Kōfuku has published a 30-second travel reel close to every day of the year, and the catalog that holds them has grown page by page into something no single visit to the hub will show you: hundreds of real situations — the train that never came, the bins with no cans, the onsen with rules you can't read. The catalog runs newest-first over ten pages (48 reels each, start at page one, then keep going), and each reel has its own page with the phrase, romaji, English, and every kanji reading spelled out. This guide is the map: every stage of a Japan trip below, with the reels that get you through it.
Where do you start with Japanese train phrases on video?
Transit is where you will actually use Japanese, because nobody at a ticket window needs English to sell you a ticket — the phrases matter when the plan breaks. The one you may hear over the tannoy is on our suspension reel: 運転を見合わせております (unten o miawasete orimasu), "we have temporarily suspended operations", which sounds five grades more dramatic than "your train is late". When a train in front of you moves, you'll hear 電車が動いております (densha ga ugoite orimasu) — reel at the train is finally moving. Asking which track or platform is yours is ask where your train goes, and boarding the right bus is does this bus go to Kinkaku-ji?, the whole Kyoto loop-number trap in one question. Two escalator rules people get wrong live in why everyone stands still on the escalator and which side to stand on. When you want to sit down and eat properly on the platform, that is the ekiben tradition — station lunchboxes eaten on reserved-seat trains. The machine that sells your ticket without a human is in using a ticket machine, over in the money section further down this page. This transit corner fills catalog page 2, spills into page 3, and the etiquette rules behind it all — phone silent, bags in front, no calls — are in our guide to Japanese train etiquette rules.
What do you say at a konbini or restaurant in Japan?
The konbini is where you will speak the most Japanese without noticing. Everything starts at the register with これ、お願いします (kore, onegai shimasu, "this one, please") — the full move is in our konbini ordering reel, and the hot-food counter where they ask if you want it heated is the konbini hot-food reel. Saying no to the plastic bag is its own phrase — 袋はいりません (fukuro wa irimasen, "I don't need a bag") — because you will be offered one at every register and 20 times you will say "no": that is refusing the bag. At sit-down places, the menu is the wall: decoding an izakaya menu, asking for an English one in asking for the English menu, and its shorter sibling the English menu request. Gyoza by the plate is ordering gyoza, the ramen machine that takes your money before you sit is the ramen ticket machine, and festival stalls are ordering festival food. The phrase that quietly does all of this — onegai shimasu — has a reel of its own. Food pages run deep in the catalog: keep going through page 4 and page 5 for the rest, plus our guide to Japanese phrases for convenience stores.
What do you do with trash when Japan has few public bins?
You will eat something within ten minutes of landing, and you will then hold the packaging, because Japan's streets almost never offer a bin. The labels on the ones that exist are which bin is the burnable one? — 燃えるゴミはどれですか？ (moeru gomi wa dore desu ka?), "which one is the burnable waste?" — while finding one at all is where is the trash can?. Eating while walking creates most of this, which is why we have a reel on it too: the walking-and-eating trash problem. The full system — why the bins vanished after 1995, the four labels, the convenience-store workaround — is in our guide to where to throw away trash in Japan.
How do you read Japanese money, tickets, and travel signs?
Cash still rules Japan, and the machine vocabulary bites hardest. Getting yen out is using a cash ATM, foreign-card quirks are will my overseas card work?, and the big red numbers on price tags are reading big yen numbers fast — the difference between ¥1,000 and ¥10,000 matters most when you are already holding a wallet out. Taxis are door-magic and fixed phrases: to the hotel, please covers まで (made, "until/as far as"), and its cousin is calling a taxi with made. Where the whole sign-decode habit pays off is walking out of a station into a street of unexplained boards — that corner of the catalog starts near page 6 and the signs-only reels cluster around page 7.
What are the etiquette rules visitors miss at onsen and shrines?
Etiquette is where Japan punishes guesswork least kindly, so it is worth two minutes of video before the moment. Bathing rules (wash first, no cameras, small towel stays out of the water) are in onsen rules, and the tattoo question — which gates entry at many baths — is answered in tattoos and onsen. At a shrine, what to do with the rope, the box, and the two bows is how to pray at a shrine. On the train, マナーモード rules everything: train manners is the reel to send anyone joining your trip who thinks calls are fine. The quieter etiquette reels live on catalog page 8 with the seasonal and festival ones.
Which five Japanese words cover the most situations?
Five words cover eighty percent of what you need, and each has its own reel. すみません does four jobs at once — excuse me, sorry, thanks, and "come here": start with sumimasen, plain, then sumimasen as an apology, sumimasen to get attention, and sumimasen to call for help. Answers come in daijōbu desu ("it's fine") and plain daijōbu. Gratitude is arigatō gozaimasu and its casual cousin arigatō dōmo. Day-opening greetings are konnichiwa and friends. And when you didn't catch that at speed: yukkuri onegai shimasu — "slowly, please" — the single most useful sentence for a learner in a shop. The essentials never leave the front page: they cycle through page 1 of the catalog.
What Japanese phrases help when things go wrong?
Three reels cover the days you hope not to need. An earthquake announcement over the PA is jishin desu — an earthquake, with what the announcement is actually telling you to do. Being properly lost, past the point of a map fixing it, is I'm lost. And standing in a drugstore trying to describe a symptom is where is the pharmacy?, with the drugstore shelf decode nearby at a drugstore in Japan. Emergencies are the tail end of the catalog — page 9 and page 10 hold the rescue reels and the newest daily uploads.
The catalog is alive: new reels land almost every day at the top of page 1 and everything older stays put, one reel per situation, no filler. If you would rather be handed the fifteen phrases that matter most before you fly, the free Kōfuku phrasebook does exactly that — and every video above is on site with its kanji readings and full transcript, no install required.
