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| INTRODUCTION |
| Jessi: Get Me To The Church, No, Make That The Hotel In Japan On Time! |
| Naomi: ナオミです。 |
| Peter: Peter here. Today we are continuing on with the taxi story line. Naomi Sensei? |
| Naomi: はい。 |
| Peter: What happened in the last lesson? |
| Naomi: Minami san took a taxi and hit traffic, which is 渋滞 in Japanese. |
| Peter: That’s right. She told the taxi driver what time the party starts and ends. The party is from 6:30. |
| Naomi: でも、今6時半です。 |
| Peter: But it’s 6:30 now. So according to the conversation, it’s already 6:30. The party starts at the same time, 6:30, and she is in the taxi. |
| Naomi: She is running late. |
| Peter: Really late. Now, last lesson, we introduced two parties. |
| Naomi: から |
| Peter: From |
| Naomi: まで |
| Peter: To with time expressions. Now we are continuing on with から and まで and now we are going to introduce the length of time. |
| Naomi: そうですね。 |
| Peter: So the conversation is between |
| Naomi: お客さん |
| Peter: And |
| Naomi: 運転手 |
| Peter: The driver. So we are going to be using |
| Naomi: Polite Japanese. |
| Peter: And the conversation takes place? |
| Naomi: In a taxi. |
| Peter: Still haven’t gotten out. All right with that said, here we go. |
| DIALOGUE |
| 南 夏見: 運転手さん、ここから 横浜ホテルまで 何分ですか。 |
| タクシーの運転手: さぁ・・・。 |
| 南 夏見: あれは、駅ですか。 |
| タクシーの運転手: ああ、そうです。横浜駅です。５分ぐらいです。 |
| 南 夏見: うーん。ここから駅まで５分。駅から ホテルまで １０分・・・。運転手さん！ここでいいです。いくらですか。 |
| もう一度お願いします。ゆっくりお願いします。 |
| 南 夏見: 運転手さん、ここから 横浜ホテルまで 何分ですか。 |
| タクシーの運転手: さぁ・・・。 |
| 南 夏見: あれは、駅ですか。 |
| タクシーの運転手: ああ、そうです。横浜駅です。５分ぐらいです。 |
| 南 夏見: うーん。ここから駅まで５分。駅から ホテルまで １０分・・・。運転手さん！ここでいいです。いくらですか。 |
| 今度は、英語が入ります。 |
| 南 夏見: 運転手さん、ここから 横浜ホテルまで 何分ですか。 |
| NATSUMI MINAMI: Sir, how long does it take to get to the Yokohama Hotel from here? |
| タクシーの運転手: さぁ・・・。 |
| TAXI DRIVER: Well... I'm not sure. |
| 南 夏見: あれは、駅ですか。 |
| NATSUMI MINAMI: Is that a station? |
| タクシーの運転手: ああ、そうです。横浜駅です。５分ぐらいです。 |
| TAXI DRIVER: Oh, yeah. That's right. That's Yokohama station. It takes about five minutes to get there. |
| 南 夏見: うーん。ここから駅まで５分。駅から ホテルまで １０分・・・。運転手さん！ここでいいです。いくらですか。 |
| NATSUMI MINAMI: Well..It takes five minutes to get to the station. It takes ten minutes from the station to the hotel... Sir, stop here please. How much do I owe you? |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Peter: Naomi Sensei 日本のタクシーは高いですね。 |
| Naomi: 高いですね。 |
| Peter: Japanese taxis are expensive. |
| Naomi: はい。 I agree. |
| Peter: Base fare はいくらですか？ How much is the base fare? |
| Naomi: 660円です。 |
| Peter: ¥660 in Tokyo. |
| Naomi: I think the price is pretty much same all over Japan. |
| Peter: Really? |
| Naomi: 多分。 Not sure ごめんね。 that’s because gasoline in Japan is very, very expensive. ガソリンは高いです。 |
| Peter: Yeah and at night time, the price rises too. |
| Naomi: そうですね。 But generally speaking, taxi drivers are very nice. The taxi cabs are clean and they never rip you off. |
| Peter: Yeah so in that aspect, it’s quite nice. |
| Naomi: それから、タクシーは便利ですね。 |
| Peter: Convenient. |
| Naomi: When you miss the last train. |
| Peter: Yeah. Convenient but 高いです。 |
| Naomi: そう。本当に高いです。 |
| Peter: What’s your personal record? |
| Naomi: 5500円。 Not bad. |
| Peter: ¥5500 |
| Naomi: はい。ピーターさんは？ |
| Peter: 10000円。 |
| Naomi: Oh…. |
| Peter: ¥10000 |
| Naomi: 高い！ |
| Peter: 高いです。 |
| Naomi: Hah! |
| Peter: 新宿から国立まで。 |
| Naomi: 新宿から国立まで、10000円？ |
| Peter: そうです。 |
| Naomi: 高い！ |
| Peter: 高いです。 Yeah I don’t really want to remember that for too long. So let’s head on to the vocabulary. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Naomi: はい。駅 |
| Peter: Station. |
| Naomi: (slow)えき (natural speed)駅 |
