Basic Japanese useful for cycling in Japan

It is always a good idea to learn simple local language wherever you travel.  The Japanese language (or "Nihongo"日本語 in Japanese) may sound and look difficult, but it is actually fairly simple to learn basic conversational Japanese, as opposed to master reading and writing.

To learn Nihongo you may want to attend lessons or take up a free online course such as

• Basic Japanese Lesson
• Basic Japanese Lesson on Youtube

On this site we will not offer general Japanese lessons that are available elsewhere, but provide a list of vocabulary which you may find useful to cycle around Japan.

Please note that there are 2 types of Japanese alphabets (Hiragana and Katakana) as well as Kanji (Chinese characters) that are listed together with Roma-ji (phonetically romanized Japanese).  Roma-ji is useful to learn how to pronounce Japanese words, but it is not widely used in Japan.  You may find it useful to learn Kana (Hiragana and Katakana) so that you read simple signs to get around.  If you learn Katakana, you will be able to decipher meaning of many English words that are used widely in Japan including cycling related terms.  In fact, there are so many English words that are used in Japan (with Japanese accents which you will get used to fairly quickly) especially for cycling parts and accessories, I did not list obvious ones in the table below.

Please refer to other basic Japanese lesson materials to learn the difference between hiragana and katakana, and also how to pronounce Roma-ji as there are simple rules you can follow.