[MMM]

Unlike some countries in Europe, where you can count on the English ability of strangers to get you where you need to go, you cannot count of the English ability of strangers to get you where you want to go in Japan.

I ran into a foreigner in Tokyo earlier this year. He was trying to get to the American embassy. He was amazed that the train station staff did not speak English and had spent (according to him) 90 minutes asking strangers "Where is the American Embassy". He was only a couple blocks away, but since he didn't have a dictionary and hadn't looked up the word "taishikan" (embassy) he might as well have been on a life raft in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Every word you can learn will make your trip that much easier.