Learn about buying a phone card
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Takase &Yoshi: おはよう東京。 |
| Yoshi: ヨシです。 |
| Takase: タカセです。 |
| Peter: Peter here, Survival Phrases #48, ながさconnection, back again for the first time in a long time! |
| Takase: What did you say? |
| Yoshi: What connection? |
| Takase: He said ながさ connection. |
| Peter: No, I said ‘き’. |
| Yoshi: I thought he said ながせconnection |
| Peter: タカセ connection? |
| Takase: Peter, 長崎(ながさき) connection! |
| Yoshi: Yeay! |
| Takase: Yeay! |
| Peter: It’s all on tape, I have proof that I said 長崎connection. ‘き, き’. |
| Takase: You said ながさ connection. |
| Peter: Of course, because what comes next to ‘き’, you didn’t give me a chance to finish! I said, I was building up – ‘な・が・さ’ and then I was about to say ‘き’ and then you were like ‘Oh well, alright’…the first day back in a long time and already causing trouble. |
| Takase: Can we leave now? |
| Yoshi: I think he got mixed up with 長崎and タカセtogether so it was like ‘ながせ’ |
| Takase: I am ナナセ |
| Yoshi: ナナセ |
| Peter: Are we done here? Are we about done? |
| Takase: 大丈夫です。 |
| Peter: It’s nice to have some discipline around here though I must admit, a little scary, right, isn’t, I mean you missed Halloween but you haven’t lost this scary side. Okay, so we’re back, let’s see, Yoshi san. I'm waiting to seeing this is a bit of an archaic Survival Phrases because I don’t think it’s used as much as it was about 10 years ago and before that. |
| Yoshi: That’s right. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Peter: Now, the frequency of this phrase has plummeted, especially for people residing in Japan. However, if you are coming to Japan, this just may come in very handy at some point. Yoshi san, what are we talking about today? |
| Yoshi: テレホンカード |
| Peter: Telephone card, and of course this is used with what, Yoshi san? |
| Yoshi: 公衆電話 |
| Peter: Public phones. Now, when I first came to Japan about 7 years ago there were public phones everywhere. Nowadays, they’re pulling them out everywhere and the number has plummeted. I mean, you need directions just to get to a public phone and that’s because of the rise of the cell phone and especially in Japan. Now, Takase, sorry it’s been so long, Takase san? |
| Takase: はい。 |
| Peter: Yoshi san, please ask the question for me, I want to ask her when was the last time she used the phone so just please ask for me. Good luck! |
| Yoshi: Takase san, when was the last time you used a public phone? |
| Takase: A few months ago. |
| Peter: Yoshi san, how about yourself? |
| Yoshi: When I came back from the States, so it was at the end of February. |
Lesson focus |
| Peter: Yes, and I can’t remember the last time that I used one, so for people in Japan, most people have cell phones now, but if you are coming to Japan, and you’re going on a trip it may be a really good idea to pick up a telephone card, just because, in case you need to call someone, a friend, if you need someone, or just to have it around, as you can use it with most public phones. Okay, so in today’s conversation, we’re going to get you a telephone card. We’re going to explain how to ask for one and then what denomination you’ll want. Okay, so let’s get into today’s conversation. The following conversation will take place at a convenience store. Here we go. |
| Staff: ！いらっしゃいませ。 |
| Yoshi: テレホンカードはありますか？ |
| Takase: はい、あります。 |
| Peter: 1000円のカードをお願いします。 |
| Takase: はい、どうぞ。 |
| Peter: One more time, slowly please. |
| Takase: もう一度お願いします。ゆっくりお願いします。 |
| Yoshi: テレホンカードは、ありますか？ |
| Takase: はい、あります。 |
| Yoshi: 1000えんのカードを、おねがいします。 |
| Takase: はい、どうぞ。 |
| Peter: This time, Takase san and Yoshi san will give you the Japanese and I’ll give you the English. Here we go. |
| Yoshi: テレホンカードはありますか？ |
| Peter: Do you have telephone cards? |
| Takase: はい、あります。 |
| Peter: Yes, we have them. |
| Yoshi: 1000円のカードをお願いします。 |
| Peter: A thousand-yen telephone card, please. |
| Takase: はい、どうぞ。 |
| Peter: Yes, here you are. Okay, before we get in, before we dissect this conversation, before we give you some cultural insight and some tips, let’s just go through the vocab in today’s lesson. |
| Yoshi: テレホンカード |
| Peter: Telephone card. |
| Yoshi: て・れ・ほ・ん・か・あ・ど、テレホンカード |
| Peter: This comes from the two English words, telephone and card. Now, can we just break this down because even for me this pronunciation, the telephone pronunciation is a bit tricky so can you give us the two words individually, one more time. Telephone? |
| Yoshi: テレホン |
| Peter: And just break it down? |
| Yoshi: て・れ・ほ・ん、テレホン |
| Peter: テレホン. Is that it? |
| Yoshi: Mm-hmm. |
| Peter: And then followed by? |
| Yoshi: カード |
| Peter: Got a long vowel in there. One more time, just break that down? |
| Yoshi: か・あ・ど、カード |
