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Learn Japanese with JapanesePod101.com! Some things in life are easy, and some are hard. It might be easy to cook a simple meal but really hard to get up early in the morning. Imagine trying to speak English without being able to express “it’s easy to” and “it’s hard to.” It would be just about impossible!

In this beginner Japanese lesson, you’ll learn how to express that something is easy to do or hard to do. You’ll discover the various masu forms of Japanese words that you’ll need. In addition, you’ll find all sorts of example sentences that you can incorporate into your everyday Japanese.

buying new shoes in Japan, learn Japanese



This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 at 6:30 pm and is filed under Beginner Season 4 . 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.

32 Responses to “Beginner Lesson S4 #35 - Japanese That’s”

JapanesePod101.com says:

Kon’nichi wa Mina-san, What do you find easy to do? Hard to do? How about writing a sentence for each in Japanese. Then we can check each other’s sentences!

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Kobukuro says:

こんにちは皆さん  :smile:  !

本当に、私はこの新しいLessonがとても好きでが、文法を勉強しにくいです :???: 。
I really like this new lesson very much, but the grammar is difficult to study.

Hmm… I hope, that my sentence makes sence somehow :oops: .

Greetings from Germany,
Nicole

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lollie says:

漢字は覚えにくいと思います!

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Daniel says:

I am new to JPod and so far really benefit from using the lesson notes. However, for this particular lesson my PDF only shows empty boxes where characters should be. This hasn’t happened to me before. Did I do something wrong?

Take care,

Daniel
New York

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Kobukuro says:

Hey Daniel!

Do you have the Asian-Font-Package for the Adobe-Reader? If not, you should install it :smile: !

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/acrrasianfontpack.html

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Daniel says:

Kobukoro:

Thanks for the suggestion. I’m pretty sure I do because I can see the characters in other PDF documents on the site. I can even see them in the “Kanji Closeup” document in the same lesson.

Any other ideas? :roll:

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Kobukuro says:

Do you have a Mac? Maybe you can ask in the forum? I remember, that there are some Mac-User with this problem :roll: .

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Daniel says:

I do. Wow, good catch! I’ll go over to the forum and see what I find there. I wonder why I would be able to see the material in some docs and not others.

Anyway, thanks again for your help.
:smile:

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Kobukuro says:

Daniel, I hope, that you will be able to solve your “problem” :grin: !

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Steffie says:

Atsuisugiru no kohii wa nominikui desu yo. (It’s hard to drink too-hot coffee.)

Hmm. Do I even need the “no” there to attach “atsuisugiru” to “kohii”? Gosh, I wish I could get this computer to do hiragana and katakana. It’s harder to read Japanese when it’s written in romaji, even though I use that alphabet every day for English! Weird.

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Daniel says:

Kobukuro (and anyone with a Mac):

I got it sorted out!

I’m sorry, as a newbie I didn’t yet know about the Forum, which is probably the first place I should have gone for such tech issues. When I searched for my problem there I found that Mac users have to download Adobe version 9 and disallow their “Preview” function from being their viewer for the PDFs. When I did that everything worked.

Arigatou Gozaimasu.

Take Care,

Daniel :grin:

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Kobukuro says:

YAY! Great :mrgreen: !

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Ryo says:

To Steffie: I think you should keep the “no” in that sentence considering it shows the connection between ATSUITSUGIRU and KOHII.

Thank you once again, JPOD!

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Jessi says:

Steffieさん> You actually don’t need the “no” :wink: And I agree with your sentence by the way! Have you heard of the word 猫舌?(nekojita, “cat’s tongue”) If you have a hard time eating/drinking things that are too hot, then you can say that you have a 猫舌 :lol:

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Naomi says:

私は、熱い飲み物が好きです。 Watashi wa atsui nomi-mono ga suki desu.
I like hot drinks
私は猫舌ではありません。Watashi wa neko jita dewa arimasen.
I’m not 猫舌(neko-jita) at all.
Actually, 猫舌Neko-jita is a good word to know.
Maybe we should have a lesson focused on animal-related idioms. :wink:

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Koosh says:

私は河馬の足を似ていません!
It’s not an animal-related idiom, but it’s true. T_T
もしかして、この文は理解しにくいですね。

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Jon says:

Hi, just a quick question.

