Speaking and pronunciation
Practical guides on speaking, grammar, pronunciation, listening, and study planning, written for learners who want to use Japanese in real life.
Speaking and pronunciation · Page 9
How to Test Your Japanese Speaking Level: Can-Do Scales and a Self-Test
Your Japanese speaking level is what you can do with the language out loud, not which textbook you finished. You can test it today: record yourself answering four prompts of rising difficulty, then score the recordings against the can-do descriptions of the CEFR and the JF Standard. This guide gives you the scales, explains how a professional oral interview works, and provides the prompts in Japanese.
11 min readJapanese for Exchange Students: Your First Month on a Japanese Campus
Your first month as an exchange student in Japan is paperwork, a dorm, a flood of club invitations and the question of how to make Japanese friends who do not switch to English the moment you hesitate. This guide gives you the Japanese for each of those, in the order you will meet them, plus the one strategy that works for friendships: ask, in Japanese, to be spoken to in Japanese, and make it easy for people to say yes.
11 min readBusiness Japanese for Startup Founders: Pitching and Investor Meetings
A founder in Japan does not need perfect Japanese to raise money or sign a partner, but a first meeting conducted at least partly in Japanese changes how seriously you are taken, especially outside the English-speaking corners of Tokyo's startup scene. This guide covers the Japanese of that first meeting: introductions and business cards, a pitch in four lines, the questions investors and partners actually ask, how to answer when you do not know, and the follow-up the next day.
11 min readJapanese for Permanent Residency and Naturalization: Interviews and Paperwork
Permanent residency in Japan is a document-based application to the immigration authorities and does not come with a formal Japanese language test; naturalization is handled by the Legal Affairs Bureau, involves interviews, and expects everyday Japanese roughly at the level of a primary-school child. This guide gives you the vocabulary, the conversation both processes expect, and a calm way to prepare. The legal details change and depend on your situation, so treat them as pointers and confirm everything with official sources.
12 min readJapanese for Buying a Home in Japan: Viewing, Loan and Contract Day
Buying a home in Japan runs through a fixed sequence: viewings (内見), a loan pre-check, a legally required disclosure session called 重要事項説明, a contract with a deposit, and the handover of the keys. Each step has its own vocabulary, and most of it is spoken, not written. This guide gives you the phrases for every step in polite Japanese, plus the lines for the first knock on the neighbours' door.
12 min readJapanese for Daycare (Hoikuen) Parents: Handover, Renrakuchō and Sick Days
Hoikuen (保育園) is Japanese daycare, and most of the Japanese you need is spoken twice a day: a short handover at drop-off and a report at pick-up, plus a notebook called the renrakuchō (連絡帳) that travels in the bag. This guide gives you those routines line by line, the phrases for the application, the phone call when your child has a fever, and the vocabulary of events.
11 min readJapanese for Job Offers and Salary Negotiation: From Naitei to Acceptance
A Japanese job offer is called a naitei (内定), and the written conditions arrive as a rōdō jōken tsūchisho. The polite way to handle it is to thank the company, ask for time to check the conditions, ask your questions in soft, indirect Japanese, and then accept or decline clearly and quickly. This guide gives you the exact lines for each step, including a negotiation dialogue.
11 min readJapanese for Business Conferences and Trade Shows: Booth Talk and Follow-up
At a Japanese trade show (展示会) the conversation follows a pattern: a short greeting, a business card exchange, a question about what the company does, a demo, and a promise to follow up. If you can handle those five moments in polite Japanese, you can work a hall full of booths. This guide gives you the lines for each, as a visitor and as an exhibitor, plus the email for the next day.
10 min readJapanese for Online Shopping: Delivery Times, Returns and Support Chat
Online shopping in Japan is smooth until something goes wrong: a missed delivery, the wrong size, a broken item. Then you need a short set of Japanese for the redelivery call, the return request and the support chat. This guide covers ordering, the address and time slot, cancelling, returns and refunds, and the polite, slightly formal register that support staff use and expect.
10 min readJapanese for Long-Distance Relationships: Video Calls, Feelings and Visits
A long-distance relationship with a Japanese partner is mostly spoken Japanese: late-night video calls, voice messages, and the small daily questions that keep two lives connected. The register is casual, the sentences are short, and feelings are said more lightly than in English. This guide gives you the call phrases, time-zone talk, natural ways to say you miss someone, the lines for planning a visit, and the polite Japanese for meeting the family later.
10 min readJapanese for Freelancers Finding Clients in Japan: Quotes, Deadlines, Invoices
Freelancing in Japan runs on a small set of documents and a polite register: a self-introduction, a mitsumorisho (見積書) for the quote, a clear agreement on nōki (納期), the deadline, and a seikyūsho (請求書) for the invoice. The conversations around them are formal but formulaic. This guide gives you the Japanese for each stage, including the delicate art of chasing a late payment without losing the client.
10 min readJapanese for Ski Season Jobs in Japan: Resort Work, Dorm Life and Safety
Ski resorts in Japan, from Niseko and Furano in Hokkaido to Hakuba, Nozawa and Myoko in the Alps, hire thousands of seasonal staff every winter, many of them foreigners on working holiday visas. The job needs practical Japanese: a few polite lines for guests, workplace phrases for coworkers, dorm etiquette, and a short list of safety words that you must understand instantly. This guide covers all four.
10 min readPractical guides
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