Here’s a great free online guide to Tokyo, from Justin Hall. I liked the section on traveler’s japanese:
wakarimasen - I am unable to speak any of your language except to say “I do not understand” and if you say anything more I might repeat this word even if I’m better off shutting up and nodding and reading your facial expression to try to figure out what you’re saying but the jet lag is kicking in and all I wanted to know is if you have a room that doesn’t smell like forty years of accumulated cigarette smoke.
dozo - older lady carrying two large canvas shopping bags; you are standing up in a crowded subway car as young men and women who have seats fiddle with their mobile phones ignoring you. Locals will force you to stand in spite of your age, but I am a foreigner and I will stand up to offer you this seat. Please, please, take it!
domo - thank you, you have said many things to me that I do not understand, and it would probably be okay if I said nothing, but domo is a small gesture of my appreciation for this delicious muscat grape yogurt drink that I have just successfully purchased from you in this very fluorescent-lit convenience store.
arigato - domo just sounds too short, so I will say arigato to you, the eager waitress who just handed me a hot towel.
domo arigato - I am grateful, o subway station manager, that you have let me through this gate even though I lost my ticket and I could have been lying about it and I can’t speak your language but you figured out from my worried expression and gestures that I am a good person and I just want to leave your station.
I’d like to add one:
issho de - I know your sushi restaurant is very very busy, but do you think there is any chance that my wife and I could possibly sit together? What if I can prove my worth by remembering this small ungrammatical fragment of Japanese? We wouldn’t mind waiting a little longer, and I hope you can intuit that, because I haven’t the foggiest idea how to say it.
