Learn Japanese with JapanesePod101.com! You always find yourself in the stickiest of social situations-and now that you find yourself in Japan, the social situations are three times as tricky! You’re very worried about offending your new Japanese friends by saying the wrong thing, so you’ve been saying as little as possible. Finally, you see an advertisement on television that says in Japanese, “If you’re having trouble handling your social obligations in Japan, you won’t want to miss this.” You respond to the announcer on TV in Japanese, “No, no I don’t! Tell me more!” The television announcer continues in Japanese, “Tune in this afternoon when we have an interview with Japan’s equivalent of Miss Manners, and she’ll tell you how to handle almost any social situation with grace and dignity.” You tell the television in Japanese, “This couldn’t come at a better time! If I had to wait one more day, I’d be lost!”
Learning Japanese with JapanesePod101.com is the most fun and effective way to learn Japanese! This Japanese Lower Intermediate lesson will show you how to form the conditional using Japanese sentence structure. With this Japanese construction, you’ll be able to form sentences in Japanese that explain one action happens when another action occurs. Here’s an example: if you study this Japanese lesson, you’ll be a brilliant Japanese speaker! Visit us at JapanesePod101.com where you will find many more fantastic Japanese lessons and learning resources! Leave us a message while you are there!
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 at 6:30 pm and is filed under Lower Intermediate Lessons (S5) . 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.
34 Responses to “Lower Intermediate Lesson S5 #4 - If You Follow Her Japanese Advice, You Won’t Make a Mistake!”
Tuesday at 6:30 pm
みなさん、 日本語が上手になるにはどうすればいいと思いますか？What should you do to get good at Japanese?
Share your thoughts here~
Tuesday at 10:39 pm
I think that these lower intermediate lessons is an effective way to significantly improve ones vocabulary, I have started to making my way through Intermediate lessons some time ago after have listened to S1-4 of lower intermediate, and even though Intermediate has great and rich material as well, it is still worthwhile for me to return to lower intermediate to explore the vocabulary and if I may say so, to listen to the fantastic hosts that made the whole of season 4 a pure pleasure
I will continue to work on my vocabulary and overall understanding in preparation for my studies in Japan that starts in april, I would like to express my gratitude to the wonderful people that are putting out so much effort to make these podcasts!
/ Jonas
Tuesday at 11:34 pm
thank you for this good lesson
Wednesday at 12:50 am
Hajimemajite ,
watashi wa Jiterusu de su. (Gitelles in katakana?)
Boku wa Portugarujin de su.
Yoroshiku Onegai Shimasu.
I’m new here but I try to listen to this lesson, and I must say that I really understand!
Domo arigato.
(Is there any way to write in kana/kanji using the western keybord? Instead of using Romanji I mean. Thank you again.)
Wednesday at 6:31 am
そのラジオ歌はすごいから、今踊りたい
Wednesday at 7:04 am
日本語が上手になるようにどうすればいいかな？Hmm…
(Jpod101.comを聞く以上に）毎日日本語を聞いて読めばいいと思います。たとえばドラマを見ながらDVDの字幕を読んで、その他には友達とSkypeで話してIMをすればいいと思います。
Wednesday at 8:44 am
Yes Gitelles. You can use the Microsoft IME to type in any of the three character sets, though some applications don’t seem to allow this input. I apologize if we aren’t supposed to link outside this website… however I found this link to be of much help with typing kana.
http://www.coscom.co.jp/learnjapanese801/howtotypejapanese.html
Wednesday at 9:21 am
Jonasさん,
Are you doing a study abroad program in Japan? What will you be studying?
Thank you so much for your kind comments! We are glad to hear that you are enjoying the Lower Intermediate series
jiteshさん,
Thank YOU!
Gitellesさん,
Great introduction
One small correction: Hajimemajite ⇒ Hajimemashite
Please check out the link that Dsan provided for how to type in Japanese!
Steveさん,
It does have a pretty good beat to it!!
プチクレアさん,
とてもいいアドバイスだと思います。I also really recommend watching TV shows in Japanese for picking up natural Japanese. And thanks to the internet, you don’t even need to be in Japan to watch Japanese shows!
Dsanさん,
Thank you for providing that link! It’s not a problem - I refer people to the same link when I get the question about how to type Japanese.
