Thank you hael-b, you helped us a lot, and the web that you shared with us (
http://voicetext.jp/) is wonderful. We will use it for sure. We are going to buy a 14 days 4G Sim card with 300 MB (daily), so this kind of websites are really helpful :)
On our first trip, we went to Tokyo, only there, for 16 days. It was awesome. We didn't eat a lot of food in restaurants, because we were students and traveled on a very, very low budget. I ate fresh made tempura in Asakusa, curry in the Tokyo Tower, tonkatsu, gyozas (lots of them, cheap and really nice, but I think everywhere they serve Ajinomoto's gyozas, and in Spain and England I can buy them. I hoped they were homemade, but probably they weren't).
So, we always bought bentos in a supermarket (Rox, in Asakusa, 24 hours open) which was close to hour hotel. We saved a lot of money, and, as Spanish people who have diner at 9-10 PM, we usually got the 30% discount in sushi or other fresh products. I remember buying a BIG, enormous bento of sushi for 50% discount, I couldn't finish it!
Also, some fast food like Mos Burger, Mr Donut and Maku Donarato (we are not big fans of fast food, but we enjoyed Mos Burger a lot). Oh, I almost forgot, we went to the Capcom bar, awesome experience despite we didn't understand a single word (shame on us).
For this trip we are going to visit Osaka, Nara, Kyoto, Kobe, Hiroshima, Miyajima and Tokyo. We will have takoyakis, okonomiyaki, ramen, sushi (lots of sushi!), kobe beef (ñam, ñam, yummy yummy :) ), monjayaki, gyozas... etc. We hope we can find a homemade (restaurant-made) gyozas. Oh! we will have mochi in Nara and Kyoto as well.
Our Japanese is really poor. We can read furigana (kanas) but not kanjis. We are learning Japanese in our own, with no teachers, slowly. We hope in 1-2 years we will be able to talk some Japanese (I wish I can go 1 month to Osaka to a Japanese Academy, if the price is not too high, I really want to go, just to speak and correct mistakes).
It's funny because for us it's easier to learn Japanese than learning English, because Spanish and Japanese has more or less the same phonetic, and the grammar is like English grammar + a little of Spanish grammar.
For us, English is chaotic. Why the "i" of mind and mint are pronounced different? women and woman, that "o" pronunciation has no sense for us, as Spanish. The Spanish language may have lots of rules, but once you know the rules, it's always the same... if you remember the rules and the exceptions, which have their own rules :P
So, at the end, you can learn Spanish reading (and you will know how to read it). Also, you can learn new words listening. I don't think is easy, but for someone motivated it won't be madness.
But here in England when you ask someone to spell a new word for you, most of the times they don't know how to spell the word. Crazy!! Oh, and don't forget the accents. Every 80-100km there is a completely new and impossible accent with different pronunciation (Liverpool-Manchester-Birmingham is the best example).
So it's "easy" to read and learn Japanese. But on the other hand... is almost impossible to practice Japanese. So, as we say in Spain, "una de cal, y otra de arena" (which means something like "one thing positive, and one thing negative", not negative at all, but you need to accept the "negative" part. Literally in English, the translation is: "one [part] of lime, and another [part] of sand"). Read as "うな で かる い おつら で あれな". Not sure about otra = おつら.
So, again, thank you again for all your help and for share that website, we really appreciate it (and will help us to learn some kanji, or identify them). If you ever have any problem related with the Spanish language (or Spain or England, in general), send me a PM, I'll be really happy to return the favor!