| Peter: Starts high and falls on the second syllable き |
| Naomi: 駅 |
| Peter: Next |
| Naomi: ホテル |
| Peter: Hotel. |
| Naomi: (slow)ほてる (natural speed)ホテル |
| Peter: Starts high, falls on the second syllable て stays low. |
| Naomi: ホテル |
| Peter: Next |
| Naomi: 5分 |
| Peter: 5 minutes. |
| Naomi: (slow)ごふん (natural speed)5分 |
| Peter: Starts high, falls on the second syllable ふ |
| Naomi: 5分 |
| Peter: Next. |
| Naomi: 10分 |
| Peter: 10 minutes. |
| Naomi: (slow)じゅっぷん (natural speed)10分 |
| Peter: Falls after the じゅ stays low. |
| Naomi: 10分 |
| Peter: Next. |
| Naomi: ぐらい |
| Peter: About. |
| Naomi: (slow)ぐらい (natural speed)ぐらい |
| Peter: Falls on the second syllable ら |
| Naomi: ぐらい |
| Peter: Next. |
| Naomi: 何分 |
| Peter: How many minutes. |
| Naomi: (slow)なんぷん (natural speed)何分 |
| Peter: Falls on the second syllable ん |
| Naomi: 何分 |
| Peter: Next |
| Naomi: さあ |
| Peter: Well |
| Naomi: (slow)さあ (natural speed)さあ |
| Peter: Falls on the second syllable あ |
| Naomi: さあ |
| Peter: Okay let’s take a look at some of the vocab we just went over. Let’s first take a look at |
| Naomi: ぐらい |
| Peter: Approximately, about. |
| Naomi: ここから駅まで5分ぐらいです。 |
| Peter: It takes about 5 minutes to get to the station from here. Now ぐらい is added after the quantity and it means about or approximately. So if we look back at this previous sentence, we had the measurement in time which was |
| Naomi: 5分 |
| Peter: Followed by |
| Naomi: ぐらい |
| Peter: About 5 minutes. |
| Naomi: The word order is opposite. So be careful, not ぐらい5分。 |
| Peter: Yeah. |
| Naomi: 5分ぐらい。 |
| Peter: Now the kanji for ぐらい can be read as |
| Naomi: くらい |
| Peter: く、く。 |
| Naomi: (slow)くらい (natural speed)くらい |
| Peter: Or |
| Naomi: ぐらい |
| Peter: ぐ、ぐ、ぐ。 |
| Naomi: (slow)ぐらい |
| Peter: So it should be pronounced as ぐらい when it is preceded by a quantity such as time, price or weight. |
| Naomi: 100円ぐらい |
| Peter: G sound one more time. |
| Naomi: 100円ぐらい |
| Peter: This is about ¥100 |
| Naomi: 今3時ぐらい |
| Peter: It’s about 3 o’clock now. |
| Naomi: But people sometimes use くらい instead of ぐらい |
| Peter: Hmm… |
| Naomi: Yeah the correct usage is quantity plus ぐらい but in a conversation, people don’t really think about it. |
| Peter: So sometimes they put in くらい。5分くらい |
| Naomi: はい。 |
| Peter: But ぐらい flows more natural it seems. |
| Naomi: そうですね。 |
| Peter: Now what I was kind of taken aback by there is kanji for this. |
| Naomi: はい。 |
| Peter: I never really saw the kanji. I always see くらい or ぐらい written in hiragana. |
| Naomi: Ah… |
| Peter: So when I saw this, I was – I thought to myself wow 位 |
| Naomi: Umm person is standing. |
| Peter: Yeah. Next we have |
| Naomi: ここでいいです。 |
| Peter: Here is fine. Literally this phrase means here is good. So it kind of works out like here is fine. You know we’d say in English to the taxi driver, here is fine. I am good here. Stop the cab! |
| Naomi: ここで。そうですね。ここでいいです。 |
| Peter: Here is good, here is fine. |
| Naomi: はい。 |
| Peter: And you can use this to get out of the taxi. |
| Naomi: ここでいいです。 |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Peter: Okay let’s have a more thorough look at the grammar used in this lesson. Naomi Sensei, what did we cover in this lesson? |
| Naomi: 何分 |
| Peter: How many minutes. Now let’s go back to where this appeared in the conversation. Can you repeat that sentence? |
| Naomi: ここから横浜ホテルまで何分ですか？ |
| Peter: How long, how many minutes does it take to get to Yokohama hotel from here. Okay and can you give us one more example of how we apply this? |
| Naomi: 何時何分ですか？ |
| Peter: What time is it? Literally what hour, what minute is it. So what we want to do here is stop and go over minutes because minutes can be a bit tricky. |
