Mina-san,

Today’s location is Puraha・プラハ. Hello to all of our listeners in Prague!! Let us know what you think of Bachelor #3. Is he the one for Natsuko??

Yoroshiku onegai shimasu!

Vickyさん、おはようございます！Good morning! 今日もよい一日を 　Have a great day!

皆さん、I really liked today’s lesson! Congratulations Natsuko!

Ahhhh and here I thought the forums would stop pointless comments.

Anyway go home Peter! How does your wife put up with you coming home so late all the time anyway.

dokushin sha no jidai sou iu koto ha zenzen mondai deha arimasen deshita ne. Demo kekkon suru to seikatsu ga mataku kawatte kuru. Maaaa sore ni taishite yoi tokoro mo arimasu.

tokoro de Japanese 101 de zangyou teate (残業手当) moraemasu ka?

なつこさんにはかわいそう。
This dream date did not turn out as you expected huh?
So, what will you do Natsuko-san? Will you take off or will you politely stay and keep going with this date with Bacholer#3 and his dad?

Very good lesson. Yokatta is a very useful word.

I think the Kanji Closeup would be much more useful if it told readers the stroke order in which the characters should be written. They’re hard to get write otherwise!

This dialog is certainly funny
I wonder what will Natsuko-san do now…

Michael…

I believe chichi oya is the more formal way to refer to your own father (more formal than just chichi). Similarly you can use “haha oya” to more formally refer to your mother. otou san is usually for someone elses father.

Since bachelor number 3 likes to use formal Japanese so much (with Natsujo anyway) it would make sense that he would refer to his father when speaking with a 3rd party as chichi oya. Notice that when speaking directly to his father he uses the very less formal “Papa”, showing that they have a very close relationship.

This would be a perfect opportunity to have introduced “mazakon”..although this would be “papakon” or maybe even “oyabaka”. All great vocab for future episodes of the dating game.

I wonder why it’s not Puragu

どうしてこのぐらいローマ字をつかいなすか。

I find it much harder to read, personally.

BTW, this is my first comment, so let me say thank you, thank you for such a great podcast. 日本語の二年生ですが、I can’t keep taking Japanese in school, so I’m glad to have a great way to keep studying.

よろしくおねがいします!

I just listened to Lesson 38 and I’m hooked

My first post too!

Very informative, it helped me alot, hello to the ‘family’ ! Peter-san must be happiest sounding DJ out there

On the PDF, it says “volitional form” and I was just wondering what that is… Great lesson today!

Yoshio-san,

Thank you for letting us know the error in the PDF.
I fixed it.

Regarding volitional form… Here is how I understand, or maybe I should say how I accept it:

When Japanese verbs are conjugated to make the long-O ending, such as ikimashou/ikou; shimashou/shiyou; tabemashou/tabeyou, that form of the verb is called “volitional.” Some authority a long time ago just decided to name the Long-o-ending form with the term “volitional”, and it is now universally accepted and used.

The word volition means or implies a will or intention to do something, so it does make sense. “I SHALL study” becomes “benkyou shimashou.” “Shall we eat?” becomes “tabemashou ka?”

Anyway, I hope my two cents on volitional form could shed some light.

Tommy