Wednesday at 9:47 am
Jonas-san
ありがとうございます！日本のどこに留学するんですか？
jitesh-san
ありがとうございます！
Gitelles-san
こちらこそ、よろしくお願いします。お名前はジテレスさんですか？
Steve-san
そうですね！明るい曲ですね
プチクレア-san
なるほど・・・。そうやって、プチクレアさんは勉強したんですね。
Dsan-san
ありがとうございました！
Wednesday at 10:59 am
Jonas-san
日本での勉強頑張ってくださいね 
日本語の字幕を見れば、漢字も覚えられますよね！
ありがとうございます
jitesh-san
ありがとうございます
Gitelles-san
一緒に勉強しましょう
プチクレア-san
いいアイディアですねー
Wednesday at 8:27 pm
Jessi-san: I am going to Tokyo to study japanese at a language school, focusing primarily on conversation during a timeperiod of 6 months, During that time, I will live with an hostfamily in a Tokyo suburb, which I think will be eventful and truly enjoyable
So im aiming to become fluent in conversational japanese as my first priority, I have already started to plan another trip to Japan after these 6 months are completed where I will stay for a longer period of time and try to fully grasp the other parts of the language, to learn the important kanji is going to be the main goal, but also to try to get a more better understanding of the japanese language, get a feel for it as a whole so to speak. One question, how long did it take for you to be fluent when it comes to conversation?
Naomi-san: As I haven’t installed japanese keyboard and just feel that romaji is a really horrible way to write japanese, I will respond to you in english
I will be living in Tokyo as I said to Jessi earlier, and will live with an japanese hostfamily that surely will show me manners, here in Sweden, we don’t really have any kind of “social rules” in lack of better words. Do you have any advice to where to go in Tokyo to see a really incredible view, which is your favourite scenic spot? 
Yuichi-san: I will try to learn as much about Japan as a possibly can during my time there, my goal is to immerse myself in the culture and lifestyle, and im very fortunate to have japanese friends that is going to help me achieve that. Those friends are really close to me because of the fact that I lived with them during my time in the US, such wonderful personality and they truly value friendship. As I asked Naomi-san, I will ask you another question, can you recommend any good bars or other kind of hangout spot?
Wednesday at 8:47 pm
Naomi先生, Jessi先生, Yuichi先生、
ドラマや映画が大好きだから、そうやって勉強するのは楽しいですよ！字幕は読むより聞くのが上手のなら漢字を簡単に勉強させて、その逆のなら会話も勉強させます。一石二鳥ですね ！
Thursday at 1:28 am
こんいちわｎ
DSan-san
どもありがと your tip help me a lot.
Jessi-san
土も有賀と for the correction sometimes I switch じ with し sounds.
Naomi-san
わたしは ジテルス です。
世路祝お願いします。
Yuichi-san
I’ll do my best to study and I’ll be very glad to study with you although I’m in Portugal, at Univesity.
Thursday at 10:11 am
Jonasさん,
Living with a host family is one of the best things that you can do to improve your Japanese 
) But after around 3 years of studying it on my own and at school in the US and one year studying abroad in Japan, I felt comfortable holding full conversations in Japanese. But keep in mind that most of that studying time took place in the US, where I was not immersed in Japanese. Actually living in Japan will make your progress go much faster 
And since you are listening to the Lower intermediate series, it sounds like you have a pretty good foundation in Japanese already - all the better!!
That sounds really exciting - I know you’re going to have a great time here!
Hmm, it’s hard to give an exact amount of time to how long it takes to reach fluency… and it also depends on how you define fluency (everyone seems to have their own definition
Thursday at 10:18 am
Gitellesさん,
You’re welcome!
I’d like to give you a tip about typing in Japanese too
Be careful with the kanji conversion, because if you are missing some vowels, it will mess up the process and the kanji will come out wrong. For example, “domo arigato” actually has two long vowels (the “o” after the “d” and the “o” after the “t”), so it is actually:
Doumo arigatou (どうもありがとう)
When you type it using the IME, you must include these long vowels, or it will convert it to the wrong kanji when you press the space bar.
For どうもありがとう, though, it’s not usually written in kanji anyways, so you don’t need to worry about converting it to kanji
I hope that makes sense - please let me know if you need more of an explanation
Thursday at 11:08 am
Jonas-san
Well…
If you like nature… Mt. Takao is good.
Also there are lot of beaches in Kanagawa and Chiba prefecture. It would be nice to visit there to have a suntan in summer.
If you’re interested in traditional Japanese culture…Asakura, Meiji-jinguu/Harajuku, Tokyo Edo muesum/Ryogoku are good. Also we have a lot of Japanese gardens in Tokyo. Hamarikyuu, Rikugien, Koishikawa kourakuen and so on.
If you’d like to see modern Japan, Akihabara, Odaiba, Ginza, Shibuya, Roppongi, Shinjuku are good.
Tsukiji fish market is really popular among foreign tourists too.
And they’re not in Tokyo, but Kamakura, Nikkou and Mt. Fuji are quite popular tourist places.
