It is one thing to study something, but it is another to do it. IF it wasnt for this lesson I would’ve starved to death. I can read and write kana but I am no good at Kanji - the doggon jidou hanbaiki were in Kanji. I felt like I was being teased with pictures of wonderful dishes, a pocket full of money and no clue how the thing works. Add to that, as it was my first time in Japan, so I’m nervous about my speaking ability and trying my darndest to avoid a conversation(silly, right?) Anyway, this lesson helped me big time. I figured out what to do to get my food ticket and saved myself from certain starvation. Thanks Japanesepod101….

thx

Lauraさん、another nice observation. The only reason I use it is, I have a tough time remembering names!! Yes, Sakuraさん did say that, and she is very polite. (except toward me )

digitaljoさん、yes! The lighting up!! Forgot to mention that. Thanks for putting that in. Yes, when I was doing the research a friendly Japanese business man wound up helping select the dish I wanted, and we wound up eating together! Could also be a good way to meet people.

Johnさん、hey!!! How are you?? Great to hear from you. How was the rest of your trip?? BTW, the forum is open. Let everyone know about Ageha!

Anaさん thanks for the post.

Wayne

I think Sakura posted somewhere that she tries to avoid saying “anata” at all. Even in a situation where she’s almost forced to say it, like telling someone “it’s your turn”, she’d rather not.

I don’t know what to think about “anata”. I’ve been told that it’s impersonal but also that it’s too familiar.

When things seem strange in Japanese, I try to think of something in English that’s strange in the same way. For “anata” the best I’ve been able to come up with is “hey you!” In most cases it’d be pretty rude to say that, like you couldn’t be bothered remembering the person’s name. But I have a friend who uses it as a intimate greeting. “hey you!” It’s kind of sweet in that context.

Other than that, food ticket roulette is fun

PS - Hello Peter, Jonas and Takase-san! ;p

自動・automatic
販売・selling, sale
機・machine

Jonas

Unless you meant if you wanted to ask a friend, for example, what they like to eat, in which case you’d want something like どんな食べ物 (たべもの) が好 (す) きですか

The thing with あなた is that there seems to be a stereotype of who uses it - usually 1) women to their husbands and 2) foreigners.

Normally, a sentence will be understandable without a personal pronoun, even though it may seem strange at first, but it’s perfectly normal in Japanese. That’s not to say that you should *never* say あなた, but it should normally be reserved for a time when the sentence would be truly ambiguous without it.

Speaking of this, if any of the JP101 team are reading, I’d love a show on this topic - all the different ways of saying “I” and (maybe over 10 shows ) the different ways of saying “you” (ok, maybe just the main ones)… it would be interesting to see what the Japanese people of the team think about, for example, a foreigner calling themself 僕 (ぼく) or 俺 おれ, and the differences between such things as 君 (きみ) and お前 (まえ).

Maybe it would be best to keep it to those as well… don’t want to be teaching everyone stuff that’s gonna be getting them into fights!