Learn Japanese at JapanesePod101.com! Monkey shows featuring Nihonzaru (Japanese Monkeys) are very famous throughout Japan. In today’s lesson, Kōji the Trainer has been training Tarō to do some, shall we say, special tricks! At first Tarō seems excited about all his hard work paying off. Then he starts to realize that Kōji has bigger plans in store for him. Our grammar points are datte and nandatte as used in casual speech. After listening, stop by JapanesePod101.com and be sure to leave us a post!
This entry was posted on Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 6:30 pm and is filed under Intermediate Lessons. 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.
27 Responses to “Intermediate Lesson #74 - Monkey Business 1”
JapanesePod101.com says:
October 2nd, 2007 at 5:34 pm
Mina-san,
What do you think about Kōji’s plan? If you can train a monkey to do a handstand, surely you could teach him more useful tricks. I wonder how part two is going to turn out…
Eran says:
October 26th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
Claudia-san: Thank you for reporting the broken link 
Should all be working now.
Francisco says:
October 27th, 2007 at 1:21 am
Wait, wait…are these Nihonzaru the ADORABLE snow monkeys we in the west know from National Geographic nature documentaries?! They train them!? Really?
That’s kind of upsetting, actually…a tasty bit of whale we can all forgive, but performing snow monkeys?
Lovely lesson, btw.
markystar says:
October 27th, 2007 at 2:24 am
have no fear! no animals were hurt in the making of this lesson. 
and if it makes you feel any better, i think these are different monkeys…
actually most japanese people i know hate nihonzaru. they are aggressive and sometimes vicious. they steal food and raid convenience stores if the doors don’t close fast enough. definitely not adorable.
but they are quite clever and get into all kinds of hijinks! 
Neil says:
October 27th, 2007 at 3:42 am
I laughed so hard I about cried when I listened to this one! Give the monkey an Oscar!
Francisco says:
October 27th, 2007 at 5:50 am
Hee hee…I’m sure they’re far worse to have as neighbors than to look at on nature documentaries!
Ｓｉｎｄｙシンディー says:
October 27th, 2007 at 7:12 am
Marky-san! 
Did you come up with lesson because of my mixi message 
Mina-san!
Anyone interested in see the Monkeys message here:
http://mixi.jp/view_diary.pl?id=601756149&owner_id=8515246
S_R_C 
Liz21 says:
October 27th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
I am in Japan! Thanks to JPOD101, I can understand quite a bit and I can speak a little. My Japanese friends here all speak English, so . . . .I am asking them to teach me a little more before I leave.
In Nikko, I saw the monkey troupe, Saragundan. They were funny!
Today, I will try a Mosburger for the first time. My Japanese friends said, “How did you know about Mosburger?” (Bikkuri shimashita!) I said, “Japanesepod101.com”! Thank you Peter-san, Natsuko-san, Sakura-san, Naomi-sensei, Mayumi-san, Marky-san, Yuki-san and everyone for teaching us about Japanese language and culture!! It`s made my visit here much more meaningful!! You guys are the best!! 
Rhys says:
October 27th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
I agree Liz21 san, just as they said, Jpod101 truly has taken my Japanese to the next level.. you guys rock !
yuki says:
October 27th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
猿、すげー！！ 
Liz-san!
chocolate oisikatta desu yo! arigatou gozaimasu
neil-san, rigo-san
i realy glad to hear you guys had fun with this story.
please come back to listen to next lesson. Next one is supposed to turn out more hilarious.
I wanna try to train moneky to clean up my room….頑張ります。
Francisco says:
October 27th, 2007 at 8:21 pm
Mina san,
I’ve been writing about Learning Japanese on my blog as well. Here’s a taste…
Learning a language as radically heterogeneous as Japanese is a bit like putting your brain in a bread maker…it just kneads it and bends it in and bakes it in ways you never imagined possible.
Or, it’s like deciding to put together a 10 million piece jigsaw puzzle, an undertaking so transparently ludicrous you can’t really believe you’ll succeed even if you know, theoretically, that if you just keep putting together a few pieces each day it’s a mathematical certainty that you’ll eventually succeed. Some day. Some very, very distant day.
Read the rest of it and tell me what you think!
Ten Blinding Insights of the Japanese Newbie…
http://caracaschronicles.blogspot.com/2007/10/ten-blinding-insights-of-japanese.html
デボン says:
October 28th, 2007 at 3:09 am
Liz san~ 日本どう？ Japanese pod101のひとに会ったの？ 楽しんでください！～
Japanesepod101~ I realize that the Intermediate level students don’t want the slower version in the regular audio but I wonder if you could put a slower version of the Intermediate lessons in the Learning Center. They are just above my level and I feel like if I could listen to them slower I could practice them a bit more. At this level it’s a bit over my head… 
Please put a slower track in the Learning Center! お願いします！
Liz21 says:
October 28th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
Devon-san,
Just try to imagine a place where everything is clean and things are beautiful! That`s Japan! The scenery, the people, the aesthetics of old and new — can`t be matched anywhere! 
applejuicin2007 says:
October 28th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Great intermediate lesson!
Usually the intermediate lessons are quite serious and all the fun stuff (crazy characters, bonus tracks) gets put into the lower levels. So I really enjoyed getting some zaniness in a high level lesson. And now I learned there is a slang term for a monkey… who’d a thunk it?
Jen says:
October 28th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
I loved this lesson and I think I am going to train my boyfriend to land in a handstand, as well as the cleaning and cooking bit. Nah, I’m just kidding…he’s already in better than I am in the cleaning/cooking department. Good ol gender stereotypes.
So, I am wondering…Is it at all possible to get some Advanced Level Japanese Pod 101 lessons that maybe involve intense conversations between three or more people with commentary only in Japanese. Or even just tape a non-scripted conversation and put the transcript on the website, like with the Audio Blogs. I find it easy to follow along a conversation when there are two or three people chatting away, but once it gets up to a hyper intense 4 or 5 person conversation, I tend to get lost easily….ALso, i think the commentary in English that we get in the Intermediate lessons is absolutely great, but I am always wondering how to make these comments in Japanese that would sound natural to a native Japanese speaker.
Anywho, keep up the good work and I will keep spreading the word about you guys!
sTeVe aUsTiN says:
October 29th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
I guess it was just a matter of time before we got a monkey lesson. ROLF.
I like practicing the monkey’s lines in the Learning Center!
Hyunwoo Sun(ヒョヌ） says:
October 29th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
そんなに何でもできる猿なら、僕も一匹欲しいです！
Fransisco, great post on your blog!
Francisco says:
October 30th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
Thanks! I have no RSS feed, though…just an unhealthy obsession with this website.
markystar says:
October 30th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
just an unhealthy obsession with this website.
hahahahahaha
that makes 2 of us!
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Category: Intermediate Lessons |
Grammar: datte, demo, nandatte, nantsuttatte | Function: training animals to do your dirty work | Topic: animals, monkeys, strange people | Politeness Level: casual, Informal
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