For foreigners who arrive in Japan with little knowledge or preparation, the first encounter with the local lingo can be brutal. In the past, for instance, newcomers would have taken the train from Narita airport to Tokyo or Shinjuku station and promptly run up against a solid wall of indecipherable ideograms. Asking for directions was often a futile exercise, as most people only spoke a little English at best.

Today many stations and other public spaces provide information in English, and place names are written in the Roman alphabet. Still, for many people the Japanese language remains an exotic, mysterious beast. According to the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State, which has compiled language-learning expectations for their professional staff (people who already know other languages), Japanese is one of the five most difficult languages to reach speaking and reading proficiency in, requiring 88 weeks of study (2,200 class hours).

This said, taming the Japanese tiger is far from an impossible task — even for native English speakers who are blessed (or cursed) with a language that is understood worldwide — provided one has the right attitude.For one thing, unless reading and writing skills are essential for your job, achieving a decent speaking level is easier than many people might think. For example, complicating factors such as articles and masculine/feminine or singular/plural distinctions are almost completely absent. Also, verbs follow regular rules of conjugation with few exceptions, unlike Russian, the Romance languages and especially English, which is mostly exceptions. This makes learning basic Japanese relatively easy for beginners.