In the first lesson we learned some basic greetings. Today we’ll go a step ahead and see how we can introduce ourselves. When you meet someone for the first time, you can introduce yourself in Japanese like this:

Sounds difficult? No panic! Things are easier than they seem. Let’s go from the beginning, sentence by sentence.
First, take a bow and say:

After hajime mashite introduce your name:

For the most fluent and genuine introduction, don’t forget this last phrase in the end while you take a bow one more time:

That’s all for today as far as introducing yourself. These phrases are the basics and will come in handy in almost any situation. In one of the future lessons we will take a closer look at grammar that will help us make simple sentences. Thus, you’ll also be able to understand the meaning of some of the new words today (like desu or wa).

Today’s new words:

watashi (わたし) = I, me

Short but necessary introduction

It’s about time we start with our free japanese lessons for beginners! :) The goal is to help you learn the basics of this language in a simple way without complicated explanations that would put you to sleep!  Our approach is a bit different from what you’d usually find in textbooks. We heard many times how foreign students of Japanese get a big shock when they arrive to Japan and find out that their learned Japanese doesn’t help them as much as they thought. Our aim is to help you simultaneously learn reading, writing and speaking a more casual everyday Japanese. These lessons would be practically impossible without Erika’s help. As a native Japanese, she also offered her voice to be used for the audio pronounciation. Of course, all your comments, questions or suggestions are always welcome.

Before we begin, a few words about our strategy! In each lesson, you’ll see the word or sentence written in Japanese either in Hiragana (for words of Japanese origin) or Katakana (for words of foreign origin). You can learn how to read these by the help of our Hiragana in Katakana charts. Underneath, there will be a Romaji version of the same word or sentence, which is Japanese written using the Latin alphabet. At the end you’ll see English translation and any special notes where necessary.

Also, don’t forget to listen to audio pronounciation by clicking on the green and yellow buttons. The green one is for normal speed, the yellow one for slow speed, syllable by syllable. We know it’s sometimes hard to catch the correct pronounciation, so we hope that the slow version will be helpful For listening, you’ll need Flash installed in your browser.

Let’s begin!

How can you greet someone in Japan?

That’s all for today. We shall continue next time! :)