Learning Japanese

I'm travelling alone for 16 out of 21 days, so I thought it might be a good idea to aquire some general knowledge about the Japanese language.
From what I heard it is pretty easy to get around with english in most of the touristy places / big cities but I also heard that it makes it easier to know some basics.

Since I always loved the sound of Japanese I made a small plan of what I would like to learn roughly 6 months before my trip.

The Japanese mainly use 3 different writing systems (just my quick summary):

Hiragana - simplified every Hiragana character represents one sound of the Japanese language. It has 46 base characters.

Katakana - is essentially the same but looks different and is only being used to write down foreign words

Kanji - this is the big one. One Kanji can represent whole words or other meanings. There are over 2000 Kanji.
You can also write any Kanji in Hiragana or Katakana.

So naturally I did not attempt to learn a lot of Kanji in 6 months. My goal was to learn the Hiragana and Katakana, some useful phrases like "Where is the train station" and "I don't spreak Japanese".
It was also very important to me to be able to articulate my vegetarian situation and since the famous japanese toilets have tons of buttons with Kanji on them I do not want to take risks and will totally learn those signs by heart.

Right now, one week before the trip I still need to learn those bathroom Kanji. But I feel confident about my Hiragana and Katakana - being able to read them might come in handy. I can also write them and I equipped my mobile phone with the equivalent keyboard (so it's easiert to type something into the google translator).
I've learned quite some sentences and can pronounce my name in Japanese. Google translate your own name, it's fun!
I think for 6 months this is a lovely outcome. I will definitely continue learning the language.

If you're interested in the tools I used for leaning so far:

• App: Hiragana Quest - great for learning Hiragana and Katakana quickly

• App: AnkiDroid - Card System to learn and repeat vocabulary

• App: Duolingo (I'd only recommend it after having mastered the Hiragana and Katakana though, since the Duolingo method for learning those is very inefficient imo - if somebody is interested in more information regarding this, let me know)

• Youtube: Several videos, just type in "Basic Japanese"

I will expand this post and go a little more into details at some point.