Learn about ordering
Now Playing: Lesson Audio
Get a breakdown of the dialogue and translations instantly with the Premium line-by-line Audio. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.
Get this lesson’s key vocab, their translations and pronunciations. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.
| INTRODUCTION |
| Yoshi&Sakura: おはよう東京。 |
| Sakura: サクラです。 |
| Yoshi: ヨシです。 |
| Peter: Peter here. Survival phrases #22. Sakura san, two weeks in a row. |
| Sakura: Yes I managed. |
| Peter: It’s great to have you here. |
| Sakura: ありがとうございます。 |
| Yoshi: Much better than Yoshi. |
| Peter: What do you mean, what do you mean? |
| Yoshi: Yoshi-san, you are a good looking guy but let’s face it. |
| Yoshi: 今日のレッスンは…… |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Sakura: Yes, let's start. |
| Peter: Okay. We just want to remind you to stop by japanesepod101.com, again in the learning center, we have pictures up and we are going to have some very interesting pictures this week. |
| Sakura: Oh. |
| Peter: Dealing with today’s topic. And these questions are quiz related. So you see the picture, then you get the question. Really, really good stuff and again preparation for the JLPT. In addition, we have much more inside the PDF and much more in the learning center. So stop by japanesepod101.com, all right. Now let’s get into today’s lesson. |
| Sakura: Right. |
| Peter: The background behind this lesson was, remember sensei from Mexico? |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: Now he came to Japan, he came to visit us. He made our day, he brought us some tequila which has gone missing since Yoshi started here but since it’s so good, we can’t really bring it up. |
| Sakura: うそだ。うそだ。Lie. |
| Peter: Sakura, I am not lying. |
| Sakura: Oh! |
| Peter: Now we asked about his experience here and what was difficult for him. He said, he had a little trouble with |
| Sakura: 食券の自動販売機。ヨシさん、お願いします。 |
| Yoshi: 食券の自動販売機。 |
| Peter: And Sakura, what is this in English? |
| Sakura: It's a vending machine for food tickets. |
| Peter: Okay. What’s the word for vending machine? |
| Sakura: 自動販売機 |
| Peter: Break it down. |
| Sakura: じ・ど・う・は・ん・ば・い・き |
| Peter: Yoshi san, give it to us once. |
| Yoshi: 自動販売機 |
| Peter: And Sakura san, what’s the first part? |
| Sakura: 食券 |
| Peter: And this is |
| Sakura: Food tickets. |
| Peter: Yoshi san |
| Yoshi: 食券 |
| Peter: In Japan, it’s not uncommon to go to a restaurant and as soon as you go in or maybe even outside the restaurant, there is a vending machine. |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: And you buy the ticket there for what you want to eat. You bring it inside, you pass it to the people and they bring you out the food. |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: It’s a good system. The only problem with this is I’ve only seen a few with English or Romaji which means most of them have Chinese characters kanji or kana, the Japanese writing system. |
| Sakura: Right. |
| Peter: So [00:03:08] sensei, he had the problem of – he didn’t know what was what because even if you can read it, you may not know the meaning. So you need a dictionary and plus if you haven’t had anything, you may not even know what’s good. So if you can’t read it or you don’t know what’s good, how do we get by this problem and that’s what we are going to cover today. |
| Sakura: Right. |
| Peter: Sakura san, can you give us the word for a food ticket one more time. |
| Sakura: 食券 |
| Peter: Break it down. |
| Sakura: しょっ・け・ん |
| Peter: Now the kanji for this word, what is the meaning of the first word? |
| Sakura: To eat. |
| Peter: And Yoshi san, what’s the meaning of the second word? |
| Yoshi: Ticket. |
| Peter: There it is, food ticket. |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: Eat ticket, food ticket. What we are going to do now is change the format a bit and give you a conversation to see how much you can pick up. Now the two people involved in this conversation are the store employee and a foreigner visiting and that person cannot read what’s on the food ticket vending machine. Now in order to do this dialogue, we went around and did research. |
| Sakura: As we always do. |
| Peter: As we always do. |
| Sakura: Yeah. |
| Peter: And Yoshi san, how do we do research? |
| Yoshi: How? |
| Peter: How? |
| Yoshi: How? |
