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Learn Japanese with JapanesePod101.com! In today’s Japanese lesson Dave-san returns to Japan after completing his research on shirokuma, literally white bear. To find out what this means and how his research turned out, tune in to today’s lesson. We’ll cover the conjugation of Japanese verbs in to the polite past tense.

Grammar: | Politeness Level:


This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 7th, 2007 at 6:30 pm and is filed under Beginner Season 2 . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

16 Responses to “Beginner Lesson S2 #15 - Dave comes to Japan”

JapanesePod101.com says:

Mina-san, how was this year’s winter in your part of the world? Today in Tokyo it is very cold!

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Patrick says:

Funny enough, although it has been a warm winter, it’s very cold in Eastern Canada now too. In fact, yesterday was the coldest March 6th on record, with the mercury dipping to -24.3 Celcius and a windchill of a biting -38C during the morning rush to work. Temperatures are expected to soar by the weekend, though! :smile:

Interesting factoid about ‘white bears’: they’re not actually white. Polar bears have black skin and clear hair, and only appear white from a distance. It’s believed that part of the bear’s metabolism depends on solar energy trapped by their fur.

Patrick M.
Montreal, Canada

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アニタ ビヤヌエバ says:

Thanks JPod101 for another great lesson! And just one question: if 暖冬 is “mild winter”, how do you say “severe winter” ?? Maybe its mild weather in other places, but here in Boston it has been literally FREEZING for the past month or so!

Anyways, I guess I’ve really noticed the cold weather here today since I was in ロスアンジェレス for the past couple days, for a 面接 (that is why I haven’t been posting comments lately…though I did take my macbook & nano with me so I could keep up with the latest podcasts! :D ). Anyways over there it was a gorgeous 70 degrees Fahrenheit the entire time . :mrgreen: ボストンに帰ったら、天気が凄く悪かった(it was like 10 F, but felt like -25 F or something with windchill)。 :cry: 風が酷くて、針が顔を刺すのようです(don’t know if I said that right..someone please correct if necessary). Anyway, ロスアンジェレスに住んでいる人は、うらやましいなあ!

Oh, and BTW, don’t know if something’s wrong with my computer or something, but I couldn’t download this particular lesson or the PDF notes via the Premium Feed in iTunes (had to get it from the website). Even after I tried refreshing and updating the podcast, it wouldn’t show up in iTunes for some reason.

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アニタ ビヤヌエバ says:

and just one more thing…so when using the potential forms of verbs, が (or は, i guess) must be always used instead of を, right? as in: アザラシが捕れません ”[The bears] can’t catch seals.” I guess it could also be translated as “The seals aren’t caught” but then wouldn’t that be expressed using the passive form, as in アザラシを捕られません? Plus it seems like the latter translation wouldn’t necessarily imply the inability of the bears to catch them, as the first one does.

Anyway I think I learned this sometime in 1st year Japanese but I always seem to forget that を shouldn’t be used with potential verbs. This point is really quite confusing because to me, sentences like ワインを飲めません still sound more natural to me than ワインが飲めません for some reason.

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Jordi says:

does someone know why this lesson can’t be downloaded on iTunes? tasukete kudasai!

sorry for the romaji, my IME is down again :cry:

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Eran says:

This lesson is now available on the Premium Feed in iTunes. Simply update the podcast and it should appear. Apologies for the inconvenience.

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Daniel Beck says:

It is indeed a warm winter in Tokyo. But, why exactly is that a “problem”? :shock:

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bakaneko says:

> It is indeed a warm winter in Tokyo. But, why exactly is that a “problem”?

Sign of global warming? And particular for a nation with a high ratio of coastline vs land area such as Japan, the rise of sea level should certainly be a concern.

Has anyone seen the 2006 Summer movie 日本沈没 about the sinking of Japan?

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Daniel Beck says:

bakanekoさん、

I hope you don’t take that movie seriously.

And while the winter has been “warm” the summer was “cool”. All in all a fairly pleasant 12 months. Again, I don’t see why the warm winter in Tokyo was a problem.

But hey, that’s just me. I happened to enjoy it. :smile:

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Mayumi says:

アニタさん、

The oppposite word of “暖冬” is “厳冬”.

I think it would be better to change “風が酷くて、針が顔を刺すのようです” to “風が冷たくて、針が顔を刺すようです”. “の” is not necessary. “針が顔を刺すようです” is the metaphor for very cold wind. So, I think “風が冷たくて” would be better.

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アニタ ビヤヌエバ says:

Mayumiさん、
説明してもらって、どうもありがとうございました!
アニタ

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Jiashen says:

I read in a book that in Japanese, ‘i’ is used to lengthen ‘e’ sounds (like ‘u’ is used to ‘o’ sounds). This has been true for practically all the stuff that I’ve heard so far, like ‘gakusei’ and ‘keizai’. But in this podcast, ‘meirei’ was pronounced with a definite ‘i’ ending rather than a lengthened ‘e’ sound. I was wondering if this is an irregularity in the language, or am I just wrong about the whole i-lengthens-e thing.

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Jiashen says:

haha I’m really sorry, but I realise I’m in the wrong comments page. I was referring to the previous Beginner lesson “Who’s watching who”.

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lulu_chan says:

もべんきょうになりました。白熊があざらしをたべての?かわいそなあざらしいね。

NYCにてんきがちょっと寒いですね。春がここですけどまでちょっと寒い。暖かいのたんきいたいんですんが。 

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Aguro » Blog Archive » Oyasumi: The polar bear couldn’t get the seal says:

[…] jpod101.com: Episode 15 of beginner season 2 as detailed above […]

causewaypond says:

I have a question.

What is the difference between 捕る and 捕れる. or are they the same?

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