| Naomi: 難しいですね。 |
| Peter: ちょっと難しいですね。 |
| Naomi: はい。 |
| Peter: And the reason for that is sometimes we have a phonetic change. So we are going to go over these and give you some tips to really help you navigate your way through counting minutes and this is really good exercise because sometimes even really experienced speakers get a little tripped up by this. Okay so ナオミ先生、お願いします。 One minute. |
| Naomi: 1分 |
| Peter: Two minutes |
| Naomi: 2分 |
| Peter: Three minutes |
| Naomi: 3分 |
| Peter: Four minutes |
| Naomi: 4分 |
| Peter: Five minutes |
| Naomi: 5分 |
| Peter: Six minutes |
| Naomi: 6分 |
| Peter: Seven minutes |
| Naomi: 7分 |
| Peter: Eight minutes |
| Naomi: 8分（はっぷん） or 8分（はちふん） |
| Peter: Nine minutes |
| Naomi: 9分 |
| Peter: Ten minutes |
| Naomi: 10分 |
| Peter: Naomi Sensei, the counter for minutes is |
| Naomi: 分（ふん） or 分（ぷん） |
| Peter: Yes. Now if we want to give a base, we could say that the counter is 分 but there again it changes. Now out of 1 to 10 and from what we just went over, 5 of them have 分（ふん）. The other five are 分（ぷん） |
| Naomi: すごい。 |
| Peter: So it’s kind of an even split here. So let’s see if we can help you remember this. So we start out with the first one. |
| Naomi: 1分 |
| Peter: Notice the pause in there plus 分（ぷん）. One more time. |
| Naomi: 1分 |
| Peter: Followed by |
| Naomi: 2分 |
| Peter: Two minutes. No pause and straight to the 2分. Next is |
| Naomi: 3分 |
| Peter: This is followed by |
| Naomi: 4分 |
| Peter: Two in a row. |
| Naomi: はい。. I think that’s because of the ん sound. N sound. |
| Peter: Similar to the previous one 3分. When you have a n sound in there, you are going to switch to 分（ぷん） |
| Naomi: はい。 |
| Peter: So three out of the first four are 分（ぷん）、1分、2分、3分、4分。 Next we have |
| Naomi: 5分 |
| Peter: So now we are back to the 分（ふん）. This is followed by |
| Naomi: 6分 |
| Peter: Back to the 分（ぷん）. So four out of the first six are 分（ぷん）. So this is followed by |
| Naomi: 7分 |
| Peter: Seven minutes. Then we have |
| Naomi: 8分（はっぷん） or 8分（はちふん） |
| Peter: Next. |
| Naomi: 9分 |
| Peter: Followed by |
| Naomi: 10分 |
| Peter: So there are two in here that can be said either way 分（ぷん） or 分（ふん）. 4 and 8. |
| Naomi: 4分（よんふん） or 4分（よんぷん）。8分（はっぷん） or 8分（はちふん） |
| Peter: Well the way I usually remember it is if we keep 4分 it’s almost like every other one is ふん、ぷん。 |
| Naomi: Wow! How do you know that? |
| Peter: Right so it’s 1分 |
| Naomi: ああ。 |
| Peter: Then we switch to |
| Naomi: 2分 |
| Peter: Then we are back to |
| Naomi: 3分。 |
| Peter: And we just got two in a row here. |
| Naomi: 4分。 |
| Peter: You can also say 4分（よんふん） here but let’s just keep this two in a row just for to make this little trick work. So we are keeping 4分（よんぷん）. This is followed by |
| Naomi: 5分 |
| Peter: 分（ふん） So every other one. |
| Naomi: 6分 |
| Peter: Back to the 分（ぷん）. Next we have |
| Naomi: 7分 |
| Peter: Back to the 分（ふん） Next we have |
| Naomi: 8分 |
| Peter: Followed by |
| Naomi: 9分 |
| Peter: And finally |
| Naomi: 10分 |
| Peter: So hopefully this gives you a little bit of insight. I mean…. |
| Naomi: Wow! |
| Peter: The best way to do it is kind of just memorize it. Sit down and memorize it. That’s definitely the best way but this should help maybe give you little bit of insight. |
| Naomi: おお、すごいすごい。 |
| Peter: Or hopefully something to help you memorize. Okay let’s move on to the focus of today’s lesson using the two parties から and まで. Now から is a particle used to indicate the starting position where まで indicates up to when talking about time or place. So let’s go back to where this appeared in the conversation. Can you repeat that sentence? |
| Naomi: ここから駅まで5分です。 |
