Japanese Vocabulary Chart

Essential Japanese for Visitors

Most of what a visitor to Japan needs to say fits into a few dozen words. This chart collects around 150 of them, grouped by the situation you will meet them in rather than by grammar: the greetings you use on arrival, the words on station signs, what to say in a restaurant, how to ask a price, and the handful of terms that matter in an emergency. Every word carries its kana, its romaji, its meaning, and — for nearly all of them — audio.

How the themes are ordered

The order follows a trip rather than a textbook. Greetings come first because they are the first thing you use; then getting around and reading directions, because that is what an airport and a train station demand; then food, restaurants and shopping, which is where most conversations actually happen; and finally health, weather and the general-purpose verbs. Nothing here assumes you can read kanji — every word shows its kana and romaji.

Where these words come from

The words are drawn from the same catalog that powers the Word Library, so their readings and meanings match the rest of the site exactly, and most come with recorded audio. A handful of everyday greetings that textbooks tend to skip — おはようございます, さようなら, はじめまして — were added by hand so the greetings section is genuinely usable. Written forms follow what you would actually see: 駅 and 出口 appear in kanji because that is what is on the sign, while こんにちは stays in kana because nobody writes it any other way.

Keep going

Search the full catalog in the Word Library, turn any of these into a review deck on the study decks page, learn the characters behind them on the kanji chart, or start with the writing system itself on the hiragana and katakana chart.