[godwine]

I actually don't kow if I agree, sure Katakana is used for names and a lot of loan words, but any meaningful sentences doesn't always have katakana in it. Japanese USE hiragana and Kanji for the most part in their day to day, if you go to asahi.com or any Japanese news site, you will see MOSTLY Hiragana and Kanji.

Your best bet is to have a decent Japanese-English dictionary with you, along with both a Hiragana and Katakana table. That way, you can look at the writing, visualize the romaji and then look it up in the dictionary

Also the downside of using the Katakana for loaned word, you have to really know the "english" equiv well. For example, Mr Smith will be Sumisu (スミス) San, Bus will be Basu　(バス). If you see Sumisu San and Basu, will you immediately knows that its MR SMITH and BUS? I highly doubt it