| Peter: It takes 5 minutes to get to the station from here. Now literally we have, one more time. |
| Naomi: ここ |
| Peter: Here. |
| Naomi: から |
| Peter: From. |
| Naomi: 駅 |
| Peter: Station. |
| Naomi: まで |
| Peter: To. |
| Naomi: 5分 |
| Peter: Five minutes. |
| Naomi: です。 |
| Peter: Is. Here from station to five minutes is what we have literally but of course when we translate it, it is 5 minutes to get to the station from here but the pattern stays the same. You can take two locations and swap them out. So if we want to say it takes 20 minutes from Tokyo to Yokohama, we would say |
| Naomi: 東京から横浜まで、20分です。 |
| Peter: It takes 20 minutes from Tokyo to Yokohama. |
| Naomi: To make a question form is easy, too. 何分 is a question. So ここから駅まで何分ですか？ is a question. |
| Peter: Yeah, so how long does it take from here to the station? |
Outro |
| Peter: All right, so I think that’s going to do for today. |
| Naomi: じゃあ、また。 |
| DIALOGUE |
| 南 夏見: 運転手さん、ここから 横浜ホテルまで 何分ですか。 |
| タクシーの運転手: さぁ・・・。 |
| 南 夏見: あれは、駅ですか。 |
| タクシーの運転手: ああ、そうです。横浜駅です。５分ぐらいです。 |
| 南 夏見: うーん。ここから駅まで５分。駅から ホテルまで １０分・・・。運転手さん！ここでいいです。いくらですか。 |
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72 Comments
HideMina-san, if you started as a Newbie and still think Japanese is difficult, guess again. This cab ride lastest for 3 lesson, but if you listen to the combined story, you'll be surprised at how much you can understand! Woo-hoo!
こんにちは Ryan,
You are very very welcome. 😇❤️️ We were so happy to read your positive message!
Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.
We wish you good luck with your language studies.
Kind regards,
レヴェンテ (Levente)
Team JapanesePod101.com
I just want to take the time to leave a nice comment and say how much i appreciate this website. i have already taken dozens of lessons and learned hiragana and katakana for free. most other sites are all about money but i havent been asked to upgrade on this site once. thank you for helping me learn japanese!!!!
Chimaさん
質問（しつもん）ありがとうございます😄
Yes, you can totally say that😇
Please let us know if you have any questions :)
Sincerely
Ryoma
Team JapanesePod101.com
Hello,
For the movie times practice in the lesson notes, could you use ぐらい to talk about the runtime like Spider-man is about 2 and half hours // スパイダーマンはななじ半からきゅうじごじゅうごふんまでです。スパイダーマンはにじかん半ぐらいです。??
Hi Oli,
Thank you for your question!
"[noun] de ii" means "[noun] is okay/fine for me."
(But please be careful as it sometimes implies that "even it's not the best for me.")
"Koko de ii desu", like in the dialogue, is often used when you ask a taxi driver to stop here.
Hope you enjoy learning Japanese with us😊
Sincerely,
Miho
Team JapanesePod101.com
in this lesson i noticed we use de in koko de ii desu (here is fine), why cant we use koko wa ii desu
Italoさん
質問（しつもん）ありがとうございます😄
「ません + か」is used to invite someone as "Shall we do ~?"
When you want to say "shall we" or "why don't we," it's always 「ません + か」😉
Yash PDさん
質問（しつもん）ありがとうございます😇
Grammatically speaking, the question mark isn't necessary because か is the question mark, but we still use it as か？😁
Please let us know if you have any questions :)
Sincerely
Ryoma
Team JapanesePod101.com
Do we use "か？" or just "か"
Do Japanese people use question mark?
Thank you 🌟
Good afternoon. In the exemple phrase of the word 駅 we have: いっしょに駅まで行きませんか。and the translation is: Shall we go to the station together? My question is: shouldnt we use 行きます in this situation? Is there any difference between 行きます and 行きません in this phrase?
Moさん
Thank you so much for your feedback😉
I'll forward this to my team👍
Please let us know if you have any questions :)
Sincerely
Ryoma
Team JapanesePod101.com