| Peter: Did you forget me going into the store and at the store pretending I don’t know Japanese, calling out the people working there. |
| Yoshi: Ah I see it now, yes. |
| Peter: Now we have been to over ten places and they were all the same. Everybody was really helpful. So we guarantee that this works. It has not failed for us yet but then again, we are in Tokyo. We are not in the boondocks. So we can’t vouch for it, but as far as in Tokyo, we didn’t have any problems. What we did was, we called over the store employee and he kind of walked us through it. Now this conversation is based on japanesepod101.com research. All right, I went around to a bunch of places, went in and asked them to help me out. I said that I didn’t understand Japanese. I can’t read, help me out. This conversation consists of the ten or so places that I went to, the experiences I had and we came together with a pretty good conversation that kind of will give you the gist of how things went. After that, we are going to break it down and give you some other pointers on how other things may work because a bunch of times, other people intervened. It was really funny, like people really wanted to help. So we have some good stories, we have some good things but first let’s get into this dialogue. It consists of a foreigner and a store employee. The foreigner is standing in front of the food ticket vending machine. In this case, Yoshi-San, so he calls over the store employee. Here we go. |
| Yoshi: すみません。ちょっと分からないんですが。 |
| Sakura: はーい。何がいいですか？ |
| Yoshi: どれがおいしいですか？ |
| Sakura: 全部おいしいですよ。 |
| Yoshi: はい、全部お願いします。 |
| Sakura: いや、違う違う。じゃあ、温かいものがいいですか？ |
| Yoshi: はい。 |
| Sakura: じゃあ、蕎麦(そば)がおいしいですよ。 |
| Yoshi: はい、お願いします。 |
| Sakura: お金をここに入れて、ここを押してください。おつりを忘れないでください。 |
| Yoshi: どうもありがとう。もう一度お願いします。ゆっくりお願いします。 |
| すみません。ちょっと分からないんですが。 |
| Sakura: はーい。何が、いいですか？ |
| Yoshi: どれが、おいしいですか？ |
| Sakura: 全部、おいしいですよ。 |
| Yoshi: はい、全部、お願いします。 |
| Sakura: いや、違う、違う。じゃあ、温かいものが、いいですか？ |
| Yoshi: はい。 |
| Sakura: じゃあ、蕎麦(そば)が、おいしいですよ。 |
| Yoshi: はい、お願いします。 |
| Sakura: ここに、お金を入れて、ここを、押してください。おつりを、忘れないでください。 |
| Yoshi: どうもありがとう。 |
| Peter: Okay. Let’s break this down line by line. First line please. |
| Yoshi: すみません。 |
| Peter: Excuse me and this expression we covered many, many times. |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: Excuse me, really yell it out. Sakura san, give us a good すみません。 |
| Sakura: すみませんーん。 |
| Peter: Weak. Yoshi san, give us a good すいません。 |
| Yoshi: すみませーーん！ |
| Peter: Nice. |
| Sakura: いいね。 |
| Peter: Come on, that’s a すいません。 |
| Sakura: Okay. |
| Peter: Next. |
| Yoshi: ちょっと、分からないんですが。 |
| Peter: Okay. Here is a great phrase and again, last week, we had |
| Sakura: んですが |
| Peter: Again to soften things and kind of – what comes next is very apparent that you need help. After this, a lot can be inferred. What comes before it, this is the important part. Yoshi? |
| Yoshi: 分からない |
| Peter: Now this is the informal form of the verb to understand but when we put the |
| Sakura: んですが |
| Peter: It becomes polite again. |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: So this is a phrase you can use multiple times in Japan. If you don’t know how to do something, all you need to say is |
| Sakura: ちょっと分からないんですが。 |
| Peter: And the person will look and see, oh you need help and come to help. |
| Sakura: Right. |
| Peter: All the time I use this. And it’s funny. I don’t have to explain what comes after because they can infer. Next. |
| Sakura: はーい。何がいいですか？ |
| Peter: Yes. What would you like? |
| Yoshi: どれがおいしいですか？ |
| Peter: Now here is the million dollar question. If you just take one phrase away from this lesson, this is the phrase you want to take away. We will give it to you one more time. Sakura san お願いします。 |
| Sakura: どれがおいしいですか？ |
| Peter: Which is delicious. |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: Break it down Yoshi. |
| Yoshi: ど・れ・が・お・い・し・い・で・す・か？ |
| Peter: This is the phrase. If you say this to the person working at the store, they will understand. It will all become clear. Ah you want to eat here, you just don’t know what to get. |
| Sakura: Uh… |
| Peter: And they will help you and the reason I say they will with confidence is because again ten stores, 10 for 10 and actually some of the people sitting down actually got up and tried to help me in English. |
| Sakura: 大変、大変…。 |
