go, come, and return for beginners and newbies

[Alcyone]

If there hasn't already been a beginner or newbie lesson on go, come, and return can we get one? I get 行きます (except that I can't go home) but the nuances of きます and かえります baffle me.

I think this is very different in Japanese than English because I can go, come, or return to home, the office, a vacation destination, my friend's house, etc. in English but apparently can't do that in Japanese but 先生 's explanation doesn't stick.

[Javizy]

Come and go work pretty much the same (although they have some special uses as auxiliary verbs), and かえる functions as English 'to come back' and 'to go back', but it can be translated differently to make the English sound more natural.

It needs to be somewhere you'd be expected to return to, so you could かえる to your friend's house if you were already there and popped out with him to get some beer, you can かえる to the office from a lunch break, and you can かえる home because you live there and are expected to come back sooner or later.

かいしゃにかえりましょう
Let's get back (go back) to the office.
はやく(うちに)かえてください
Please hurry home (come back quickly).

[markystar]

this is how i sort them out in my head, so if it helps think of 帰る as "come home, go back home" (although as javizy mentioned there are a few other uses.

again, another simplified way to think of things:

戻る is literally "to return (to some place/point"

来る is "come" as in to a place close to the speaker

行く is "go" as in to a place far from the speaker

[Javizy]

Now Marky has said that, I can't remember a time when I've heard it used about the office like in the example I gave, so you might want to ignore that and check out the640+ Example Sentences Here. Try getting rikaichan if you can't read the kanji, otherwise you should be able to get a fair sense of how to use the word from the translations.