Tourist question...

I was wondering, do a lot of tourists go to Japan, without any knowledge of the Japanese language?

I watched a Japanese TV show (Morning Musume show) and they were talking to foreign tourists. They seemed to know basically no Japanese. I noticed one man, he said thank you to someone, after purchasing something, instead of arigatou.

I have watched many Morning Musume TV shows, and I learn many words from those.

I'm just curious, will I get by easier since I know many simple words?

I would say most tourists visit Japan knowing not much more than "Konnichiwa".

If you know how to say please and thank you in Japanese then you will seem politer of course, but if you can't read Japanese or understand much spoken language then you will be in the same boat as most other tourists as far as reading signs and understanding announcements goes.

It's always good to learn a few words of the language of the country you are visiting though, keep up the study :-)

It's no problem if you don't know any Japanese if you go on a holiday to Japan. However, if you wanna know a few Japanese words and so, you can buy a small English-Japanese translation computer. The size of these things are about 7 by 12 centimeters and not so expensive. I've bought one on my last trip to Japan in Tokyo for about US$40 and it even can speak Japanese! (I type in English, push a button, then it translates to Japanese and says the sentence in Japanese,haha)

Nathan,
most tourists around the world don't speak the language of the countries they visit. But it is amazing how much one can communicate with a few words and hands gestures if one if willing to try. On my last visit I got lost. I had a good idea of the direction but? A lady was coming out of her house (a fancy one in a posh area)and guess that I was lost. We had a long conversation about where we were, local temples, where I lived.(she knew the place--small world--)in a mixture of Japanese, English and French.
be sure to learn several basic sentences structures rather than just words.