| Peter: Yeah. [00: 09:37] was really good at English too. |
| Sakura: 本当。 |
| Peter: So yes we went causing trouble in the store for you…Ah listen… |
| Sakura: Ahh…Terrible. We can also use this when we are looking at the menu while you are sitting down in the restaurant ちょっと、ちょっと。 |
| Peter: Yoshi, next line. |
| Sakura: Say it, say it. |
| Peter: Yes. We can use this one too at the restaurant, very useful. |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: Useful expression. |
| Sakura: Yes. 全部おいしいですよ。 |
| Peter: They are all delicious. Now this is based on 2 or 3 answers I got as jokes from the Japanese people working there. |
| Sakura: I think it's a popular answer. |
| Peter: Yeah. |
| Sakura: Yeah. |
| Peter: Because they have confidence in their food. |
| Sakura: Yeah. I got this answer many times from – yeah. |
| Peter: And this means everything. |
| Sakura: Right. |
| Yoshi: はい、全部お願いします。 |
| Peter: Yeah. So you might not know what the word is. So you are thinking, oh yeah I will take everything. So Yoshi just asked for everything. Okay, one of everything. |
| Sakura: Right. いや、違う違う。 |
| Peter: Ah no it’s different, it’s different. |
| Sakura: じゃあ、温かいものがいいですか？ |
| Peter: So here is a very useful phrase. One more time please. |
| Sakura: 温かいもの |
| Peter: One more hot thing. So do you want something hot or what’s the opposite? |
| Sakura: 冷たいもの |
| Peter: Do you want something cold? Hot dish or a cold dish. |
| Yoshi: はい |
| Peter: Yes hot dish. |
| Sakura: じゃあ、蕎麦(そば)がおいしいですよ。 |
| Peter: Okay. Soba is delicious. |
| Yoshi: はい、お願いします。 |
| Peter: Okay I will take it. |
| Sakura: ここにお金を入れて |
| Peter: Put your money in here. |
| Sakura: ここを押してください。 |
| Peter: Push here. |
| Sakura: おつりを忘れないでください。 |
| Peter: And please don’t forget your change. |
| Yoshi: どうもありがとう。 |
| Peter: Thank you and again we went over the phrase of thank you. The change please and other things, maybe your ears will get a bit accustomed to that after a couple of weeks here. |
| Sakura: Right. |
| Peter: Let’s just give you one. Change is quite important because you might forget your change and you might hear this in the background. |
| Sakura: おつり |
| Peter: Okay. Two more phrases that might come in useful in this type of store. Now, you could ask for the employee’s opinion and how we do that? |
| Sakura: おすすめをお願いします。 |
| Peter: Your recommendation please and this one works pretty well too but sometimes you will have an employee who can’t decide. So you both stand in the machine. You don’t know and the employee doesn’t know what to get. And one more phrase we want to give you before time is running out today |
| Yoshi: お水、お願いします。 |
| Peter: Water please. And especially if you are backpacking through here, you probably want to get a few glasses. |
| Sakura: Right. |
| Peter: All right. What a day! |
| Sakura: What a day! |
| Peter: This one will come in handy, really handy. |
| Sakura: Yes I think so. |
| Peter: Remember, instead of playing food ticket roulette trying to get something delicious, just call the person over, call the employee over and they will help you. They will get you through it. |
| Sakura: Yes. |
| Peter: All right. And if all else fails, you can use |
| Sakura: 英語で大丈夫ですか？ |
| Peter: And during my research, when I asked for help and I said, |
| Sakura: ちょっと分からないんですが。 |
| Peter: When I said this phrase ちょっと分からないですが the ちょっと adds a little bit of – a little bit. I just don’t understand a little bit and it’s kind of attached to many things when you are asking for something but many times, even though the employee couldn’t speak English, they tried. So they will try and help you and they try and get you through it. |
| Sakura: Right. |
| Peter: So the point is, get the store employee involved. They will change your meal tremendously. Get the patrons involved. |
| Sakura: Ah… |
| Peter: Sakura san, you don’t agree? |
| Sakura: No, no, no it’s just you know 大変 |
| Peter: Don’t tell me that. |
| Sakura: No but it’s – yeah they will be excited as well. |
| Peter: Yeah. |
| Sakura: そうそう。 They would like it, actually. |
Outro |
| Peter: All right. That’s going to do it for today. |
| Sakura: また明日ね。 |
| Yoshi: またね。 |
| Peter: See you tomorrow. |
Get complete breakdowns, review with quizzes and download printable practice sheets! Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.
Comments
Hide