Japanese Perfect Master: Lesson 4

Today we explore different objects and nouns, and ask someone to identify them for us. This is a good opportunity to learn new vocabulary and perhaps, if you find it useful, to start sticking post-it notes on items in your house with their Japanese names!

We also learn about possession with a new particle, the の particle. 私(わたし) の ○○○ です。means ‘That is my ○○○’. So, we know who the ○○○ belongs to.

0:10

Tom-san and Mike-san discuss the surrounding items. We learn a new question word どこ to ask ‘Where’ something is from. One other helpful word in this conversation is たぶん, which means ‘maybe’ or ‘probably’.

Tom-san and Mike-san also end some of their sentences with ですね。 Where the extra ‘ね’ here is a way to express agreement like: ‘I understand’. It’s not a formal expression or used when writing.

Activity ①
Pause the video after you hear the conversation a second time. See if you can understand the conversation, at 1:26
1. What item do Mark-san and Tom-san talk about first?
2. Where is it from?
3. Who does the bag probably belong to?

1:28

Ken-san and Bob-san have the same three conversations. Pay attention to the style and listen out for the new vocabulary.

Kevin-san uses ですよ。 At the end of his sentence. A bit like the extra ‘ね’, ‘よ’ here is used in agreement with Bob-san. They both think the book is 面白(おもしろ)い ‘interesting’. Again, you wouldn’t use the extra ね or よ when writing something since you can’t agree or understand something with your reader!

Activity ②
Pause the video after you hear the conversation a second time. See if you can understand the conversation at 2:37
1. Whose computer is it?
2. How much does the computer cost? (From Lesson 2!)
3. What kind of book is it?
4. Who does the book belong to?

2:38

Paul-san and James-san talk about something which belongs to Matthew. In the second half of the conversation practice, we clean back into asking the price for things from Lesson 2. A helpful phrase here is そうですか。 Which (confusingly) isn’t asking a question directly, it’s an expression ‘Is that so?’ which is a conversation filler.

Activity ③
Pause the video after you hear the conversation a second time. See if you can understand the conversation at 3:47
1. What item belongs to Matthew-san?
2. Where is that item from?
3. How much does the cake cost?

4:04

Activity ④
Congratulations! You’ve made it through the video. Can you answer these questions with あらた-san, the narrator? Pick a random object, but something you know the word for to use as a point of discussion. You’ll be asked what it is, who it belongs to, where it is from and how much it costs.