Yokoso

The Japanese signs you walk past every day — decoded

Japan is generous with signage and assumes you can read it. These twenty signs run shop doors, stations, and parking lots nationwide — and each one decomposes into kanji you'll meet again, so learning the sign teaches more than the sign.

On shop doors

営業中 えいぎょうちゅう — open (for business). 中 tacked onto anything means "in progress" — business happening now.
準備中 じゅんびちゅう — closed — preparing. The flip side of 営業中; often means closed between lunch and dinner.
定休日 ていきゅうび — regular closing day. Small shops close one fixed day a week; check before driving across town.
営業時間 えいぎょうじかん — business hours. Posted by the door with times like 9:00〜18:00.
年中無休 ねんじゅうむきゅう — open every day of the year. Literally "all year, no rest."
押 おす — push · 引 ひく — pull. The 押/引 mix-up is a daily gaijin ritual. End yours here.

Getting around

入口 いりぐち — entrance · 出口 でぐち — exit. Everywhere in stations — follow it before following your phone.
非常口 ひじょうぐち — emergency exit. The green running-man sign. 非常 = emergency, 口 = opening.
駐車場 ちゅうしゃじょう — parking lot. The big P. 場 = place/grounds.
満車 まんしゃ — lot full · 空車 くうしゃ — spaces available (and, on a taxi dashboard, a vacant cab). 満 = full, 空 = empty.
お手洗い おてあらい — restroom. The politer sibling of トイレ — literally "hand-washing."

Warnings and money

立入禁止 たちいりきんし — no entry / keep out. 禁止 = prohibited; 禁 + anything = don't do that thing.
注意 ちゅうい — caution. 足元注意 = watch your step, 頭上注意 = watch your head.
危険 きけん — danger. Stronger than 注意. If a sign says 危険, believe it.
禁煙 きんえん — no smoking. Same 禁 as above — the pattern is the lesson.
無料 むりょう — free · 有料 ゆうりょう — paid. 料 = fee; 無 = without, 有 = having.
割引 わりびき — discount. On supermarket stickers: 2割引 = 20% off. Evening bento hunting, essentially.

At the station

改札 かいさつ — ticket gates. Where IC cards tap and where everyone agrees to meet: 改札で会いましょう.
精算 せいさん — fare adjustment. The machine by the gates that fixes an underpaid ticket. No shame at the 精算機, ever.
運行状況 うんこうじょうきょう — service status. The board to check when the platform feels too crowded.
遅延 ちえん — delay · 運転見合わせ うんてんみあわせ — service suspended. The first pairs with 〜分 to tell you how bad; the second means find the bus.
優先席 ゆうせんせき — priority seat. The differently-colored seats. Sit if empty, stand the moment someone needs it.
両替 りょうがえ — money exchange / change. On change machines in arcades and laundromats.

Shop status, beyond open and closed

満席 まんせき — full (no seats) · 空席 くうせき — seats available. The same 満/空 pair as the parking lot — learn it once, read it on restaurants, trains, and taxis.
売り切れ うりきれ — sold out. Sold-and-cut. On the ramen shop's best item by 1pm, reliably.
本日休業 ほんじつきゅうぎょう — closed today. 本日 is the formal "today." The sign on the one restaurant you crossed town for.
営業時間外 えいぎょうじかんがい — outside business hours. 外 tacked on the end flips 営業時間. Come back later.
順番待ち じゅんばんまち — waiting in turn. Take a numbered ticket and watch the display. Ramen shops and city hall share this ritual.
受付 うけつけ — reception. The desk to walk to first in any clinic, office, or gym.
使用中 しようちゅう — in use / occupied · 故障中 こしょうちゅう — out of order. Your old friend 中 marking a state in progress; the second time, the state is broken.

On the road

一時停止 いちじていし — stop. The red triangle at Japanese intersections. A full stop, legally: the police do check.
駐車禁止 ちゅうしゃきんし — no parking. 禁止 doing its forbidding work again, this time to your car.

How to read a sign you have never seen

Signs are built from a small set of recurring parts, which is why they make excellent first kanji. 中 marks a state in progress (営業中, 使用中, 故障中). 禁止 forbids whatever precedes it. 満 fills and 空 empties whatever follows. 外 flips the meaning of what it trails. Learn the parts and an unfamiliar sign stops being a wall — it becomes a sentence with one unknown word.

Study the signs around you

The workflow that sticks: photograph the signs on your own street, look them up the same evening, and let spaced practice do the rest — the street re-tests you tomorrow for free. The clusters above cover the nationwide set; numbers and prices handles the digits beside them, and the N4 material picks up where the everyday set ends. Arriving soon? The printable 30-day checklist schedules these signs into a realistic month.

Learn them so they stay learned

Reading a list once won't survive a month. Yokoso teaches these signs with spaced repetition, quizzes them the way the street does, and unlocks each one only when you know the kanji inside it — free, offline, built for people who just moved here.

There is a session shaped exactly like this page. On the home screen, "Practice a situation" offers Signs & stations, which narrows what gets served to signs, announcements, and getting around, at whatever level you have reached. Your schedule and pace stay global, so it counts as a normal session rather than a second pile of reviews.

Practice real signs free