Four weeks before a Tokyo trip is the single most common Japanese-learning timeline I’ve heard. Not because four weeks is enough — it isn’t — but because that’s the moment travelers realize that Google Translate doesn’t help with restaurant menus or train station signs. The realistic question becomes: what’s the maximum useful Japanese I can fit in four weeks?
The answer is roughly: the hiragana syllabary, a small set of survival phrases, and 30 noun-verb pairs that cover the most common transactional contexts (food, transit, asking for directions). That’s 50 cards — about 12 per week — and it’s enough to navigate Tokyo without panic, even though it falls short of any formal proficiency level.
This deck is that 50.
What 50 cards in 4 weeks actually buys you
Be honest about what this isn’t: it’s not JLPT N5. It’s not classroom-equivalent. You won’t be able to hold a 5-minute conversation. You will be able to: read enough hiragana to recognize katakana borrowings, ask for what you want at a restaurant, navigate JR train signs, ask “how much” / “where is” / “what time,” and politely decline when an offer is wrong.
That’s the realistic ceiling for 4 weeks of 15 min/day. It’s also a useful ceiling — it covers most of the transactional scenarios a solo traveler will hit (food, transit, asking for directions, basic numbers).
The 50 cards by week
Week 1 (12 cards) — hiragana foundations. The 5 vowels (あ, い, う, え, お), the K-row (か, き, く, け, こ), and the 2 most-common particles (は as topic marker, を as object marker). The first 12 cards aren’t a lot but they’re what every other card sits on.
Week 2 (13 cards) — survival phrases. すみません (sumimasen — excuse me/sorry), ありがとうございます (arigatō gozaimasu — thank you), はい/いいえ (hai/iie — yes/no), おねがいします (onegaishimasu — please), わかりません (wakarimasen — I don’t understand), えいごをはなせますか (eigo o hanasemasu ka — do you speak English?), いくらですか (ikura desu ka — how much?), どこですか (doko desu ka — where is it?), なんじですか (nan-ji desu ka — what time?), トイレ (toire — toilet, in katakana), みず (mizu — water), たすけて (tasukete — help). All 13 are full survival phrases — you can produce them in a conversation without composing them from grammar.
Week 3 (13 cards) — food and transit. Restaurant: メニュー (menyū — menu), おいしい (oishii — delicious), いただきます (itadakimasu — pre-meal phrase), ごちそうさまでした (gochisōsamadeshita — post-meal phrase), べんとう (bentō — boxed meal). Transit: えき (eki — station), でぐち (deguchi — exit), いりぐち (iriguchi — entrance), きっぷ (kippu — ticket), でんしゃ (densha — train), バス (basu — bus, katakana), タクシー (takushii — taxi), ホテル (hoteru — hotel).
Week 4 (12 cards) — directions and modifiers. ここ (koko — here), そこ (soko — there), どこ (doko — where), みぎ (migi — right), ひだり (hidari — left), まっすぐ (massugu — straight), ちかい (chikai — close), とおい (tōi — far), あつい (atsui — hot), さむい (samui — cold), おおきい (ōkii — big), ちいさい (chiisai — small).
That’s 50.
What the cards look like — cloze, not phrasebook
Travel-prep apps usually format vocabulary as Q&A: front shows the English, back shows the Japanese + romaji. That format works for a phrasebook lookup but fails as a memorization tool — by week three, students recognize the Japanese in the app but can’t produce it in a real restaurant.
The deck uses cloze deletion so the student is forced to produce the Japanese, not just recognize it:
{{c1::すみません::sumimasen}} means "{{c2::excuse me::or "sorry" in
apologetic context}}" — the most-versatile survival phrase. Pair with
a small bow when speaking.Two cards from one note. Card 1 forces production of the hiragana from meaning. Card 2 forces production of the meaning + the contextual nuance (excuse me vs. sorry — same word, two situations) that travel phrasebooks usually skip.
The transactional phrases — “how much,” “where is” — get the parallel pattern:
"How much is it?" — {{c1::いくらですか::ikura desu ka}}.
"Where is it?" — {{c2::どこですか::doko desu ka}}.
"What time is it?" — {{c3::なんじですか::nan-ji desu ka}}.
The shared structure {{c4::〜ですか}} turns any noun + interrogative
into a polite question.Four cards from one note. Card 4 surfaces the pattern (the polite-question structure) which is the actual generative skill — by trip day, the student can construct new questions from new nouns, not just recall the three the deck explicitly taught.
For hiragana foundations, the overlapping pattern reinforces the row:
The K-row hiragana: {{c1::か::ka}}, {{c2::き::ki}},
{{c3::く::ku}}, {{c4::け::ke}}, {{c5::こ::ko}}.
The vowel pattern is {{c6::a-i-u-e-o}} for every consonant row.Six cards. The vowel-pattern card (c6) is the most valuable in the deck — once a student internalizes “every consonant row goes a-i-u-e-o,” each new row (S-row, T-row, N-row) drops from “5 new things” to “1 new consonant + a known pattern.” The vocabulary is intentionally non-grammatical — you’re not learning the verb conjugation system; you’re learning enough phrases and content words to make the conjugation system someone else’s problem (a phrasebook, a tour guide, body language).
Why FSRS-5 matters more for a 4-week sprint than for a 4-month one
Spaced repetition’s value compounds the longer you have. For a 4-month sprint, the algorithm will move easy cards out to 60+ day intervals and concentrate effort on the hard ones. For a 4-week sprint, intervals never get that long — most cards stay in 1-7 day intervals throughout. But the algorithm still works because it surfaces the cards you’re least confident on more often, which is what you’d want a flashcard tutor to do anyway.
The advantage of FSRS-5 over a fixed-interval Anki schedule (which most travel-prep apps use) is that on day 28, the night before the flight, the algorithm doesn’t ambush you with 80 cards “due” — it surfaces the 20-30 you’re shakiest on, leaves the rest alone.
Try the first 10 below
The 5 vowels + the 5 K-row hiragana. Foundation reading. If you can read all 10 in 5 seconds each, you’ve already got the hardest part. If 3+ are slow, install Avorio and load the 50.