We go through life constantly having to explain our actions to others. It is no difference in Japanese as any other language. The most common way to do this is to use から. There are a couple of ways below. The biggest thing is to just pay attention to the patterns and how the sentences are formed. It is actually pretty simple once you get used to it.

The first way is the simplest. Create 2 sentences and add から to the end of the second one like below.

Pattern:

• Japanese: (situation)。 (reason)から。
• English: (situation). Because (reason).

Sentences:

• 私は今晩勉強します。明日テストがありますから。
  • わたしはきょばんべんきょうします。あしたテストがありますから。
  • I will study to night. Because I have a test tomorrow.
• バスに乗りましょう。タクシーは高いですから。
  • バスにのりましょう。タクシーはたかいですから。
  • Lets take the bus. Because taxi’s are expensive.
• 今が食べましょう。今晩は忙しいですから。
  • いまがたべましょう。きょばんはいそがしいですから。
  • Lets eat now. Because I am busy tonight.

The second way to do から is probably the more recommended way, even though I have heard both, because it feels more fluid and natural. Just like above pay attention to the pattern, and, almost literally, just reverse the sentences locations and replace the period with a comma.

Pattern:

(reason)から、(situation)。

(situaion), because (reason).

Sentences:

• 明日テストがありますから、私は今晩勉強します。
  • あしたテストがありますから、わたしはきょばんべんきょうします。
  • I will study tonight, because I have a test tomorrow.
• タクシーは高いですから、バスに乗りましょう。
  • タクシーはたかいですから、バスにのりましょう。
  • Lets ride the bus, because taxi’s are expensive.
• 今晩は忙しいですから、今が食べましょう。
  • きょばんはいそがしいですから、いまがたべましょう。
  • Lets eat now, because I will be busy tonight.

Hopefully this is enough for you get get a better feel for explaining yourself. I would recommend writing down a few sentences to get used to the pattern. Once you do that it will be fairly natural.

Related Posts:

• ~てすみませんでした, I’m Sorry
• 〜ておく Preparation Time
• Combining Activities with te-form verbs
• Top 10 Japanese Tounge Twisters

This is another て-form addon, noticing a pattern? There back in the main te-form post I hinted at teform being used to conjugate other things a lot. You are now starting to see that. In this case it is a way to apologize for something you have, or haven’t, done.

Something You Did

The crux of using it is to add すみませんでした to the end of a te-form verb.

• 朝ご飯を食べて、すみませんでした。
• あさごはんをたべて、すみませんでした。
• I ate breakfast, sorry.

• 猫を買って、すみませんでした。
• ねこをかって、すみませんでした。
• I am sorry I bought the cat.

You can also use the same construct, but add ごめん to the end to make it more casual, like with a friend.

• デートの約束を忘れて、ごめん。
• デートのやくそくをわすれて、ごめん。
• Sorry I stood you up.

Something You Didn’t Do

This is the same concept as above, but you use なくて. To get it at the end you need to get the short, negative ~ない form of a verb. Drop the い and add くて。

• 持ってこない
• 持ってこな
• 持ってこなくて

Here are some sentences

• 宿題をもってこなくて、すみませんでした。
• しゅくだいをもってこなくて、すみませんでした。
• I am sorry for not bringing in the homework.

• 洗濯しなくて、すみません。
• せんたくしなくて、すみません。
• Sorry I didn’t do the laundry.

With ごめん.

• もっと早く言わなくて、ごめん。
• もっとはやくいわなくて、ごめん。
• Sorry that i did not tell you earlier.

Conclusion

I have a feeling I will be using this one quite a bit. I tend to forget to do things all the time. This is actually kind of fun and easy to use once you figure it out. What are some example sentence you can come up with for this?

Related Posts:

• Combining Activities with te-form verbs
• Because 〜から
• 〜ておく Preparation Time
• Start Using New Verbs
• Adjective Conjugation Te-Form

おく is here to help. Especially since it is a helping verb about us preparing for something. ておく is actually て-form + おく:

て＋おく

It also conjugations like a normal u-verb. So your conjugations should work. Here are some example sentences.

• 明日試験があるので、今晩勉強しておきます。
• あしたしけんがあるので、こんばんべんきょうしておきます。
• Since there will be an exam tommorow, I will study tonight.

• 明日は雨が降りますから、バケツをかっておきました。
• あしたはあめがふりますから、バケツをかっておきました。
• I bought a bucket (to catch water), because it is supposed to rain tommorow.

• オテルを予約しておかなくちゃいけません。
• オテルをよやくしておくなくちゃいけません。
• I must make a hotel reservation in advance.

