Today's post is about HOW TO TAKE A BUS IN JAPAN! Hahaha... seems silly but it can be embarrassing if you do not know what you have to do when you get up a bus!! To save you the embarrassment, here's how you take a bus!! ;0)

Passengers usually get up the bus at the back door and get down on the front door. Payment is made before you alight. So, when you get up the bus, take a numbered ticket from the machine which is usually placed on the right when you get up. Here's how it looks like...


The ticket looks like this...and it is called SEI-RI-KEN せいりけん(整理券)


The ticket has a number imprinted on it. So when you have reached your destination, look at the chart (see below).... look for the number and it will indicate how much you have to pay when you alight... The chart will also indicate the name of the bus stop... so at least you know where you will be...


If you do not have enough change, you can go to the coin changer (located just next to the driver) to change loose change. When you alight, throw the ticket and the money into the coin box....


That's it! ;0) .. hope you have a stress free and joyful bus ride!

Hmm.. this post, I am going to write about onsen 温泉- japanese hotspring!... nothing much to do with the language ... but culture?? ;0)

Onsen! Oh, I love going to onsen!! It is so nice.. not sure what is nice .. probably the fact that I am naked (when do you have the chance to do that and no one really cares about how you look!!) and can dip in the hotspring... and the hotspring is therapeutic for me!! ;0)

My first experience was pretty self conscious and after a few rounds, I am more or less settled into the routine and so I am truly enjoying the process indeed...! I have been to many hotsprings in Kyushu and now in Hokkaido. The cheapest one I stepped into is Yen100 and the most expensive so far is Yen1000. For the cheaper ones, usually they do not provide the towel and toiletries so you will have to bring your own.

What do you do when you stepped into a hotspring? Well, when you enter the place, you have to remove your shoes and put into the locker provided. Pay the necessary fees at counter or some places have vending machines to pay your fees so you have to pay the fees @ vending machine first. Then, proceed to the bath area.

At the bath area, you will have to remove your clothes and usually there is usually a basket or locker to place your items. Then, proceed to the hotspring area - you will have to bath yourself first before you go into the hotspring.

The temperature is hot!! really hot! most that i go to, the temperature is about 40-44 degrees!! I will usually take about 5mins or so, starting with my legs, before I can fully dip myself into the hotspring....

Some places have open bath areas - it would be nice if there is a nice view to boot! But most that I go to, do not really have a nice view except for one in Kyushu.. that was really nice... the hotspring is up in the mountain....the colour of the hotspring is also a bit bluish...nice view of the place too... wow, so nice... just recalling it...


This is the cheapest onsen that I went to in Kyushu - only Yen100!! cheap isn't it? It doesn't have much facilities - not even proper bathing facilities... you basically bathe using the hotspring water which is very very very hot!!


This is one of the small hotspring in the ryokan that I stayed in Beppu, Kyushu. Really hot!!! I cant even bring myself to dip fully into the hotspring - only my toes got in!! ;0)

Hope you are still hanging in there!! Ganbatte! Any questions welcomed!

More on conjugations!

The conjugations are grouped based on the hiragana charts:
あえうえお - u group
かきくけこ - ku/gu group
さしすせそ - su group
たちつてと - tsu group
なにぬねの - nu group
はひふへほ - fu/bu group
まみむめも - mu group
らりるれろ - ru group

So each verb will end with one of the above group. And conjugations will follow the pattern in the respective group.

There are 2 exception verbs - (来る/くる) to come and (する) to do. These 2 words have their own individual patterns of conjugations which is different from the above.

Following up on my last post yesterday... conjugations!

Example, the verb 'TO GO'... 行く（いく）

The following will be the basic conjugations for this verb:
Nai (ない )form　　　　　行かない　（いかない）
Masu (ます ) form　　　　行きます （いきます）
Dictionary form　　　　　行く　（いく）
Conditional form　　　　行けば　（いけば）
Volitional form　　　　行こう　（いこう）
Te (て ) form　　　　　　行って　（いって）* exception
Ta (た ) form　　　　　　行った　（いった）* exception

The conjugations of verbs follow some specific patterns.

I think most of the schools that teach Japanese do not teach you all the conjugation when you first start... except one of those few like the one that I attended. I thought that it is good to learn the basic conjugation first so that it will be easier for you to get the right conjugation for the grammar... what do i mean by conjugation?

