I thought I was having a stroke cause I couldn’t read anything in the picture, but no, it’s just slop.

With SpongeBob on it.

え、しょうがないね。

I went like 6 or 7 years ago. Basically no knowledge of Japanese. I used Google translate quite a bit. And yeah it was hit or miss, but generally worked well enough. Is there a better translater?

Besides that, you'll encounter English a fair bit. Store names, brand names, signage, menus. Not the norn, but not uncommon. And plenty of information out there in English of how to get around.

Relative to other countries where both the spoken language and writing are foreign to me, my subjective opinion I found it easier. Not easy, easier.

Edit: oh and similarly not uncommon to encounter people who speak at least a little English.

Google is pretty shit at Japanese. Using Google translate or lens frequently does nothing useful. Somehow gmaps is like straight ass and only displays names in kanji which is useless for English speakers and even makes it hard to search.

Beer is beeru, hotel is hoteru, taxi is taxi. The only real difficulty I encountered is when the waitress asks you what she should write on your omurice and you can't think of any animal names.

When I went to Japan a lot of people spoke English. I don't think we had any trouble. Everyone was very helpful. At one point my granddad and I were looking at a map trying to figure out how far we were from our hotel, and a guy came up and asked us in English if we needed help, and when we told him where we were staying he walked with us like 2.5km to make sure we got there! (This was in ye olde days before smartphones, so we were using paper maps.)

stop posting AI slop

was an actual picture of Japan really too difficult to find?

Is this a bot advertising AI translation apps