The best way to get loads of lovely Japanese snacks in to come to Japan. One reason that people don't come to Japan is that they believe the language will be a problem. So.... How do you learn enough Japanese to stay out of trouble, or to get into trouble if that's what you want...
Two weeks ago I met a Canadian called Don Maybin at an English teaching conference. Over the past couple of years he's been building a language study system called "Sulantra" which stands for "Survival Language Training." Sulantra uses Maybin's intensive training system that he's been developing and testing over the past 30 years.
Each course is only 10 dollars so I signed up for the Chinese one to see if I could actually talk to the staff in my local Chinese restaurant in Mandarin instead of a mixture of bad Japanese and slightly better English. I was amazed at how easy it was to learn using the system and, because all the vocabulary and phrases are reused as you progress, it was easy to remember most of what I had studied.
The thing I really like about Sulantra is that the courses drill "survival phrases" into your brain such as "Please say that again.", "Please speak more slowly.", "What does this mean?". Using these survival phrases almost becomes a reflex action so that when you are in a shop or whatever and you're trying to buy some awesome new Pocky you have these phrases to fall back on if you get into trouble.
Anyway, the basic course is 10 USD and takes about 30 hours (although you have unlimited access) so it's really worth giving the Japanese course a try; you'll be buying a green tea Kit Kat in no time.
Learn Travel Japanese Really Quickly
(There's also a bunch of other languages including Chinese, Turkish and Korean.)
Please post a comment to say how you got on with the course, and whether you feel it was worth 10 bucks!
