One thing that helps -- besides the Google translate app -- is to learn Katakana and Hiragana before you leave. There are only ~48 characters in each and they match each other 1:1 (think of Katakana as "printing" and Hiragana as "cursive"). Each character represents only one sound (unlike English) so it's easy to learn the symbol-to-sound mapping. Most signage and menus include one or the other and being able to sound out the phonemes dramatically increases one's feeling of being able to read. You can learn either from its Wikipedia page:
Kanji is a whole different deal: That's the writing system with tens of thousands of characters. It helps to learn the most common few of these, but it's completely unnecessary to learn more than that to have an enjoyable time as a tourist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana
Kanji is a whole different deal: That's the writing system with tens of thousands of characters. It helps to learn the most common few of these, but it's completely unnecessary to learn more than that to have an enjoyable time as a tourist.