Thursday at 10:06 pm
もう一度どうもありがとう、Lower Intermediateレッソンの先生たち！
Yuichiさん, I do have a question that kind of relates to my last question I asked you in the last episode of LI S5. At around 16:20 Jessiさん used the たらconditional and 「時」 interchangeably: 「風を引いたら、お風呂に入ればいい。」 and 「風を引いた時、お風呂に入ればいい。」 Why is this correct?
またね、
コンスタンティン
Friday at 4:29 am
Pretty challenging dialogue in today’s lesson, it took a good few listens to catch it all!
There was one part I couldn’t work out though, and it was part of the after dialogue conversation. At the 7 minute mark Naomi said “Nihingo dake ja nai to wa omou n’desu kedo eigo ni mo jouzu na koto [???] aru to omou n’de. Demo nihongo no benkyo suru dake ja nakute nihonjin wa fudan dou iu fuu ni kotowateiru no ka to ka dou iu fuu ni aite ni message wo tsutaeteiru no ka to iu benkyou suru no mo daiji desu ne. ”
It was so long and so quick that even when attempting to transcribe it I got lost.
From what I can work out, and I really can’t fathom this one - “It’s not just Japanese, good at English [??] I think. But, it’s not just studying Japanese, Japanese people habitually refuse with which method [??] it is important to study what method the other party reports the message.”
There is a word in the first sentance which I can’t make out, and after that I get completely lost with the “nihonjin wa fudan dou iu fuu ni kotowateiru no ka to ka ” part. I don’t understand the ‘no ka to ka’ part at the end at all. There are a whole lot of particles in there and I feel my head will explode if I try any harder to understand it!
Oh and one dialogue question, with the line “あいてにきづいてもらえるように、はなしかたにきをつけましょう” I’m a little confused with the use of ‘ni’ attached to ‘hanshikatta’. I didn’t know you could attach ‘ni’ to the end of past tense verbs without using ‘koto’ or ‘no’ first. Sorry for my stupidity!
Also sentances like this really take some thought to translate into English! Tricky stuff…
Also, and sorry to be a moan, and I realise you guys are friends and have a good time recording the lessons, but some of the after lesson banter is rather laced with so many ‘mmmmmm’s that on repeated listening it kind of grates after a while. Sorry!
Friday at 9:43 am
Tachikomaさん,
The word you missed in Naomi’s line was “kotowarikata” - when kata (方) is attached to the stem of a verb, it means “way to [verb]” or “how to [verb]”. So “kotowarikata” would be “way of refusing”. So basically what she’s saying is that in English also there are probably tactful ways of refusing someone (not just in Japanese). After that, she’s basically saying that it’s important to not only study the Japanese (the language aspect), but also to learn how Japanese people usually refuse something, how they get their message across to their listener, etc.
The two “no ka” in there are marking embedded questions (we covered those in Season 4), and the “to ka” in there is the particle used to list things (like the particle ya, it indicates an incomplete list). I realize now that that was a pretty long and complicated sentence, but I hope that helps somewhat
はなしかた is the same かた I mentioned up above, so it means “way of speaking”. 話し方に気をつけましょう = Lit. Be mindful of your way of speaking = Be careful how you speak.
Friday at 10:28 am
Tachikoma-san
そうですか。気に障ったのでしたら、申し訳なく思います。ご意見ありがとうございました。
Saturday at 11:03 am
Thanks Jessi, I think I have it all now! 勉強になりました！ （ところで、このごろピイタアはどこですか？最近ふるいintermediate & lower intermediateのレッスンを聞きました。ちょっとノーコンですけど懐かしいです）
Saturday at 9:03 pm
Jessi-さん
Thank you, I could really use those tips. From now on I’ll be more carefull.
どうもありがとう
きょう、ぼくはべんきょうしました。 (is it well written? Kyou , boku wa benkyou shimashita.)
Monday at 10:20 am
Tachikomaさん,
Peter has been pretty busy lately, but you can still find him hosting the Beginner series and the Sunday News! 
よかったです
Gitellesさん,
No problem! I hope it helped you out.
The sentence you wrote looks great!
Wednesday at 6:17 am
This lesson was very well crafted from start to finish. Many useful illustrations of useful words and grammar points.
A mistake?=質問 is spelled しもん in the kana version.
I especially thought the vocabulary sample sentences were very good and useful this lesson. Thank you for not making them too esoteric.
質問があるんですけど＝Does 食料品 しょくりょうひん translate as “food items” as in a purely technical written expression, or can I also use it to say the common colloquial expression “groceries”
I also have a suggestion=instead of separating kana and kanji it would be amazing if the format of manga and books for kids was used, where the kana is written above the kanji within the sentence. This is probably too complicated to do, but i think it would make the site even more professional and effective.
