What is mostly used on signs in Tokyo: Katakana, Hiragana or Kanji?


I am going to travel to japan the next spring and I just want to be able to
read most of the signs (and of course speak some Japanese). Any answers on
what is the most common to use on signs: Katakana, Hiragana or Kanji?




Statistically speaking, the answer is definitely kanji, because the vast
majority of Japanese nouns (including place names) are written in kanji. For
example, on signboards, Tokyo is 東京 (kanji), Ginza is 銀座 (kanji), _subway_ is
地下鉄 (kanji). However, there are over 1000 common kanji each with more than one
reading, while there are only 40-some hiragana/katakana. It usually makes no
sense to remember only kanji, but if all you want to do is to identify a few
words for fun, you may choose to do so. By the way, almost all important signs
have [romaji](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Japanese) like
[this](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Japanese_Road_sign_105-A.svg),
too.

I recommend you read a basic article about the Japanese writing system.
Japanese uses a combination of kanji, katakana and hiragana to write a
sentence. This means a typical Japanese sentence has all kanji, hiragana and
katakana mixed together (see [example
here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_writing_system#Examples)).

