Shopping in Japanese

Before you try this game, you might want to try the How much? Japanese song!

There's an English version of this game on the Genki English CD Vol. 1. If you found it easy to learn Japanese this way, your kids will love the CD version!

To use this game in a computer room, get all the students to start at the same time and see who can fill the basket the quickest!

Shopping in Japanese

Japan is an expensive place to be, and you need big numbers to talk about money!

How much is :

which is fine to start with or "I ku ra desu ka?" to be more polite.

To learn some money Japanese, first of all have a go through the basic numbers 1-10. Then we can start the big stuff.

is "Hya ku"but it's usually always simply written as 100. It's really easy to say "200" or "300", just like in English you say the number then add "Hya ku". So 200 is "ni hyaku". Sometimes the "h" sound changes a bit, e.g, 300 is "san bya ku" but don't worry about that, play the game above a lot and you'll quickly get used to which is which.. By the way a 100 yen coin is about 50 pence or one US dollar. "Hya ku En" shops are very popular in Japan.

1,000, or , is "sen". Again 4,000 or 5,000 is simply "yon sen" or "go sen" etc. etc.

But with Japanese yen ( written and pronounced as "en" ) you won't get far without a 10,000 "en" note.

10,000 in Japanese is" ichi man".

20,000 is simply, "ni man".

So 30,000 is ...?

Have a play around with the game above, it's great listening practice. As with any part of learning Japanese, learning from mistakes is the best way. If you have no idea what was said, click something at random. Do this often enough and you'll slowly figure out what is what, and that's the easiest way to make sure it sticks in your head!

Recommended Courses

There are loads of great resources out there, and one of the good ones is the "Pimsleur" series. They have a "Quick & Simple" starter pack and also a full on "Gold Course". They are well recommended if you want to learn Japanese, in January I used it to learn everyday Spanish in a month!

Click here for more:

Or for slightly cheaper, but one that requires a bit more work, you can have a look at the Living Language series. Although now I would prefer the Pimsleur course above, I actually used the Living Language series myself when I first learnt Japanese. It's good, but you have to keep repeating and repeating the same CDs, whereas the Pimsleur makes you think more, and reviews the language as you go along.

Click for more.

If you teach English in Japan you might be interested in my new Classroom English / Classroom Japanese CD.

All the Japanese on this page is suitable for either guys or girls, and is pretty normal, everyday Japanese. This means it's not too formal, but you'll be fine as long as you don't say it to anyone too posh!

Read the hints & tips I used to get fluent in Japanese.

Email me if you have any questions or comments,
Email:

Mata ne!
Be genki,

Richard

Copyright Richard Graham All rights reserved

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