LLearn Japanese

Daily Thread: for simple questions, minor posts & newcomers [contains useful links!] (June 30, 2025)

  • June 30, 2025

This thread is for all the simple questions (what does that mean?) and minor posts that don't need their own thread, as well as for first-time posters who can't create new threads yet. Feel free to share anything on your mind.

The daily thread updates every day at 9am JST, or 0am UTC.

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19 comments

  3. Dialogue is about 店長 telling レオン what to do in his restaurant job

    店：そして、「ご注文が決まりましたら、こちらのボタンでお呼びください」と言って、戻ってきてください。

    レオン：はい・・・・・あの、「ボタン」って何のことですか。

    店：ああ、このテーブルの上にあるボタンのことです。

    1. What does 何のこと mean in second sentence? According to yomitan it can mean “what・what sort of thing”. to me sounds like if he was saying “what sort of button”, or maybe “what do you mean by a button”, but i dont know

    2. Is the のこと in 3rd sentence used when explaining something to someone? Ive seen it used before in というのは sentences, for example “パソコンというのはパーソナル・コンピュータのことだ。”

  5. How do you justify the time commitment it takes to learn japanese with your family?

    My wife barely tolerates it, but doesn’t understand why I do it. My parents think I’m trying to move to Japan(Genuinely not, given that I already have a kid).

    How do you justify it with them? Any pointers??

  6. 食たべたくなくなる。」

    How do I intepret this cluster of a word?

    Negative たい。食べたくない

    くなる　

    （食べたくな – Dont want to eat）（くなる – to become）　

    Essentially you will reach a point you will not want to eat?

  7. I plan to (politely) scrape [Usagi-chan’s Genki resource site](https://www.csus.edu/indiv/s/sheaa/projects/genki/) and convert it into Markdown flashcards for use with LogSeq’s SRS subsystem.

    1. Has someone already done this or converted a similar site into Markdown, JSON, or some non-presentation-heavy format? (That is, not Anki.) I considered modifying [Seth Clydesdale’s anki_decks_maker.py](https://github.com/SethClydesdale/genki-study-resources/blob/master/resources/tools/anki_decks_maker.py), but I’m uncertain whether the results would have every card I want. And that seemed like the best alternative I uncovered.
    2. If I do this, would anyone be interested in the results? (I’d still ask the owners at Sacramento State before posting, but being academics, I think they’d approve.)

    *Background*

    You don’t need to read this, but I expect someone will ask, “Why subject yourself to this when you can just go on <beautiful pre-made course> with an actual curriculum, grammar lessons, and its own flashcards and SRS, etc., and get to N1 in 18 months?” or a similar question about my motivation.

    I’m reasonably happy with (paid) Duolingo + anime. (It’s inefficient, but it’s practice I do, as opposed to textbooks which sit on my shelf and look pretty, or specialized online courses, which expect a level of motivation far exceeding mine.) The only problem is that Duolingo doesn’t review vocabulary frequently enough, and manually reviewing lessons has slowed my progress to a crawl. I tried making cards manually, but that took way too long. I already use LogSeq’s SRS. And I don’t want to include Anki (its UI is too awful, its data format is too clunky, and its cross-device synchronization is horrible) or Anki’s competitors (another thing to add to my schedule).

  8. Hi! Is this introduction correct for a formal interview setting?:

    はじめまして。ホアン·シフエンテス·メラと申します。チリのカトリック大学で映画監督を専攻しました。今、しごとは映画監督で配給会社でアニメーション制作会社『ピスタ·ベー』でプロデューサーとして働いています。チリと日本の独立系アニメーション会社間の共同制作について研究したいと考えています。そのため、日本で映画とアニメーションを学びたいです。しょらいはチリと日本を繋ぐ映画制作者になりたいです。どうぞよろしくおねがいします。

    Thanks in advance!

  9. Found this example sentence and explanation of あげる in a textbook:

    ⑥A：森さんはお正月に、お子さんにお年玉を**あげます**か。
    B：いいえ、自分の子どもたちには**やりません**よ。

    The explanation says:

    「やる」は、⑤のように動植物などの場合に使う。また、⑥のように、自分の家族に対してすることを、家族以外の人に話すときにも使う。

    If I understood correctly, やりません can only be used if B is 森さん and talking to A who is not in their family, then they can use やる for something that they give to their own family. If A and B are other people talking about 森さん, then B has to use あげません to talk about the child because it’s not the speaker’s own child.

    Is this correct?

  10. Can we place words like まだ flexibly in a sentence, or is there a natural best place?

    Examples:

    まだ宿題をしていません。 vs. 　宿題はまだしていません。

    or:

    まだ車が洗ってありません。　vs　車がまだ洗ってありません。

  12. For those who have taken the JLPT, are you able to work ahead if you finish one section? I’m finding on all the practice tests I tend to blitz through the kanji/vocab sections with very good results and I’m wondering if that will save me time on reading, which is where I’m the slowest (my grammar is not as good but I am practicing it and the vocab side will be a good boost).

  14. So I finish Hiragana & Katakana. I searched that I should start now with grammar but my problem is that I don’t understand the words and I can only read them with Hiragana. So like I don’t understand the vocabulary itself.

  17. Is this なりよう correct? これ以上悪くなりようがないほど最悪の状態

  18. question about remembering vocabulary. I’m still at the earlier stages of studying but, when I’m reviewing my decks on Anki, with the not so familiar words that i almost never hear when I see the cards come up, let’s say i see ぶんがく i know it’s literature. but when I’m not on Anki, let’s say I’m trying to practice writing sentences when reviewing grammar and I want to say the japanese word for literature, I can’t remember it. it’s like one way, when i see the japanese word only i remember the meaning associated to it. do you recommend making recall cards or something? or should i just be patient and keep at it? any suggestions?

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