Hopefully those examples help show it in different forms, and are easy enough to understand (last one might hurt a bit). I find I don’t use this a lot, but when I have needed to it is really useful.

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One thing I have realized in learning Japanese is I didn’t pay attention a lot during elementary school while learning English. The biggest thing I didn’t pay attention to was terms regarding grammar. I know the big key elements, but all the littler ones, not so much.

Unfortunately, I have noticed quite a few people are in the same boat as me they just don’t want to admit. So, I am going to post up a few posts with key terms anywhere from 5 to 10 per post. So lets get started with the biggest most known ones just to get those out of the way.

• Verb – The part of speech that describes an action or occurrence or indicates a state of being
• Adverb – An adverb is a word that modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. Adverbs generally answer one of four questions: how, when, where, or to what extent
• Adjective – An adjective is a word that modifies a noun or pronoun
• Noun – A noun is a word that signifies a person, place, thing, idea, action, condition, or quality
• Subject – The subject of a sentence or clause is the part of the sentence or clause about which something is being said. It is usually the doer of the action. It is a noun or a pronoun
• Verb Tense – In English the tense also may provide emphasis and may determine whether or not an action or condition was continuous or repetitive

I think these are the ones I run across the most. If you have any suggestions of terms you see most often please let me know, and I’ll see about adding them to the next part.

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The word for “play” in Japanese does not necessarily have the same context in Japanese as it does in English.

In English when we think play we think, in general, we think games or sports. From tennis and golf to video games or mind games.

The word 遊ぶ (あそぶ) can mean up to three main things.

• to play
• to spend time pleasantly
• to pay a social visit

To Play generally refers to the concept of playing not “actual” playing.

• こどものとき、よくともだちとあそびました
• When i was a hild, I often played with friends

To Spend Time Pleasantly refers to having a good time like going to a club or hanging out with friends.

• せんしゅうのしゅうまつはとうきょうにあそびにいきました
• I went to Tokyo to have fun last weekend

To Pay a Social Visit refers to when you visit someone as more a social obligation to be nice. Like if you had in-laws you hate and they invite you it is a social call to go visit them usually “playing” isn’t involved.

• わたしのうちにあそびにきてください
• Please come and see us again

The last one is the one that bugs me the most as it is so often mis-translated or purposely not changed in translation. I have seen a few j-drama where someone is invited to a house, party, or in one case a boat ride. Each of these they left play as the translated word and it is confusing if you don’t know the context from the Japanese langauge point of view.

If you want to say you are going to play a sport or video game you would use the verb する.

• テニスをする
• テレビゲームをする

There are other nuances to “playing” stuff, but this is the gist of it. I’ll come back down the road and expand more.

Update: Just Another Day in Japan posted a good compliment to this. Give it a read.Let’s enjoy Japanese: Playing around

Related Posts:

• 10 Steps to Start Learning Japanese
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In another post we had a video on object placement. Today we are going to go beyond an objects relative position to the speaker and discuss relative position to other things or places. This is, after all, more well used, some examples might be:

The building to the right of the post office.
On top of the table.
Under your shoe.

So lets look at the words that we are going to use and their translations.

The usage is actually fairly simple. Pretty much plug and chug, for those math people. X should be a noun Y should be the object and the location.

X は Y　の (location) です

Here it is with the words above.

Soooo what does that mean? Well here is an image to describe the translation

Basically when you say something like.

じてんしゃはとしょかんのなかです

You are saying the bike is in the library. Here are some more.

ぎんこうはとしょかんのとなりです。 – The bank is next to the library.
かさはテービルのしたです。 – The umbrella is under the table.
レストランはデパートとびゅおういんのあいだです – The restaurant is between the department store and the hospital.

Hopefully this will give you a start with describing where things are.

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We already discussed te-form verb conjugation so lets go to the next step and talk about combining activities, because lets face it we rarely just talk about one thing at a time. To do this we combine verbs to do anything from combining two actions, or two things we are doing, to describing why or how we are doing something. Lets look at a couple of examples.

ノートをかりて、コピーします
(I will borrow her notebook and xerox it.)

きょうは、ろくじにおきて、べんきょうしました
(Today I got up at six and studied.)

しょくどうにいって、ひるごはんをたべましょう
(Let’s go to the cafeteria and have lunch.)

Here is an example of how the first verb describes how the second one takes place

バスにのって、かいしゃにいきます
(I go to work by bus.)

This example describes the situation for which the apology is made

きょうかしょをわすれて、すみません
(I am sorry for not bringing in the textbook.)

Hopefully this will get you started on writing more than 4 word sentences. Well at least I am now writing 5 word sentences.

