# Travel Japan without reading Japanese: signs and menus, read out loud > Station signs, restaurant menus, ticket machines and convenience store labels. How to get through a trip to Japan when you cannot read the script, using your camera and your voice. Published: 2026-08-14 Category: Travel Canonical: https://glimpseai.jp/blog/travel-japan-translation Japan is one of the easiest countries in the world to travel in and one of the hardest to read. The trains run to the second, the staff are endlessly patient, and roughly none of it is written in an alphabet you know. Typing an unfamiliar script into a translation app is the part that does not work, because you cannot type what you cannot read. Pointing a camera at it and asking a question skips the problem rather than solving it, which in this case amounts to the same thing. ## The five places it saves you ### Station signs and platforms Japanese stations are large, layered and signposted beautifully in a script you may not read. Point at the board and ask which platform goes to a place, or just ask what the sign says. The same trick works on exit numbers, which is what actually gets people lost in Tokyo, since a station can have twenty of them and the wrong one puts you a fifteen minute walk from where you wanted to be. ### Restaurant menus This is where it changes the trip rather than merely smoothing it. Plenty of very good restaurants have a handwritten menu on the wall and no English anywhere in the building. Point and ask what the dishes are, then ask the question you actually care about: which of these has no pork, what is the cheapest one, which is the fish. Being able to read the menu is the difference between eating where the food is good and eating where the pictures are. ### Convenience store and supermarket labels Konbini food is excellent and almost entirely unlabelled in English. Hold up an onigiri and ask what filling it is. Ask whether something contains dairy. Ask whether the drink is sweetened, which is the one that catches out everybody who assumes green tea will not be. ### Ticket machines and kiosks Many have an English button. Many do not, and the ones in smaller towns often do not. Point at the screen and ask what the options are, or which button does the thing you are trying to do. ### Signs that are actually rules Shoes off here. No photos. Queue on this side. Bath house etiquette. These are the signs where getting it wrong is embarrassing rather than dangerous, and they are almost never in English. A quick read heads off the moment. > ### Ask for meaning, not translation > > A literal translation of a Japanese sign is often less useful than an explanation. What is this sign telling me to do gets you a better answer than a word for word rendering, especially with polite indirect phrasing, which Japanese has a great deal of. ## Speaking as well as reading The other half of a language barrier is producing words rather than understanding them. You can ask how to say something politely, and hear it, before you say it to a person. How do I ask for the bill. How do I say I am allergic to eggs. Hearing it spoken is considerably more useful than seeing it written in romaji, where the stress usually lands somewhere the listener does not expect. ## Practical notes for a trip - **Data.** This needs a connection. A travel eSIM or a pocket wifi covers it. Station wifi is unreliable at exactly the moment you need it. - **Battery.** Camera plus voice is not free. A small power bank in your day bag is worth more than any other accessory. - **Be considerate with cameras.** Some temples, shops and restaurants do not allow photography, and pointing a camera around reads the same way whether or not you are taking pictures. Put it down where the signs ask you to. - **Names of places.** Ask it to read a place name out loud so you can say it to a taxi driver. ## Why this matters for glasses specifically Travelling is when your hands are fullest. Suitcase, ticket, phone, coffee, map. Standing in a station concourse trying to hold all of that while aiming a phone at a sign above your head is genuinely awkward, and looking up at the sign and asking out loud is the version that works. That is what [Glimpse Glasses](https://glimpseai.jp/glasses) are for, and it is the use case where the difference is most obvious. Either way, the phone version is free and works today. Download [Glimpse](https://apps.apple.com/jp/app/glimpse-vision-ai/id6764219526?l=en-US) before you fly and try it on something at home first, so the first time you use it is not while a queue forms behind you at a ticket machine. ## Common questions ### Can I use AI to read Japanese signs and menus? Yes. Point your camera at the sign or menu and ask what it says, or ask a direct question such as which dishes contain no pork. You do not need to be able to type the script. ### Does it need an internet connection? Yes. A travel eSIM or pocket wifi is the practical answer, since station and cafe wifi tends to fail at the moment you need it most. ### Can it help me speak Japanese as well as read it? Yes. You can ask how to say something politely and hear it spoken, which is more useful than reading romaji off a screen when you are about to say it to a person.