Learn Japanese FAQ

Archive for January, 2009

Q: First of all, I want to say how impressed I am with your site, after 2 weeks of reeding your site among others I am near conversational in Japanese.
But I digress, I would love to go to Japan, but I have different  means of getting there. Anyway which city would you say the easiest to get an apartment in etc… – Jess

A: Hi Jess, thank you very much for the nice words!  As far as ease of getting an apartment goes, that’s a tricky one! As you do speak Japanese now then pretty any city is just the same, with obviously price differences between the popular and not so popular areas.  If you didn’t speak Japanese then I’d say Tokyo would have to be the easiest to get apartment details in in English.  Of course you’ll pay for the English support with much higher prices!

Be genki,

Richard

Q: Hi Richard. Recently when I was in Japan, I had trouble trying trying to understand Japanese people as they spoke too fast. How would you recommend I overcome this problem, so that I can understand people speaking Japanese fast, and so that I no longer need to ask them to slow down? Jacob

A: Hi Jacob.   The key here is simply to practice listening to fast Japanese.  A lot of textbooks and teachers slow things down too much, which means that you only get used to slow Japanese.  So just get some real youtube videos ( and of course the GenkiJapan.net songs!) and just do lots of fast listening practice.  It doesn’t take long to get up to speed.

Be genki,

Richard

Q: When you read in Japanese what are some punctuations. and how come there is a long line of katakana and hiragana, can that be a sentence.   – Gladis

A: Traditionally Japanese doesn’t have any punctuation, but these days all the usual full stops, question marks etc. are included to make it a little easier.  The long line of symbols is because we don’t put spaces between words.  That might sound strange, but that’s where the kanji characters come in because once you can read those it’s easy to see where one word ends and the next starts and you realise you don’t really need spaces at all!

Be genki,

Richard

Q:  How do you say “Where are you from?” in Japanese

A: Here you go!

= do ko = where? (also have a look at the what, where, when song)
= ka ra = from
= ki ma shi ta = came
= do ko ka ra ki ma shi ta ka = where from came? = where are you from?

Be genki,

Richard

Q: Hello! I just wanted to say your site is very useful. My friend and I are having an argument about the meaning of “stop” in Japanese. I think it is ‘yamete’ or ‘yoshite’ and she thinks it is ‘tomari’ is there more than one way to say stop and are there only certain situations you can use them with? Also I read your newsletter about the IPhone app and was interested in making a video for your students about American high school life.  Are there any rules I should know about? I’m interested in learning about schools and students in Japan as well. Thanks, Ashlynn

A: Hi Ashlynn, again thank you for the nice words about the site!  The answer for the “stop” part is, you are both right!  やめて = ya me te = means “Stop what you are doing!”  like if someone is annoying you, you say “Yamete!”.   止まれ = to ma re = means “Stop moving” so it’s what you see on stop signs at the side of the road.

With regards the iPhone, please do make some videos for the students in Japan, they love them!  Just keep the English really, really, really simple – or you could do it in Japanese of course!  Please send me the links when you are done!

Be genki,

Richard