Moving to Japan? How Complete Beginners Get Conversational in 40 Hours

The contract is signed, the visa is in progress, and somewhere between the packing lists and the farewell dinners, the same thought keeps surfacing: “I don't speak a word of Japanese.”

If you're relocating to Japan for work — or moving with someone who is — you've probably been told not to worry. Tokyo has English signage, your office works in English, translation apps exist. All true. And yet daily life in Japan runs almost entirely in Japanese: the ward office, the clinic, the delivery driver at your door, the neighbor in the elevator, the izakaya menu with no photos.

The good news: you don't need years of study to change that. You need the right forty hours.

Why “I'll pick it up after I arrive” rarely works

Most newcomers plan to absorb Japanese naturally once they land. In practice, the opposite happens. Work fills the weekdays, life admin fills the weekends, and English-speaking bubbles are comfortable. A year later, many expats can order a coffee — and little else.

The other common route, textbook self-study, tends to stall for a different reason: traditional methods front-load reading and writing, so you spend weeks on script drills before you ever hold a conversation. For someone who needs to function in Japan within months, that order is backwards.

Speaking first, script later

Our approach flips it. NIHONGO Breakthrough, Interlang's flagship intensive for complete beginners, puts speaking and listening first. The written script is optional — romaji and kana are provided alongside everything — so from your very first lesson, you're talking, not memorizing charts.

The course runs as 40 hours of live lessons with native Japanese instructors — fully customizable, for example one-hour lessons × 40 — and moves deliberately from survival phrases to real, everyday conversation: introducing yourself, shopping, asking directions, handling the clinic and the town hall, small talk with colleagues and neighbors. Lessons are role-play focused — real dialogues drawn from daily life in Tokyo — because the goal isn't passing a test. It's Tuesday morning at the ward office.

Built around a relocation, not a school calendar

Relocations are chaotic, so the course is flexible by design:

• Where: live group lessons at your company, at our school in Akasaka, Tokyo, or fully online — never recordings.
• When: the 40 hours are scheduled your way — for example, one hour × 40 lessons — around your dates and pace.
• Who: relocating staff, their spouses and families, and professionals — complete beginners are exactly who it's for. Your group can include up to 10 people, so invite colleagues, friends, or family to learn with you.
• Plus: access to our exclusive learning portal and resources throughout.

Interlang has provided corporate language training in Tokyo for over 50 years, and our instructors have guided newcomers to Japan for years — they know precisely where beginners get stuck, and how to get them talking anyway.

“Forty focused hours and I arrived able to hold a real conversation. Genuinely the best onboarding decision I made.”

Not in Japan yet? Start lighter

If your move is still months away — or you're simply visiting first — there's also an optional 4.5-hour Pre-departure cultural primer: a concise, culture-first introduction covering the scripts, kanji, and the stories behind Japan's temples and shrines. It's delivered live as well, and fits easily into the weeks before you fly.

What it costs

Pricing for the 40-hour intensive is the course fee plus a course-management fee, and varies by format, cohort, and start date — tell us your situation and we'll confirm the details in a quick, no-obligation quote.