In preparation of Worlds 2023 in Yokohama, many of you will be trying to learn Japanese to help communicate with locals, navigate the transit, shop & more! After some discussion with @pfm , I’m excited to share that I will be sharing weekly Japanese cultural & language lessons.
These lessons will be by no means perfect, as I am not a native Japanese speaker, however I have been studying Japanese for almost a decade so I am able to hopefully convey and teach enough to get you “through” the cultural shock of Japan.
I will be creating a deck of slides that will provide you with the tools you need to hopefully be successful in communicating with locals while in Japan. I will reference the Genki I textbook (you can download here), to provide a better understanding of the grammar. There will be an archive here of all the google slides I post.
(I will not teach handwriting or reading - please do this on your own time! By Lesson 3 in the textbook you will need to know how to read and understand both hiragana and katakana. In real life, you may need to know how to read basic Japanese, so I’m highly suggesting you learn it.)
Lessons will look something like this:
Introduction to a concept (grammar, verb conjugations, etc)
Review/practice - Through WB exercises
Real life examples, videos, games etc to apply.
Cultural component about Japan - to prepare for 2023!
I think if you want some success at doing more interesting things in Japan, learning a bit of the language will go a long way!
At any point if you need any clarification or have questions I’m more than willing to schedule office hours or voice chats
I wouldn’t say amateur… It is something that sounds like it makes sense, but is actually a misunderstanding of what each of the words themselves are doing and mean in Japanese. Another classic one is:
かわいい ＝ cute.
～そう = looks like, appears like
So people often think to say something “looks cute” can be said as かわいそう, since it appears to be a grammatically correct construction like 寒そう (さむそう, looks cold) but actual it doesn’t really make sense. And also the actual word かわいそう has a pretty negative meaning (可哀想, poor, pitiable etc). In this case you just stick to かわいい (可愛い) as this word is already expressing the appearance of being cute.
I think everyone learning Japanese has made both these mistakes at least once lol
カツ丼 (katsudon)
ラーメン (ramen)
きつねそば (kitsunesoba)
そば (soba)
焼き鳥 (yakitori)
焼肉 (yakiniku)
てんぷら (tempura)
牛丼 (gyuudon)
ちゃはん (chahan) fried rice
つけ麺 (tsukemen)
(なんとか)定食 ———teishoku (set meal)
カレーライス (curry rice)
坦々麺 (tantanmen)
うどん (udon)
しゃけ (shah-ke) salmon
卵かけご飯 (tamagokakegohan) white rice with a raw egg cracked over too
納豆 (natto) give it a try when here. I eat it with rice, soy sauce, and eggs and I find it delicious!!
Pub grub
焼きそば (yakisoba)
たこ焼き (takoyaki) probably street food
ぎょうざ (gyoza)
唐揚げ (karaage) fried chicken
フライドポテト (furaido potato) French fries
Sushi
にぎり (nigiri) normal sushi
(なんとか)まき (———maki rolls)
エビ (ebi) shrimp
ツナ/マグロ (tsuna/maguro) tuna
うなぎ (unagi) eel (very good)
カニ (Kani) crab
ウニ (u ni not yuni) sea urchin
I don’t eat a lot of other fish, so not really sure of other tasty ones names.
If anyone else has other stuff, I can try to amend this. This is all I could think of right after waking up. Hope it helps! Sometimes I couldn’t recall kanji so just didn’t write them.
Rather than trying to decipher menus, I would say go well researched and prepared about the types of food you want to eat and where you want to eat it. If you don’t, you will just end up eating really trashy stuff that is no better than what you can get back home. Case in point, Yokohama Chinatown has some good restaurants but most of them are really really bad. But if you research and target the specific things you want then you can the find the restaurant where a certain dish or style is a specialty and you will have a much better time.
Compared to something like Chinese, Japanese is really easy to ask for basic stuff so you can just point at the menu or show a picture on your smartphone from Google Maps or whatever. Of course once they deviate from the script you will be in trouble, but this method has served me well in places like Taiwan outside of Taipei where some of the shopkeepers literally ran away as soon as they saw me walking up to their shop lol. However in the end you can get the job done and actually eat really authentic local good food with local people. Not just chain restaurants and places inside shopping malls or stations etc.
Firstly, huge appreciation for what @pokemontrader and @pfm (as well as other community members) are doing by going out of their way to create weekly lessons and provide great resources to those wanting to brush up and learn the basics before Worlds (and honestly the rest of their lives, learning another language really enriches you~ Plus, good for the brain at the very least.)
But I was curious about the speaking part of learning a language! I know a lot of people can be intimidated by speaking in another language, but it helps a lot! I was curious about the idea of incorporating it for those who might want it for say, practice. Since pronunciation is important, and there’s even pitch accent to consider. But I know that’s probably beyond the scope of the basics, where people might simply want to know a few phrases or be able to read/recognize characters, but I just like the idea of practicing with one another, or have a scheduled discord call or zoom meeting about what was learned in the week’s lesson and a chance to practice speaking, or even just sitting back and improving listening skills.
I dunno! Maybe there’s already something like this set up, but I just love the speaking and listening parts of learning a language. HelloTalk lets you converse and practice with natives, as well as help them with their English language learning. It’s a nice exchange, but I think it could be fun to have an E4 study group or ‘class.’ Having fun while learning is also important in making things stick! Sorry for the long idea, I’m not trying to step on anyone’s toes and I still think the lessons are super generous and super helpful, I’m just throwing in a thought! c: I miss having study buddies!
In this lesson you will learn your numbers, how to point to objects, asking how much something is, and then counting items to order more than one!
I also think that voice chats would help so if that is something this group is interested in, I’d be happy to participate as well!
I’m thinking next week I’ll build on this topic and focus on convenience stores - to practice money, asking how much things are, but build on the knowledge from this week – unless other people have suggestions?
I could be wrong but these examples are a bit ungrammatical, I think：
スパチキ２つをお願いします。
このえびフィレオ一つとコカコーラ三つをおねがいします。
Counter goes after the を in these cases.
This is a bit of a confusing concept because we are usually told a sentence requires a verb, but I believe you use kudasai or onegaishimasu to simply make the request polite so the を particle is actually controlling the counter as opposed to the verb.
Thank you so much for these amazing lessons.
As many of us will probably check out card stores as well it would be great to get a lesson for such an event that we can properly buy some Pokemon cards when we’re there
Do you think that would be possible?
That would be amazing!
Especially since I will be also going to Japan in March. So if this special episode would come a bit earlier, I would be very appreciative
