100 Most Common Japanese Words for Beginners

You do not need a big vocabulary to start speaking Japanese. You need the right small one. A handful of well-chosen words covers most of what you say in a normal day: a greeting, a number, a food, a place, a verb to tie it together. The 100 below are that handful, grouped by theme so you can learn them the way you actually use them.

Almost every word here sits at the JLPT N5 vocabulary level, which is the entry tier of the Japanese proficiency test and a reliable starting set for any beginner. You do not have to care about the exam to benefit from its word list. It is simply the best-organized answer to the question "which words first?"

How to use this list

Read each word in three parts: the kana, the romaji, and the English. Trust the kana over the romaji. Romaji is a crutch for your first week, and like any crutch it slows you down if you keep it too long. If the kana looks like a wall right now, spend a few days with a hiragana guide first, then come back and read everything below in kana.

Do not try to swallow all 100 in one sitting. Take one theme at a time. Greetings on day one, family on day two, food on day three. Each section links to a fuller themed list if you want more words in that area later. For the complete beginner set and how it is organized, the full JLPT N5 vocabulary guide is the next stop after this page.

Greetings and basics

Start here. Greetings are the only words you can use correctly on your first day, because they need no grammar at all. You walk into a shop, say the right phrase for the time of day, and you have already used Japanese the way it is actually used.

Two small notes. こんにちは (konnichiwa, "hello") ends in は but you say it wa, because that は is the old topic particle, not the usual hasound. And すみません (sumimasen) is the workhorse of the language: it means "excuse me," "sorry," and a soft "thank you" all at once. If you want the full set with casual and polite forms, the guide to Japanese greetings goes deeper.

People and family

Family words are where Japanese first asks you to think about politeness. Each term has two forms: a humble one for your own family and an honorific one for someone else's. The list below shows the humble forms, the ones you use to talk about your own people.

The pattern matters. You call your own father 父 (chichi) when speaking to someone outside the family, but you would call their father お父さん (otōsan) with the honorific お~さん wrapper. Getting this pair right from the start saves a lot of awkwardness later. The full breakdown of both registers lives in the N5 family vocabulary list.

Food and drink

Food vocabulary pays off fast, because you use it every time you eat or order. Most of these are short native words plus a couple of loanwords you already half-know (パン from Portuguese, コーヒー from English).

Notice that ご飯 (gohan) means both "cooked rice" and "a meal," because rice was the historical center of every meal. That is why breakfast, lunch, and dinner all literally contain the word for rice. To round out a restaurant menu, the N5 food vocabulary list adds the rest of the everyday items.

Time and days

Time words show up in nearly every plan, question, and schedule. These are the relative-time anchors (now, today, tomorrow) plus the parts of the day. Learn 今日 (kyō, "today"), 明日 (ashita, "tomorrow"), and 昨日 (kinō, "yesterday") as a set, because they travel together.

The days of the week, the months, and clock-reading all build on this base, and the N5 time and date vocabulary list adds the weekday names and the relative-week words (last week, this week, next week) when you are ready for them.

Places and travel

If you are learning Japanese for a trip, this is the most immediately useful cluster on the page. Stations, trains, the airport, the hotel, and the two direction words you will say most: 右 (migi, "right") and 左 (hidari, "left").

Pair these nouns with one question pattern, [place] はどこですか ("where is [place]?"), and you can navigate a city without an app on every corner. The N5 travel vocabulary list fills in tickets, reservations, and sightseeing words for a real trip.

The body and the weather

Two small clusters that earn their place. Body words come up at the doctor and inside a surprising number of idioms. Weather words are the safest small talk in Japan, the same way they are in English: a comment about the heat or the rain is how strangers warm up a conversation.

A quirk worth knowing: 足 (ashi) covers both "leg" and "foot," and context tells you which. For pains, the frame is [body part] が痛い (ga itai). The N5 body vocabulary list has the head-to-foot set if you want the rest.

With the weather words and the four seasons, you can hold a full minute of small talk. 今日は暑いですね (kyō wa atsui desu ne, "it's hot today, isn't it?") is the kind of opener you will hear on trains and in elevators. The N5 weather vocabulary list adds the typhoon, the warm-weather words, and the temperature terms.

Numbers

Numbers are non-negotiable. Prices, times, ages, train platforms, and quantities all run on them. Japanese mostly uses the Sino-Japanese set below, and the pieces stack: 十 (jū, ten) plus 一 (ichi, one) reads jūichi for eleven, and so on up through 百 (hyaku, hundred).

Four and seven each have two readings, which trips up every beginner. Memorize which reading each counter prefers rather than hunting for a rule. The N5 numbers and counters list covers the high-frequency counters (people, days, flat objects, long objects) that change a number's reading.

Verbs and adjectives

Nouns name things; verbs make sentences move. These eleven verbs carry a huge share of everyday speech. Learn them in the dictionary form below, then practice turning each into the polite -masu form (食べる becomes 食べます, "I eat"), and you have the spine of basic conversation.

Note the two irregular verbs that you simply memorize: する (suru, "to do") and 来る (kuru, "to come"). Everything else on this list conjugates by a regular pattern. The N5 verbs list sorts the top thirty by class so you can see the patterns side by side.

Finally, a few adjectives to describe what you are eating, seeing, and feeling. These are i-adjectives, the ones ending in い, which behave consistently and slot straight into sentences.

That is your first 100. The honest part: seeing each word once is the easy half. The hard half is being reminded of it at the moment you are about to forget, over the next few weeks, until it stays. That spacing is the entire job of a flashcard app. Inku ships about 515 N5 words with bundled pronunciation audio so you can hear each one said aloud, and it uses spaced repetition to handle the reminding for you. But the words themselves are the point. Learn this set, use them out loud, and you have a real beginning.

Common questions

Related reading

• JLPT N5 vocabulary by theme
• The full JLPT N5 vocabulary guide
• Japanese greetings to learn first
• Learn hiragana before you start

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