[jbaez-13]

Hello everyone here at ChefTalk. I was just wondering if any Japanese chefs had some advice. I plan on doing an apprenticeship in Japan in a couple of years, and was wondering if you had any advice on learning the Japanese language. Is there any books that you reccomend that I check out, and is it going to be helpful to learn the language? Thanks.

[Headless Chicken]

I know a very little bit of the language and it is quite difficult to learn. There should be some books you can pickup at any of those large mega bookstore chains, some even have audio aids. I learned my Japanese from 12 years of karate training and picking up stuff from their anime shows and movies. If you work abroad anywhere where the language is different, it'll help a lot to learn what the locals speak.

[cheflusch]

I was an exchange student in japan...many...many .. many years ago lol, but still have most of my books. I got some in Japan, some here, but best ones are
learn japanese, new college text - john young and kimiko nakajima-okano

and definately get,

Sanseido's daily concise english dictionary.
There are 3 alphabets in Japanese, kanji which is about 50,000 characters representing whole or partial words and 2 50 something character alphabets, one for all Japanese words (which make up kanji) and one for all foreign words (you would use to spell your own name. This dictionary is awesome because it breaks down into the different alphabets. Spent a year there and think I left at a second grade level...good luck, its a tough one to learn. Remember also, English is a mandatory class in Japans high schools, so its difficult not to find people that don't speak it, I just found that many are shy to try.
But yes, definately learn the alphabet called hiragana, it will do wonders for you when you're there