Each verb has the following basic conjugations in Japanese:
Negative (polite) form *
Negative (impolite) form *
Dictionary form - this is the impolite positive form *
Masu ますform - this is the polite positive form *
Conditional form
Volitional form
Te (て) form
Ta (た) form (this is one of the past tense form)

* those will have past tense to it as well

Well, confusing right? But you will get used to it when you start learning it... So each verb will have the above conjugations. These conjugations will be used in the Japanese grammar.

Of course, there are other forms like potential, passive and causative to add to the confusion!! ;0)

And there are 2 types of verbs:
(a) 他動詞　（たどうし）
(b) 自動詞　（じどうし）

(a) verbs that needs to be accompanied by a subject/object
(b) verbs that doesn't need to be accompanied by a subject/object

A good example will be:
(a) I opened the door. (this will use verb in group a)
(b) The door opened. (this will use verb in group b)

More confusion!! ;0) ... I am still figuring out the difference... hahah..

It is the sakura season right now in Sapporo... Wow, so beautiful... after it blooms and sheds its petals, its pink petals will fly and fall all over the place.. wonderful sight indeed! like snow flakes falling from the sky...

Time flies!! It has been 2.5 weeks since I reached Sapporo!

Have been too busy wondering around Sapporo to sit down and update my blog!! gomen ne! ;0)

Yesterday in class, I learnt 2 more greetings (used in workplace):

gokorosama - used by superior to subordinate to thank them for their hard work
otsukaresama - used by colleagues to colleagues to thank them for their hard work

2nd day of lesson today!! I learned something today. Whenever I watched Japanese drama, I always hear them saying 'yoshi' よし! ... apparently always very enthusiastically!! And today, I learned that 'yoshi' means alright, okay!!! aaaahhhhh... eureka, bingo! finally understood something yet again... hahah

Before I comment further, I want to write about the various greetings used by Japanese that I know of at this juncture (I am sure there are many more that I do not know yet!!):

Before you eat, you will say 'itadakimasu'
After you eat, you will say 'gochisousamadeshita'

Before you go out of house, you will say 'ittekimasu'
After you come home, you will say 'tadaima'

For person at home, you will say 'itterashai' to person leaving
For person at home, you will say 'okaerinasai' to person who just came home

When going to bed, you will say 'oyasuminasai'

I have reached Sapporo!! Yeap. Today, I had my first day of lesson! Wow, my classmates were so good conversationally!! And my 2 teachers speak so fast!!! Like machine gun.. thank god, I could still understand what was going on 95% of the time!!!

We learned potential verbs today. I learned this before so this is refresher course for me. There are many tenses in Japanese. So far, I have learned the following tenses:
- Present/future/past verbs
- Potential verbs
- Passive verbs
- Causative verbs

I will elaborate more in my next post.... sugo (soon) ;0)

I started my Japanese learning journey almost 15 months ago - wow, time flies! I enrolled myself into a Japanese Language School locally and attending classes twice weekly for 1.5 hours each. In order to catch up with each class, I had to spend a lot of time memorising the hiragana, words and sentence structure.

At the end of each class, there will be a final test before you can move on to the next level. It was good as it is a good indication for me personally how well I have done for each level. Glad to say that I have done well and have been quite consistent in my results! Hard work pays off I guess! Yeap.

Now, I have just graduated from my intermediate class and I will be going on to my pre advance class next month. Between now and then, I will be going to Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan! Yeap, Sapporo!! I have enrolled myself into a language school there to polish up on my conversation skill, which is so so lacking locally as I do not have the chance to practice.

So, look out for my post on my journey in Sapporo!

Alright, here I am writing my inaugural post!!! The reason I wanted to start this blog is that I wanted to share my journey of learning Japanese with anyone who wants to read about. While trawling the cyberspace in search of some of the explanations of some of the grammars that I learned in school, I find that I couldn't get the information that I wanted!!

So I hope with my blog, some of the beginners will not go through the same journey that I did but will find my blog a good resource to learn Japanese!!

For those who just started learning Japanese, it is not an easy language to learn as there are 3 sets of characters to learn - hiragana, katakana & kanji! After learning my 1st set of character (hiragana), I thought I am done!! Haha... how wrong I was.. I went on to learn katagana and then finally learning kanji... OMG, it was tough!! So for those new beginners, がんばって(persist on!)...!