Today we will try getting a train ticket. In Japan, there is two ways of getting a train ticket. You can either go to the vending machine and pop in your money if you already know how much it’s going to cost you. For this, you need to check a map and determine how much you are going to need. Now if you don’t want to put up with that, you can simply walk up to a ticket gate window and tell them where you are going. Let’s work on that today. In today’s lesson, we will use Tokyo station as a destination to practice how to get a train tickets. |
In Japanese, station is eki, e-ki, eki. So Tokyo station would Tokyo eki. Now let’s put that in a sentence. Please give me tickets to Tokyo station would be Tōkyō eki made no kippu o kudasai. To-u-kyo-u-e-ki-ma-de-no-ki-ppu-o-ku-da-sa-i. Tōkyō eki made no kippu o kudasai. Don’t worry, we are going to break this down by word. The first word Tokyo eki is like we said, Tokyo station. Made means to usually referring to a destination. No is the rough equivalent of the English word of. Kippu means ticket. So far we have Tōkyō eki made no kippu literally this means Tokyo station to of tickets. So it means, tickets to Tokyo station and the remaining part of the sentence is o kudasai. O is the object marker, kudasai means please give me or please do this. |
Altogether it’s Tōkyō eki made no kippu o kudasai. Literally this means Tokyo station to tickets please give me or please give me tickets to Tokyo station. Now here is Sachiko secret. I don’t remember exactly when this started but the Tokyo subway system has become a lot easier to read. All the train stations now have a letter and a number to substitute for them. That way you don’t have to remember really long names like Akasakamitsuke or Shinjuku San-chome. You get my point right. The Japanese is still there obviously but there is also a letter in a number set like M9 or M13 and it’s much, much easier for foreigners to get by. I hope that helps. Okay, so to close our today’s lesson, let’s practice what you’ve just learned. |
I will give you the English equivalent of the phrase and you are responsible for shouting it out loud in Japanese. You got that. I will give you a few seconds before I give you the answer. So good luck Ganbatte kudasai. Tickets to Tokyo station please. Tōkyō eki made no kippu o kudasai. To-u-kyo-u-e-ki-ma-de-no-ki-ppu-o-ku-da-sa-i. Tōkyō eki made no kippu o kudasai. All right, that’s going to do it for today. See you later which in Japanese is Matane. |
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