How much is “a bit” ? I’ve got the hiragana, the katakana, a few Kanji and all the korewa, sonowa etc grammar rules. Will it be enough to visit Tokyo? No. But the way it works is sometimes a stupid attempt at speaking will trigger the “poor stupid helpless tourist” reaction that gets you help, which you won’t get if you don’t make yourself “vulnerable” as people say today, but do the opposite: implicitly demand that others make themselves vulnerable to you.