I found it very hard, a lot of my young buddies studied Japanese here but my generation did French and German. There's minimal signage and the Lonely Planet book I had was misleading on that. The thing is the script is hard to look up. You definitely need a contact. I meant to visit the Imperial Palace but got lost in the subway. ;) Also things like finding an ATM was hard as Cirrus is not universal. You need to carry cash around in Japan. But it is a wonderful place and on my own I felt very safe there. I missed casual conversations but then I talk too much so 10 days of enforced silence may have been good for me. ;)
> Japan would be more fun if you know someone, but i think you can get around > ok and it wouldn't be that much diff to begin say, in another foreign > country where english isn't the first language. Most people know a bit of > english (even if they don't speak it well or pretend not to) and signs are > in english and it's easy to get around.
