Daily lessons · Day 6 of 90
You finished this day
Where is …?
Find the station, the toilet, anything
Getting lost is the default state of a first trip to Japan - addresses work differently, and stations are enormous. Today gives you one reliable question pattern for finding anything, the direction words you need to catch in the reply, and a strategy for understanding an answer that's faster than your Japanese.
The master pattern
One frame finds anything. Swap the place and it keeps working:
That's now three question words in one identical frame: なん (what), いくら (how much) and どこ (where). Two more worth having: だれ (dare, who) and いつ (itsu, when). The frame never changes - [thing] は [question word] ですか. This is the highest-leverage sentence pattern in beginner Japanese.
Understanding the answer
You don't need to parse a whole reply. You need to catch these anchor words:
Here's the practical strategy: don't try to understand the whole sentence. Listen for one or two anchors and act on them. If you catch つぎ and みぎ, “next corner on the right” is enough to get moving. Japanese people are famously willing to help - many will simply walk you there - so a partial understanding plus a grateful ありがとうございます works perfectly well.
Useful follow-ups
Three phrases that make the exchange smoother:
That last one is worth its weight in gold and worth practising even though it's long. It's polite, it's specific, and in any large station, hotel or department store the answer is usually yes. Notice はなせる (hanaseru) - “can speak”; you'll meet this “potential form” properly later, but for now keep the whole sentence as one memorised unit.
Carry over, from earlier days
Check yourself
9 questions. Nothing is saved unless you finish.