Your First Japanese Phone Call: Book a Table With a Ten-Line Script

What a booking call looks like, step by step

A reservation call in Japan is a form filled in by voice. The staff member needs the same five facts every time, and they ask for them in nearly the same order at an izakaya, a ramen shop that takes bookings and a hair salon. Once you know the order, every question they ask is one you expected, and the call stops being a conversation and becomes a checklist.

Two things differ from a call in English. The staff read the whole booking back at the end, slowly, and expect a hai after it. And the caller ends the call: say shitsurei shimasu, wait a beat, and hang up. Shops may wait for you to hang up first, so a silence at the end is not a problem.

The ten-line script

These are your lines, in the order you will need them. Lines one to six make the booking; seven and eight are the repair lines; nine and ten close the call. All are polite form, because the person on the line is a stranger at work. Replace the date, time, number of people and name with your own, and keep the card in front of you while you dial.

Yoyaku shitai no desu ga trails off on ga, which is deliberate: it hands the turn to the staff, who then ask the questions. Learners who try to say the whole booking in one sentence, date, time, people and name together, make the call harder, not easier. Give one fact, wait for the next question.

What the shop will say back

Staff on the phone use the service register, which is more honorific than anything you will say yourself. You do not need to produce it, only to recognise which of the five questions you are being asked. Here are the lines in the order they tend to come, with the reply each one wants.

Shōshō omachi kudasai means they are checking the book; say hai and wait, even through twenty seconds of hold music. The read-back line near the end is the one that matters: listen only for your date, your time and your number, and say hai, onegai shimasu if all three are right. If one is wrong, say the correct one with the pattern in the next section.

Numbers, times and names on the phone

The details are where phone calls go wrong, because a mishearing costs you a table. Japanese speakers have their own habits for making numbers and names survive a bad line, and borrowing them makes you sound prepared. Seven is nana rather than shichi, because shichi sounds like ichi (one). Four is yon rather than shi. Zero is zero. A phone number is read digit by digit in its written groups, with no between the groups. Minutes past the hour use fun or pun, and half past is han.

A foreign name is spelled out syllable by syllable in katakana, not letter by letter in English; the staff are writing it in katakana anyway. If the shop asks for the reading of your name, that is what they want. Dates with the small irregular readings, tsuitachi for the 1st, futsuka for the 2nd, mikka for the 3rd and so on up to the 10th, are worth checking before you dial if your date is one of them.

Asking them to repeat, and checking you heard right

On the phone you cannot show confusion with your face, so you have to say it, and you have to say it fast, before the staff member moves on. The repair lines from a face-to-face conversation all work here, with one addition that is specific to the phone: odenwa ga tōi yō desu, literally the phone seems far, which politely blames the line. The other essential move is confirming back: repeat the detail you heard and add desu ne, and the staff member will say hai or correct you.

Dekimasu ka at the end of a request is a shade softer than onegai shimasu alone and suits the phone, where you are asking a stranger for extra effort. Use the correction line only when the read-back is wrong; a quiet hai when it is right is the normal rhythm.

When the answer is no

Sometimes the time is full, the shop is closed that day, or they do not take bookings for small groups. Staff will not say no bluntly; they wrap it in mōshiwake gozaimasen (we are very sorry) and often offer an alternative in the same breath. The call then becomes a small negotiation, and three lines handle all of it: ask for another time, accept it, or thank them and withdraw.

Manseki (full) and aite orimasu (we have space, humble) are the two words to listen for. If you hear manseki, wait: an alternative usually follows. If you cannot take the alternative, withdraw with wakarimashita and a thank-you; there is no need to explain why.

A model first call

The whole call, as it might go at a small izakaya. Your lines come from the script above; the staff lines are the ones you have just read. Say it aloud with the phone against your ear.

Fourteen lines, seven of them yours, none longer than six words. Otori shimashita is the humble form of took, meaning the booking is made. If you want to ask something in the same call, a last order time or whether cards are accepted, slip it in before the goodbye with a sore kara (and also); but for a first call, booking only is a fine ambition.

How the first call honestly feels

Dialling is the hardest part; many learners hold the phone for a full minute before pressing call. Then the shop answers in a rush of honorifics that you half expected and still cannot parse, and the only thing that saves you is that your first line does not depend on theirs. Once you have said anō, yoyaku shitai no desu ga, the staff member takes over, and the call becomes the checklist you prepared. The read-back at the end feels like a test you suddenly know the answers to.

The second call, a week later, is almost boring, which is the point. Phone calls reward exact repetition more than any other speaking situation, because the other side is reading from the same script every time. Three bookings in, you will be adding questions of your own.

• Giving every detail in one breath. One fact per turn; let them ask.
• Saying shichi and shi for seven and four. On the phone, nana and yon.
• Spelling your name in English letters. Syllables in katakana are what the staff write down.
• Staying silent through the read-back. It is waiting for your hai.
• Hanging up right after yoroshiku onegai shimasu. Add shitsurei shimasu, then a beat.
• Calling at the busiest hour. Mid-afternoon calls get a calmer, slower staff member.

Make the call to a Sensei before you make it to a shop

The mission Reserve a Restaurant by Phone in AI Sensei is this call without the dial tone. Choose Yamada-sensei, ask Yamada-sensei to play the restaurant, and Yamada-sensei will take the booking at a normal speed, read it back and, if you ask, make the first time slot full so that you practise accepting another. The report afterwards shows which numbers and which repair lines came out cleanly. Do it with the script in front of you the first time and without it the second.

Before the voice version, Mocchi, Unihongo's study assistant, can check your card: paste your ten lines with your own date, name and number and use /correct, and ask it to write your name in katakana syllables the way a shop will hear them. It keeps track of what you asked, so the next booking's card takes a minute. Everything here runs on a free account; sign in at unihongo.com/login and the mission is one click from the home page.