> When you don't know the language, knowing the alphabet is pretty useless.
Knowing the Japanese hiragana and katakana means you can work out some menus in Japanese games - "startu"; "opshun"; etc. (This is not romaji, because they're using English words and a Japanese alphabet. So what's that called?)
Careful with gairaigo. Most of the time it doesn't mean what you think it means. Ever seen an ad for a mansion? In Japanese that refers to a type of apartment. I challenge anyone who has no prior knowledge to guess what 'Delivery Health' means.
Transliterated English is actually very useful for learning Korean, even if the meaning is a little twisted sometimes. Fully 25% of my Korean knowledge is transliterated English. It helps that Korea is probably the country with the highest English-fever in Asia.
Knowing the Japanese hiragana and katakana means you can work out some menus in Japanese games - "startu"; "opshun"; etc. (This is not romaji, because they're using English words and a Japanese alphabet. So what's that called?)