うまくやっていただきありがとうございます！
Wednesday at 9:42 am
ヤドカリさん,
Thank you for the nice comments! We have fixed the typo in the kana version
Yes, 食料品 can be used to talk about your everyday groceries!
Thanks for the suggestion as well - we’ll see if it’s possible to do something like that.
Wednesday at 10:21 am
今度もとてもいいレッスンでした！
ありがとうございます！
このセンテンスの文法ポイントはちょっとわかりにくいんですから、ちょっと説明してくれたらうれしいです！ → 相手に気づいてもらえるように、話し方に気をつけましょう！
なんで 気づいてもらえる になるのですか？ I don’t understand why もらえる is where it is >_
Wednesday at 12:40 pm
Maria-san
Verb +もらう の文法は難しいですよね～。
The usage of [Verb]+Morau is tricky isn’t it.
Basically もらう is used when the subject receives benefit from an action.
The original form is
But I hope this helps. 
相手が気付く
So, of course you could say…
相手が気付くように、話し方に気をつけましょう。
But if you want to emphasis the subject receives benefit by 相手が気付くこと”her or his realizing”, you add もらう or もらえる.
相手に気付いてもらえるように、話し方に気をつけましょう。
“So that you could get benefit from the person’s realizing, you should be careful how you talk.”
I know this direct translation is awful.
Sunday at 4:56 am
せきばらい is spelled せくはらい in the kana version of lesson notes lite.
Monday at 9:43 am
ヤドカリさん,
Thanks for pointing that out! I have fixed it
Friday at 3:55 pm
Ｊｏｎａさん
Jonasan, sorry for the late reply. Tryin to immerse yourself in the culture and lifestyle is one of the best way to learn foreign langauge and culture. I’m looking forward to seeing you speak Japanese fluently in near futre!
As I asked Naomi-san, I will ask you another question, can you recommend any good bars or other kind of hangout spot?
> That’s a tough question!! There are many places you can hangout especailly in urban area: Shinjuku, Shibuya, Ikebukuro, etc. But, the bar I recommend is “Lockup” in Shibuya. I’ve been there, and it was a unique bar, so if you have a chance, please visit. http://r.gnavi.co.jp/g528910/
Friday at 4:48 pm
コンスタンティンさん
I do have a question that kind of relates to my last question I asked you in the last episode of LI S5. At around 16:20 Jessiさん used the たらconditional and 「時」 interchangeably: 「風を引いたら、お風呂に入ればいい。」 and 「風を引いた時、お風呂に入ればいい。」 Why is this correct?
> Both are correct, but the meaning of them are slightly different. As you know, tara indicates the conditional, whereas toki means “at the time when.” Toki expresses exclusively the time clause. Thus, you cannot indicate the condition using toki. See examples below. The first sentece shows the condition when you feel sick. The second sentence is odd because you usaully don’t feel sick at the time you eat mango. Am I answering the question you asked? If you have more question, you can ask any time you want in the comment section
1. 私は、マンゴーを食べると（食べたら）、気持ち悪くなる。 If I eat mango, I feel sick.
2. ×私は、マンゴーを食べるとき、気持ち悪くなる。 When I eat mango, I feel sick.
Monday at 10:20 pm
Can anybody explain the construction of the verb きづく？ Is the object marked by に?
I think ヤドカリさん’s idea is great! It also would save a lot of space. Also, I’m wondering if the romanjis are really necessary at this level. We all should be able to read kana (although I am still bad with katakanas
). Personally, I would prefer havint the sample sentences in kanjis and kanas rather than in kanjis and romanjis.
By the way, would it be possible to have the reading of the sample sentences written in a normal black color. It’s almost impossible to read, even when I print them out.
Tuesday at 12:05 am
I would also love an in depth lesson on きづく (also written as 気付く ?)
i always hear this in everyday usage and use it myself though i am not familiar with all its ins and outs. By the way, how does one write the づ with a keyboard? i cut and pasted because i keep writing ず
thanks!
Tuesday at 10:50 am
Sylvie -san, ヤドカリ-san
The original form of 「きづく(気付く）」 is 「きがつく（気が付く）」. That’s why the “ZU” part is spelled as づ （ “DU” in Japanese keyboard spelling) in Hiragana.
The thing(noun) the subject realizes should be marked by particle に.
ex)
間違い に 気付いた。
テストがあること に 気付いた。
However “informal speech ＋quotation marker と” can also precedes 気付く or 気が付く.
何かが変だ と 気付いた。
I hope this makes sense.
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