Let’s start with something very simple, like saying hello. If you’re answering a phone and saying hello in Japanese, you’d say moshimoshi. Simple enough? And when you end your conversation, you’d say adiosu. Now we just have to figure out what you’re going to say in between hello and goodbye. That’s hard enough in any language. Some people just never know what to say.

Let’s say you want to order room service because you’re in a hotel. Well you essentially want to tell them that you want food. Unfortunately, there all kinds of ways to say food in Japanese. For example, if you want to order a bowl of rice you’d say donburi. If you have a baby with you and want to order some baby food, you’d say ikujishoku. If you want a piece of devil’s food cake, it’s debiruzufu-doke-ki.

What if you’re ready to leave your luxurious hotel room and you need a taxi to take you to the airport? In that case you’d ask for a takushi. If it’s a privately owned taxi, the word is kojintakushi. And if you want to find where the nearest taxi stand is, you’d use either teishajou or teishaba. If you want to give the cab driver a tip, the word is kokorodzuke, which is actually Japanese for gratuity. They don’t have a Japanese equivalent for tip.

You’re probably wondering how I know this stuff. Well, there are plenty of places online where you can learn Japanese. In my signature, you’ll find a review of a great resource that will teach you Japanese easily and cheaply, no matter what your reason is for wanting to learn.

Learning Japanese is as easy as singing a song by The Vapors.

Sparksy is a writer on a wide range of subjects that interest him and his writings can be found all over the web (if you know where to look!). This short series of articles on the subject of Learning Japanese may well be what you've been looking for. Click here to find out more or read the review here. http://tinyurl.com/5kzsss