The core idea: count from the street, up and down
Stand on the pavement outside a Japanese building. The floor you walk into is ikkai (一階), literally floor one. Go up a flight and you are on nikai, floor two. Go down a flight and you are on chika ikkai (地下一階), literally underground floor one. Both counts start at the street and run in opposite directions, so there is no floor zero.
Everything else follows from that line. The lift button marked 1 takes you to street level. Signs write upper floors as 2F and lower ones as B1 or B1F, with B for basement. The roof, okujō (屋上), literally roof top, sits above everything and is marked R or RF where you can go out onto it. The idea wobbles only on a slope, where the street may meet a building on two levels: a side entrance can then lead in on 2F or B1, and the numbers follow the building's own plan.
| Japanese | Romaji | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 受付は一階です。 | Uketsuke wa ikkai desu. | Reception is on the ground floor. |
| 会議室は二階にあります。 | Kaigishitsu wa nikai ni arimasu. | The meeting room is one floor up. |
| 食堂は地下一階です。 | Shokudō wa chika ikkai desu. | The canteen is on basement level one. |
| 喫煙所は屋上にあります。 | Kitsuenjo wa okujō ni arimasu. | The smoking area is on the roof. |
Counting floors: kai and its sound changes
The counter is kai (階), the character in kaidan, stairs, literally floor steps. Most numbers join it unchanged: nikai, gokai, nanakai, kyūkai. A few change, following two rules that apply to many counters beginning with k, so learning them here pays off elsewhere.
First, ichi, roku, hachi and jū drop their last vowel and double the k: ikkai, rokkai, hakkai, jukkai. Second, after n the k can soften to g: sangai and nangai. Both rules make the word quicker to say, and both are loosening. Hachikai is common alongside hakkai, and sankai and nankai are widely heard, especially from younger speakers. All of them will be understood.
| Floor | Reading | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 一階 | ikkai | Ichi doubles the k |
| 三階 | sangai, sankai | K softens to g after n; sankai is also common |
| 四階 | yonkai | Always yon, never shi |
| 六階 | rokkai | Roku doubles the k |
| 七階 | nanakai | Nana is the usual form |
| 八階 | hachikai, hakkai | Both forms in everyday use |
| 十階 | jukkai | Jū doubles the k; the older form is jikkai |
| 何階 | nangai, nankai | Which floor |
Four is yonkai and seven nanakai. The usual explanation is that shi sounds like the word for death, and that shi and shichi are easily confused. Higher floors combine the parts: jūgokai for 15, nijukkai for 20.
In the lift: reading the panel
A lift, erebētā, has floor buttons, a display showing the floor and direction, and two door buttons below. Learn the door buttons first, because you will need them in a hurry. Both kanji are built on the picture of a double gate. A common explanation is that 閉, close, shows a bar set across the gate and 開, open, shows the bar lifted away. On most panels open is on the left and close on the right, with arrows pointing apart for open and together for close. Some panels spell the words out in kana, and some show arrows only.
| On the panel | Reading | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 開 | hiraku | Open the doors |
| 閉 | tojiru | Close the doors |
| 満員 | man'in | Full; often lights with a buzzer when the car is at its limit |
| 非常 | hijō | Emergency call, usually an intercom to building staff or a monitoring centre |
| 点検中 | tenkenchū | Under inspection, out of service |
| 車いす用 | kurumaisu-yō | Wheelchair panel; the doors stay open longer |
Lift talk: what people actually say
Japanese lifts are quiet, but a handful of short phrases do real work. The person nearest the panel acts as operator: they ask which floor, press it and hold the doors. Strangers use polite desu and masu. A few department stores still employ lift attendants who announce each floor in very polite shop language, and recorded voices say much the same.
| Japanese | Romaji | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| すみません、乗ります。 | Sumimasen, norimasu. | Excuse me, I'm getting on. (hurrying to the lift) |
| 何階ですか。 | Nankai desu ka. | Which floor? (person by the buttons) |
| 五階、お願いします。 | Gokai, onegai shimasu. | Fifth floor, please. |
| すみません、降ります。 | Sumimasen, orimasu. | Excuse me, I'm getting off. |
| お先にどうぞ。 | Osaki ni dōzo. | After you. |
| 上へ参ります。 | Ue e mairimasu. | Going up. (attendant or recorded voice) |
| ドアが閉まります。 | Doa ga shimarimasu. | The doors are closing. (recorded voice) |
| 五階でございます。 | Gokai de gozaimasu. | This is the fifth floor. (attendant) |
The department-store directory: a vertical map
Department stores, depāto, post a floor guide, furoa gaido, by every lift and escalator. It reads as a vertical map, and most stores follow a similar order, though every chain varies it. Food is at the bottom, in the depachika (デパ地下), short for depāto chika, literally department-store underground. Cosmetics take the ground floor, the most visible level. Women's clothing fills the next floors, men's and children's wear come higher, and restaurants cluster at the top, with a garden or summer beer garden on the roof in some stores.