Is it more common to describe 飲み物 as 暖か as well? Because in Chinese it is quite common to use that other than 熱い to distinguish the level of “hotness” (whether you will get your tongue burnt!). However, it isn’t quite common to use the opposite 涼み to describe 飲み物 in Chinese, but how about Japanese?

Sometimes it’s interesting to compare the two languages. :smile:

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Jessi says:

Jonさん>
Good question! And yes, 温かい(あたたかい) can be used for drinks, but the kanji is different from what you have! This character 温 is used more for tangible things and feelings, while 暖 is used for the temperature and weather :smile: I don’t think 涼しい is used for drinks - but if you want to say a drink is lukewarm (when it should be hot), you can use the adjective ぬるい :wink:

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Jon says:

Jessi-san

Thanks for the explanation! 有り難ございます!As always, one can learn a lot from here :razz:

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バカエイゴ says:

ジャパニーズポッドのために、学校の宿題出来にくいんだよ、楽しすぎだから。 :kokoro:
時々数学を勉強するのを忘れやすすぎるね!

僕は質問がある。「温かい」と「冷たい」、同じ意味なの?
他の質問がある。このコメントには、丁寧語で書いた方はこれよりいい? いつも分からない。 :dogeza:

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yukiko says:

Kon’nichi wa mina-san :smile:

Thanks for such a great lesson Pita-san to Naomi-sensei :kokoro:
I would love to have a lesson with idioms like “neko-jita” sore wa omoshirosou desu ne. Jya watashi wa, tako ga tabenikui. Soshite, ima wa, hiragana ga chotto yomiyasui ne.

mata ne

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Naomi says:

バカエイゴ -san

I really feel guilty to call people バカ, but it’s part of your name so…there’s nothing I can do…. :sad: :lol:
 
>>>僕は質問がある。「温かい」と「冷たい」、同じ意味なの?
Do Atatakai “warm in air temperature” and Tsumetai “cold to touch” have the same meaning? Am I understanding your question right? Or did you mean something else?

yukiko-san
You don’t like たこ”Tako-octopus?” Watshi wa tako-wasabi ga daisuki desu. :kokoro:

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yukiko says:

kon’nichi wa Naomi-sensei :smile:

Watashi mo, wasabi ga daisuki desu :kokoro: Demo….tako wa…
amari sukijanai desu kedo…sumimasen :neutral:

mata ato de

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バカエイゴ says:

Naomiさん、

:oops: You read my question right, though I had the definitions messed up in my head (「冷たい」とは「熱い」と思った) so that’s why it was so confusing. :shock:

I still have my other question though — In comment threads / forums / other online discussions, is it generally more appropriate to use 丁寧語, or is more intimate language the norm?

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Jessi says:

バカエイゴさん>
Hmm, I think that in online discussions, you’re mostly talking with people you don’t know (well) or have never met, so it might be more appropriate to use 丁寧語。 Japanese forums/communities used by native speakers always use 丁寧語 (and also 敬語) as well :smile:

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Emmy01 says:

その店員さんの日本語はちょっとアニメっぽくない?ちょっと大げさですね。

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Emmy01 says:

Can I ask what’s the difference between しにくいand しづらい?

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Kobukuro says:

Emmy, しづらい is more a subjective feeling, personal circumstances…

この本の日本語は読みづらいです。
It’s hard to read, maybe because I didn’t get it’s content or I’m not familiar with it’s topic.

この本の日本語は読みにくいです。
It’s hard to read, maybe because the letters are too small or so.

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Emmy01 says:

kobukuroさんへ:
わかりました!ありがとうございました!

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Kobukuro says:

Emmyさんへ、どういたしまして!うれしいです  :grin:  !

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Inge says:

Hi,

I have been listening to your podcasts for a while now, and I am now finally using all the great tools you provide. One thing is not so clear at this point. What’s the idea for the voice recorder. Is it the idea that we read out the lesson in Japanese or just anything we feel like? Is our recording stored somewhere and do we get feedback on it?

どうもありがとうございます。
またね

Greetings from Belgium.

Cheers

Inge

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Jessi says:

Hi Ingeさん,
Thanks for the comment!
The voice recorder is for you to practice recording anything you like (vocab word, sample sentence, line from the dialogue), and play it back to check your pronunciation, and compare it to the audio of the native speaker. Our recordings are not saved anywhere on our servers.
I hope that helps :)

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