Related Posts:

• ~てすみませんでした, I’m Sorry
• Because 〜から
• 〜ておく Preparation Time
• Start Using New Verbs
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Things exist in this world and we need to know how to tell others that. You might say “there is a TV in the living room”, “There is a McDonalds down the street”, “Over there is a TV”, “Tomorrow is a Test”. These are examples of phrases we use that show existence.

The root verb we start from is ある and we do verb conjugation from there to get our different meanings. This is a fairly often used verb in the Japanese language in many many forms so it is important to take some time and make sure you understand it. For that reason I am going to go ahead and write down several example sentences and their translations.

• あそこにマクドナルドがあります – There is a Mcdonalds over there. Notice the が instead of は? we use が instead of は in this case since it is presenting something. Normally if we were just talking about McDonald’s we would use は since it is the topic marker
• テレビがありません – (I don’t have a TV) here we are doing the negative present tense conjugation
• じかんがありますか – (Do you have the time?) time exists and it can be given or presented so we are asking for it
• かようびにテストがあります – (There will be a test on Tuesday) we can also use あります to specify an event is going to take place
• あしたはにほんごのクラスがありません – (There will be no Japanese class tomorrow) and as above we can also say there isn’t going to be an event

If you notice all the objects that have existed above are not alive. For that we use a different form います. Here are a couple of examples

• あそこにりゅうがくせいがいます – (There’s an international student over there)
• せんせいはどこにいあますか – (Where is the teacher?)

Hopefully this will be enough to get you started down the road of understanding how to refer to something or someone existing. I will hit on more in a later post as I shuffle more through particle usage.

If you have anything to offer to help others to understand this any better please leave a comment.

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When it comes to ru-vebs there are a lot of weird things going on, but lets first look at irregular verbs since they are an easy exception.   The irregular verb will have a る at the end of the word, but to determine if it is an irregular verb or not we need to look at the character before it. In the irregular verbs case you will either see a す or a く, so する or くる. Just remember the する or くる are irregular verbs.

Now that we have the main exception out of the way lets dig further into u-verbs or ru-verbs on verbs ending with る(ru). Unfortunately someone decided it was a good idea to confuse us all and make life a tad bit more difficult by making some ru-verbs u-verbs, but they did help us out a bit, only a bit. There is a way to determine if a verb ending in る is an u-verb or a ru-verb.  Basically, it is decided by the sound before る.

If the sound before る is a, u, or o it is always an u-verb. So if you have a verb that the end sounds like aru, uru(minus exception above), or oru it is an u-verb. Lets take a look at a couple of examples.

のる
やる
かぶる

lets break these down to get the “sounds” to do this the easeist thing to do is just convert to romaji.

noru
yaru
kaburu

Now we have the romaji take a look before the ru. In red is the sound so. They are o, a, and u therefore they are u-verbs.

Next is verbs that are ru-verbs. To determine if they are actually ru-verbs we need to take a look again at the sound just before the る. In this case are are at iru and eru. If the sound is i or e most of the time it will be a ru-verb, we will talk about the exception after we look at some examples.

たべる
おりる

Now to break it down to romaji.

taberu
oriru

Again in red is the sound before ru. We have the sounds i and u so they are real ru-verbs.

So time for the exception to this rule, basically most of the time they are ru-verbs, but sometimes they are u-verbs. That is it, that is the explanation of the exception. I have talked to several people and the best explanation is “statistically speaking there are more ru verbs than uverbs”. And another person, my sensei, said “best way to know whether it is u or ru is to just memorize the exceptions because there isn’t a good way to tell.” Please if you know another way and are reading this let me know.

Hopefully, this is understandable for you I’ll leave you with some more examples for you to take a look at.

u-verbs
あそぶ (asobu)
いそぐ (isogu)
かえす (kaesu)
けす (kesu)
たつ (tatsu)

ru-verbs
あける (akeru)
おりる (oriru)
つける (tsukeru)
わすれる (wasureru)
しめる (shimeru)

irregular verbs
つれてくる (tsuretekuru)
もってくる (mottekuru)
けっこんする (kekkonsuru)
せんたくする (sentakusuru)
うんてんする (untensuru)

Related Posts:

• 〜ておく Preparation Time
• Start Using New Verbs
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• Don’t do that with short forms
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Verbs are a big part of any langauge.  They help to describe what we are doing, did or going to do.  The following are some of the more basic verbs that you would use quite often.

Ru-Verbs

U-Verbs

Irregular Verbs

I am just posting these as a precursor of things to come.  I was going to do some usage, but as I was going through typing things out I realized I haven’t explained on here at all anything that would help to make sense.  I am going to do a bit more grammar before posting verb usage and conjugation.  Just look at this as a post to get an idea of what some of the words are.

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• Can You Really Play in Japanese?
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