If you’re stuck travelling through Japan there are two major rules I followed. The first rule I would call Learn like a child: if you don’t know what to do, stop and watch other people around you. Repeat what they do and reach your goal. This especially helped with using vending machines only available in Japanese.
The second and most important rule could be named If nothing goes right, go left: in a surprisingly high number of times I was successful by doing things the total opposite of how I would expect things to work. Open a book from the right side, not the left. Enter a bus in the rear and pay in the front when leaving. With this you see how long Japan was closed and things developed totally different than in the Western world.