Japanese Phrasebook/Conversation essentials

Once you've gotten past greetings and other common phrases, it's useful to learn how to survive on your own. Conversation with new acquaintances in Japan can be frustratingly predictable at times, but this is a good thing when you're still learning the language.

Another survival tip:

Downloading Rikaichan for Firefox is highly recommended, all you need is a basic understanding of the backwards sentence structure that Japanese has compared to English and you'll be able to read web pages like the Japanese Wikipedia. Slowly, word-by-word, but at least it's possible through the interactive dictionary.

Useful things to say
すみませんが、もう一度お願いします. Sorry, please repeat that.

もう一度、お名前を…… I didn't quite catch your name ...

どこで働いていますか. Where do you work?

Talking about the weather
いい天気ですね. Great weather isn't it.

涼しくなってきましたね. It’s cooling down.

降ってきましたね. It’s raining.

よく降りますね. It’s raining a lot.

はっきりしない天気ですね. It's cloudy/overcast isn't it.

暖かくなってきましたね. It’s getting warmer.