| Peter: Okay, so these words appear in カタカナ and derived from the English words telephone and card. Of course they’re a bit different meanings, now what this is, it’s a small card, about the size of a credit card and it’s very thin and most public phones, most of the phones that I’ve seen in Japan, are equipped with a slot for these cards to go into. Now these cards are very flimsy, they’re very bendable, they used to come in different denominations, like a wide variety back when telephone cards were very popular. This was a common way, a lot of people used public phones to make calls so they would come in very high denominations. Nowadays, the denominations aren’t that high so we are going to have to check this out, if you come by japanesepod101.com we’ll have information up there about what denominations they go up to currently and what they went up to in the past. Now, even nowadays, some people carry a thousand-yen telephone card just in case your cell phone, the battery runs out or something comes up, you’re out of range, so it’s kind of like an insurance policy and this is the one type of telephone card. Now, they also have an IC card. Now this is a bit off the topic and again we’ll have something on the site about this, but newer phones are equipped with an IC telephone card which is a bit different from what we are talking about today, but on the site we’ll have something about this. Okay, now I personally carry a thousand-yen telephone card. Yoshi san, do you carry one? |
| Yoshi: Yes, I do. |
| Peter: And Takase? |
| Takase: No. |
| Peter: You’ve a lot of faith in the cell phone system in Japan, right? |
| Takase: No. |
| Peter: Why don’t you carry one? |
| Takase: I always have coins and I don’t need one. |
| Peter: Excellent point. You don’t necessarily need a telephone card to make a call in Japan as the public phones, they take coins, but let me ask you this, Takase san and Yoshi san, what benefit would you have using a telephone card over coins? |
| Yoshi: It’s bendable?! |
| Peter: Yes, and I guess you could use it to protect yourself in case of mugging and some other things – it’s pretty sharp, a couple of rounded corners, it looks like you could do some damage, but I think the main reason is if you’ve ever attempted to use coins on a public phone you’re just going to keep putting them in. I’ve never…you get, for 10 yen you get 10 seconds. Also, you don’t change, Takase san, if you put in 100 yen and you just want to say hi to your friend. You have to wait until your money runs out. ‘Oh, I still have time, let’s talk to the end,’ because you won’t get that change back, will you? Will you? |
| Takase: Well, I don’t mind! |
| Yoshi: (laugh) |
| Peter: Haha, okay, so the benefits – I don’t have any proof yet but I’m very confident from my experience that you get more time for your money using the telephone card as opposed to pumping in coins, plus with the coins you don’t get any change back. What you put in, stays in, okay. Let’s move on to the number we covered in today’s lesson. |
| Takase: 1000円 |
| Peter: 1,000 yen. Break it down? |
| Takase: せ・ん・え・ん、1000円 |
| Peter: And this comes from the word thousand 円 yen which in Japanese is actually, Takase san? |
| Takase: 円 |
| Peter: 円. So in English we say yen, we get the y in there but in Japanese, no such y. What’s the denomination for a thousand again? |
| Takase: 1000 |
| Peter: Break it down? |
| Takase: せ・ん、1000 |
| Peter: Now, the nice thing about this phrase that we introduced today, is you’ll be alright with a 1000円カードand most places, this is the denomination they sell it in. There are higher ones, but this should be alright for your trip, so this should be enough for your purposes, you don’t want to spend too much, you know you don’t want to get a big card and then not use it, so I think this should be good for multi-purposes. Okay. Living in Japan? Insurance policy. Coming from out of town? Nice to have it around so you can make calls. Okay, so the minutes will show up once you put the card in, letting you know how much time you have left and they’ll slowly decrease so when you put the card in it’ll show you the amount, kind of the credit you have left. Now if you’re making a call to a landline, the call will be much cheaper than a public phone to a cell phone. When you call a cell phone you’ll see your units drop very fast (makes a sound to denote units dropping). Now, this brings us to another one. It’s not in today’s lesson but this could come in handy. Yoshi san, what is the word for public phone? We had it in the beginning and just give it to us one more time? |
| Yoshi: 公衆電話 |
| Peter: First word public, second word telephone. So let’s take a look at the first word. |
| Yoshi: 公衆 |
| Peter: Public. Break it down? |
| Yoshi: こ・う・しゅ・う、公衆 |
| Peter: Then we have? |
| Yoshi: 電話 |
| Peter: Break it down? |
| Peter: で・ん・わ、電話 |
| Peter: Put them together? |
| Yoshi: 公衆電話 |
| Peter: And how can we ask: Where is there a public phone? |
| Yoshi: 公衆電話はどこですか？ |
| Peter: Yes, and you’ll remember this phrase from a previous Survival Phrases and you can ask this anywhere, anytime, and we’re still at the point where there is a…you shouldn’t have to go too far to find a public phone. Most major department stores will have them. Okay, now let’s take a look at this conversation one more time and look at the details inside of this. From the top, one more time. |
| Yoshi: テレホンカードはありますか？ |
| Peter: What do we have first? |
| Yoshi: テレホンカード |
