Going to Japan soon - recommendations for love hotels, onsen

[buster38]

Hi, my husband and I are going to Japan soon for two weeks. I have been there before and speak basic Japanese -(passed level 3) but my grammar isn't so good.
Can someone please tell me the Japanese for: I'm sorry I don't speak Japanese fluently, but please try to understand my pidgin Japanese.
I think I'd say something like: Suimimasen, Nihongo wa sukoshi hanasemasu, watashi no kirei jya nai nihongo o wakatte mite kudasai.

Also, how early can we go into a love hotel for the all night stay? Are they about 8000 - 10,000 yen for the night? Any recommendations in Tokyo, Hiroshima, Osaka and Kyoto? We are going to stay in the odd ryokan as well!

My best friend teaches Japanese in a high school in NZ and I said I'd try to get some teaching resources for her. Does anyone know of a good place to do that?

We are going to the Hakone area - we have JR passes but do we still need to get the Hakone Freedom pass or can we get to nice areas with the JR pass? I don't really want to pre-book all the shinkansen tickets, if we rock up to the station in the morning can we usually get on a train? There are no public holidays while we are there.

One last question: where can we have an onsen bath where the monkeys are?

Thanks for your help!

Deborah

[Heerefishyfish]

Mmm I went to Japan for about 10 days, and absolutely loved it. I'm not sure of your age/likes/dislikes, so our trips could be very different; I'm 23, if helps at all.

We spent all of our time inside of Tokyo, except for heading out Kamakura for a day, so real onsen were not in the cards for us.

That said, be verrrry glad you're going to Hakone for your onsen experience. We went to a sort of theme park one in Tokyo and while it was fun, it was definitely not the real thing. I can't remember where that was exactly, but I remember we had to take the monorail to a place called Yurikamone.

As for lodging, the best place I stayed was an awesome hotel in Ginza, but it was a little pricey, like 200 per night. Expensive compared to the dirt cheap hostels all over Tokyo

Khaosan Tokyo Guest House in Asakusa was awesome. Very cheap nightly prices, plus they give you one free drink per day at their bar. We met people from all over the world there.

Good luck over there!

[Psy]

Hi, my husband and I are going to Japan soon for two weeks. I have been there before and speak basic Japanese -(passed level 3) but my grammar isn't so good.
Can someone please tell me the Japanese for: I'm sorry I don't speak Japanese fluently, but please try to understand my pidgin Japanese.
I think I'd say something like: Suimimasen, Nihongo wa sukoshi hanasemasu, watashi no kirei jya nai nihongo o wakatte mite kudasai.

I can't really help you with the tourist stuff, however as a rule wakaru isn't generally used with wo or te kudasai (it's one of those weird verbs that takes the form of the potential, eg. dekiru, hanaseru, without any conjugation). One of the nice things about Japanese is you can cut off a lot of your thoughts and leave the context to be decided by the listener. Personally, I would say sumimasen, nihongo wa sukoshi shika hanasenain desu ga... (I'm sorry, it's just that I only speak a little Japanese...) and trail off the sentence there. The rest of what you want to say should be perfectly clear.

Have a great trip!

[jkid]

sumimasen, nihongo wa sukoshi shika hanasenain desu ga...

しか 'takes' a negative verb always correct? So in the above example despite 話す not be positive the translation is as you stated? My instinct would be to automatically think don't speak because of ない.

[Psy]

Yes. しか〜ない is a construction that means "only." Thus すこししかない is "only a little," 英語しかない "only English," etc. You can also tag it onto verbs where it means "only" in the sense of "there's no other choice but." 我慢するしかない "... can do nothing but endure." Useful little construction that you'll hear quite often.

[buster38]

Thanks for the advice so far!