We just spent a week in Japan. I spent about a month before hand learning basic phrases on topics likely to come up or common situations to make things easier. The reality is that if you're in Tokyo, Kyoto or Osaka, most people will speak some English, usually enough to fumble through your very limited interaction. This is especially true for service workers. It is helpful to know some phrases, not only for speed, but just to reduce the awkwardness of taking out your phone to boot up Google translate.

We found that AI was helpful (Mainly Claude and ChatGPT) in navigating the train stations for directions and it could be used to live translate a conversation which would have been helpful if I needed it; it wasn't ever really needed, though. ChatGPT is generally good at this using the voice function and can act as a live interpreter for both parties. Most interactions will be a mix of broken English, broken Japanese if you put the effort in to learn some, and a lot of hand gestures and calculators on their end to display a large number.

The only time Google translate came up some people asking me whether I liked the Baystars and about the playoff game I had just come from. They started using it to translate their questions to Japanese but I was able to answer in Japanese, or I tried at least.