| Peter: Word for telephone card, so telephone card marked by the topic article. |
| Yoshi: は(va) |
| Peter: Followed by? |
| Yoshi: あります。 |
| Peter: The verb ‘to exist’ for inanimate objects, in its polite form. One more time? |
| Yoshi: あります |
| Peter: So we interpret this as ‘there is’, so telephone card, there is, and finally we have? |
| Yoshi: か？ |
| Peter: Which indicates that it’s a question, so literally we have: telephone card, there is, question mark. Telephone card, there is? Again, what we have to do is just reverse the order here. Is there a telephone card? That’s the literal translation. When we interpret it – do you have telephone cards? And again, this pattern, はありますか, this stays the same, this is fixed. The only thing that changes is what you’re asking about. When you go into a store and you want to ask about something, you say the thing you want and then follow it with ありますか. Yoshi san, for example, let’s use that public phone. If we go into a store, and I want to know, is there a public phone here? |
| Yoshi: 公衆電話はありますか？ |
| Peter: Is there a public phone here? Do you have a public phone? Okay, and what a gracious, gracious convenience store worker we have in Takase san. |
| Takase: はい、あります。 |
| Peter: Yes, there is. Very straightforward. はい– Yes, あります – there is. Yes, there is. Straightforward. Followed by? |
| Yoshi: 1000円の、カードを、お願いします。 |
| Peter: Okay, first part here, we have the denomination. |
| Yoshi: 1000円 |
| Peter: Okay, 1,000 yen, followed by – this is very important and this is the key here – we have |
| Yoshi: の |
| Peter: Possessive. So, 1,000 yens, or 1,000 yen of. |
| Yoshi: カード |
| Peter: Card. 1,000 yens card. Card of 1,000 yen. Again, we interpret here, literally we gave you the literal just now We interpret. 1,000 yen card and this is – we want one – so it’s the object marker… |
| Peter: を |
| Peter: …followed by |
| Yoshi: お願いします |
| Peter: Very polite way of saying ‘please’. Now, Yoshi san, this is extremely polite but maybe it’s a little more difficult to remember than 下さい, so could I say 1000円のカードを下さい? |
| Peter: Mm-hmm. |
| Peter: It works too. What stays the same in this pattern, what you want is marked by the object marker… |
| Yoshi: を |
| Peter: …then it’s followed by either… |
| Yoshi: お願いします |
| Peter: …or… |
| Yoshi: 下さい |
| Peter: Okay. Then, pay the money and we have? |
| Takase: はい、どうぞ。 |
| Peter: Yes, please, and when you hear this clerk say please どうぞ you know what Yoshi san, what action is taking place? |
| Yoshi: She is passing the card. |
| Peter: Yes, when you pass something or when you are passed something you’ll hear this phrase. Actually, when you pass something you should say this. どうぞplease. And when something’s passed to you this will be said. We’re running short on time, what we’re going to do before we give you the conversation one more time in its entirety is we’re going to talk, where can you buy these cards? Now, we mentioned the dialogue took place in a convenience store so you can get these definitely at a convenience store. We did some surveying and Yoshi san, what kind of cards, what denomination cards did they have at a convenience store? |
| Yoshi: 1000円 |
| Peter: 1,000 yen, okay. So we’re going to do a bit more surveying and we’ll see what other denominations turn up. Now, Takase san, what’s another place you can buy these cards? It’s a very popular place to buy these cards? |
| Takase: キオスク |
| Peter: Now, is that the Japanese for キオスク？ How do we say this in Japanese? |
| Takase: キオスク |
| Peter: And break that down for us? |
| Takase: き・お・す・く、キオスク |
| Peter: Okay, キオスク. Here you can buy these cards. Usually, in the past, especially in the past when I was waiting for the train I’d pick up a couple of these cards, more than the convenience stores. Okay, can you think of any other place that we can get these cards? |
| Yoshi: 自動販売機 |
| Peter: Vending machine, but probably in recent years the availability has decreased, right? |
| Yoshi: I think so. |
| Peter: Yes, and of course you can get them illegally, the illegal ones, from other places. Takase san, can you tell us |
| Takase: Do you, Peter? Do you get them? |
| Peter: Before the show, you are the one that brought this up to me. |
| Takase: Hah? |
| Peter: Takase san! |
| Takase: Well I don’t have anything to say. |
| Peter: Yes, you used to…that’s a line you would say to the police – I don’t have anything to say, and I want my lawyer. Yeah, we know. If you ever wonder why sporadic absences… |
| Takase: (Laughter)Humm... |
Outro |
| Peter: (Laughter). Alright, so I think that’s going to do it for today. Again, stop by japanesepod101.com, there we’ll have that information we promised you and some more things about the IC card, or either that, we’ll cover that next week. Also next week we’ll be back with cell phones, you can actually rent a cell phone in Japan while you’re here which is another reason the telephone card has decreased in popularity. Okay, so we’ll be next week with that information. That’s going to do it for this week. |
| Takase: また明日。 |
| Yoshi: またね。 |
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