting past someone on a train)
• Hello / over here (calling a waiter — say it at conversational volume, which feels rude and is not)
• Sorry (bumping into someone)
• Thank you (when someone has gone out of their way, where it carries a nuance of "sorry for the trouble")

If you learn one Japanese word, learn this one. It is genuinely usable forty times a day.

The core set

Japanese	Rough sound	Use
ありがとうございます	arigatō gozaimasu	Thank you (the polite full form — use this one)
お願いします	onegaishimasu	Please / yes please / I'd like this
大丈夫です	daijōbu desu	I'm fine / no thanks / it's OK
これ	kore	This (point at it — genuinely effective)
いくらですか	ikura desu ka	How much is it?
英語のメニューありますか	eigo no menyū arimasu ka	Do you have an English menu?

お願いします is the workhorse for transactions. Point at what you want, say kore onegaishimasu, and you have successfully ordered.

大丈夫です is the polite decline. When a cashier asks about a bag, or a shop assistant offers help you do not need, this covers it without any awkwardness.

In a restaurant

At a counter, "osusume wa?" — what do you recommend? — is often the best thing you can say.

• おすすめは？ — osusume wa? — What do you recommend? Frequently the single best question to ask, and it usually produces a genuinely good answer.
• いただきます — itadakimasu — Said before eating. Not optional in company; the closest equivalent to saying grace, but universal and secular.
• ごちそうさまでした — gochisōsama deshita — Said after eating, and to the staff on the way out. This is the one that visibly registers with restaurant staff.
• お会計お願いします — o-kaikei onegaishimasu — The bill, please. In many places you take the slip to the register instead, as covered in our izakaya guide.

Getting around

• 駅はどこですか — eki wa doko desu ka — Where is the station?
• トイレはどこですか — toire wa doko desu ka — Where is the toilet?
• これは〇〇に行きますか — kore wa ___ ni ikimasu ka — Does this go to ___? Useful when you are on a platform and unsure whether the train in front of you is the right service.

Things worth knowing that are not phrases

"Hai" does not always mean yes. It often means "I am listening" or "I have heard you." Someone saying hai, hai while you talk is acknowledging you, not necessarily agreeing.

Silence is not awkward. A pause before an answer is normal and often means the person is considering it. Filling the gap is more disruptive than leaving it.

"Chotto..." (a little...) trailing off is a soft no. If you ask whether something is possible and get chotto muzukashii — "a little difficult" — the answer is no, and pressing is not going to change it.

Pointing works. Combined with kore and onegaishimasu, pointing solves an enormous proportion of transactions. Nobody minds.

What not to bother with

Skip the grammar drills for a short trip. Skip konnichiwa as a shop greeting — staff say irasshaimase and no reply is expected. And do not worry about pitch accent or getting the politeness level exactly right; the effort registers regardless, and an obviously foreign visitor attempting Japanese is met with warmth almost without exception.

The one thing worth practising out loud before you go is sumimasen, until saying it feels automatic. Everything else can be pointed at.