Phrases you'll actually use on the trip — at the market, in a café, with a taxi driver, at a hotel desk, in an emergency. Grouped by situation, with native script, romanisation, and one example sentence each.
We are not a fluency course. This is the language part of being there.
Customs, food, and the quiet rules locals notice when foreigners arrive.
Etiquette, the slow side streets, and what Japanese hosts read in the first ten seconds.
Hutongs, hand-pulled noodles, and the cities a guidebook never quite reaches.
Why phrases and not lessons? Most travelers don't want fluency. They want to order a coffee, get a taxi, ask a question at a market stall, and not get the etiquette wrong. The Phrasebook treats language as something practical — paired with the article that explains the cultural context.