There is retail logic to the order. Japanese retailers talk of the funsui kōka (噴水効果), literally fountain effect, where the food hall draws people in and some drift upwards, and the shawā kōka, shower effect, where restaurants or an event floor at the top bring people up to shop on the way down.
| Japanese | Romaji | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 婦人服売り場は何階ですか。 | Fujinfuku uriba wa nankai desu ka. | Which floor is women's clothing on? |
| 三階でございます。 | Sangai de gozaimasu. | It's on the third floor. (staff) |
| お手洗いは各階にございます。 | Otearai wa kakukai ni gozaimasu. | There are toilets on every floor. (staff) |
| エスカレーターはどちらですか。 | Esukarētā wa dochira desu ka. | Which way is the escalator? |
| 地下の食品売り場に行きたいんですが。 | Chika no shokuhin uriba ni ikitai n desu ga. | I'd like to get to the basement food hall. |
| Directory word | Reading | What you find |
|---|---|---|
| 食料品 | shokuryōhin | Food, on the depachika floors |
| 化粧品 | keshōhin | Cosmetics, usually on the ground floor |
| 婦人服 | fujinfuku | Women's clothing |
| 紳士服 | shinshifuku | Men's clothing |
| 子ども服 | kodomofuku | Children's clothing |
| 催事場 | saijijō | Event floor for fairs and seasonal sales |
| レストラン街 | resutoran-gai | Restaurant floor, literally restaurant town |
| 駐車場 | chūshajō | Car park |
Beyond the basics: mezzanines, storeys and room numbers
Some buildings add a half-level, the chūnikai (中二階), literally middle second floor, a mezzanine. It may be marked 中2F or M2F, and you usually reach it by stairs rather than the lift.
To say how tall a building is, add date (建て), from tateru, to build: sangai-date, a three-storey house. Large buildings are described with both counts, chika nikai chijō jukkai-date, two floors below ground and ten above; chijō (地上), literally on the ground, is the partner of chika. The top floor is saijōkai (最上階), literally the uppermost floor.
Flats and hotel rooms carry the floor in their number. Room 305 is on sangai and room 1204 on jūnikai: the last two digits are usually the room, the rest the floor. People read it digit by digit, san-maru-go, or as a number, sanbyaku-go, adding gōshitsu (号室) in formal speech. Some buildings, especially older flats and hospitals, skip room numbers ending in 4 or 9, because shi and ku can sound like death and suffering.
| Japanese | Romaji | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 十階建てのマンションに住んでいます。 | Jukkai-date no manshon ni sunde imasu. | I live in a ten-storey block of flats. |
| 部屋は305号室です。 | Heya wa san-maru-go gōshitsu desu. | My room is number 305. |
| 最上階は何階ですか。 | Saijōkai wa nankai desu ka. | Which floor is the top floor? |
| 上の階の足音が気になります。 | Ue no kai no ashioto ga ki ni narimasu. | The footsteps from the floor above bother me. |
Beyond the basics: nankai, which floor or how many times?
Nankai has a twin. Written 何回, it means how many times, and the counter for occurrences follows the same sound changes: ikkai is both the ground floor and once, rokkai both the sixth floor and six times. Context settles it almost always, since floors come with buildings and places and times come with actions. Nangai, the traditional reading for floors, can only mean the floor.
The words for the rooms inside a home, and how to say which floor you live on, are covered in the post on house and rooms vocabulary. This article is about the building as a whole, the public, vertical space you move through with strangers.
| Japanese | Romaji | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 一階で待っています。 | Ikkai de matte imasu. | I'll wait on the ground floor. |
| 一回で覚えました。 | Ikkai de oboemashita. | I learned it in one go. |
| 会議室は何階ですか。 | Kaigishitsu wa nankai desu ka. | Which floor is the meeting room on? |
| 東京に何回行きましたか。 | Tōkyō ni nankai ikimashita ka. | How many times have you been to Tokyo? |
Common mistakes with floors and lifts
Using British numbering. A meeting on nikai is one flight up, not two. The cause is the ground floor, which Britain calls ground or zero and Japan calls one. Add one to every British floor number, and do not look for a G button: street level is 1.
Saying ichikai, rokukai or jūkai. The cause is reading the number and the counter as separate words. Learn ikkai, rokkai and jukkai as whole words, the way you learned the numbers themselves.
Pressing 閉 on someone running for the lift. At a glance the two kanji look alike, framed by the same gate. Remember that open is usually on the left, and look for the arrows pointing apart.
Heading for street level to catch a train. In city centres the station link is often underground, on B1 or B2, and the directory marks it as a connection to the station. Check before you press 1.