Ep. 1 Commentary - Meeting at the Station: Part 3 "Gohan-Gohan"


Dialogue

ディエゴ:

もしもし?
Hello?

()いた?
ついた?
Are you here?

うん、今改札前()だよ。
うん、 いま かいさつまえ だ よ。
Yeah, I’m in front of the ticket gates.

はいは~い。
OK, cool.

ミキ:

ああ、お腹空()いた!
ああ、 おなか すいた!
Aaah, I’m hungry!

はやく()こう!
はやく いこう!
Let’s go!

トビ:

()めましてトビです。
はじめまして トビ です。
Hi, I’m Toby.

ミキ:

ミキです。よろしく。
I’m Miki. Nice to meet you.

ねえーディエゴ、はやく()こうよ!
ねえー ディエゴ、 はやく いこう よ!
Hey, Diego, let’s go already!

餓死()する!
がし する!
I’m gonna starve to death!

ディエゴ:

ほかのみんなは?
Where’s everybody else?

ミキ:

もうお()だって。
もう おみせ だって。
They’re already at the restaurant

だからはやく()こうよ!
だから はやく いこう よ!
So let’s get going already!

ディエゴ:

じゃあ(こう。
じゃあ いこう。
OK, let’s go.

ミキ:

うん!
Yeah!

ごはん!ごはん!
Food! Food!


Commentary Transcript

In this next section we get to meet our third character, Miki.

At the very start, we’re already getting some review from earlier in this video, as Diego answers his phone…

ディエゴ:

もしもし?
Hello?

()いた?
ついた?
Are you here?

うん、今改札前()だよ。
うん、 いま かいさつまえ だ よ。
Yeah, I’m in front of the ticket gates.


はいは~い。
OK, cool.

We’ve already seen もしもし, so that should be no problem understanding, I hope.

And we’ve already seen 着いた? Which means “Are you here?” (direct translation: “arrived?”)

And we’ve already seen うん、改札前だよ. “Yeah, I’m in front of the ticket gates.”

All that’s left in this little phone call is はいは~い

As most of you probably know, はい means “yes” in Japanese. I could make an entire lesson on the different ways to say “はい” in Japanese. And I probably will at some point. For now, though, let’s just look at this particular usage, where we have はい said two times, with the second は sound drawn out a bit before the last い

Intonation is extremely important when you’re saying はい, as it can be the difference between a serious “Yes,” はい! And something like “yeah, yeah” はいはい, which can be super rude if you’re not careful. The way that Diego says it isn’t really rude, though, more so just casual.

I translated it to “Ok, cool.” Or it might also be something like “Okay, got it.” It certainly does not have the impatient tone that we’d get if we drew the first of the は sounds, making something like は~いはい、which would be something like “Okay, okay” in English. To get a masterful control over the correct pronunciation of this one, please check out the shadow track. It sounds like this:


Miki shows ups

This is where Miki finally rolls in, and she says…

ミキ:

ああ、お腹空()いた!
ああ、 おなか すいた!
Aaah, I’m hungry!

はやく()こう!
はやく いこう!
Let’s go!

The first thing that she says is ああ、お腹空いた

お腹 (おなか)means “stomach,” and 空く(すく)means “to get empty; to become less crowded.”

Like we saw with あ、いたいた or 来た! in the last video, here the past tense is actually illustrating a present state, much like the present perfect tense does in English. That probably sounds really complicated, but it’s easy if we look at an example.

空いた, translated directly into the past tense of English, would be “got empty; became less crowded.”

Actually, though, it’s closer to the present perfect tense, which would be something like “has gotten empty; has become less crowded.”

So, “stomach” + “has gotten empty” = “hungry” = “(I’m) hungry.”

If you’d rather not think about all of that weird stuff, you can just do what I did back when I was at a lower level and memorize this phrase as is: お腹空いた = “(I’m) hungry.”

If you see this in a Japanese class, they’ll probably put the article が between these two words, to give you: お腹が空いた. It’s pretty common to drop が, though… especially in super casual settings like this one.

Because Miki is hungry, she continues by saying: はやく行こう(はやく いこう)

はやく is the adverbial form of はやい, which means “fast; quick; early.”

If you didn’t know this already, then it’s worth noting that anytime you want to make an i-adjective into an adverb, you just drop the い and replace it with く.

We want to use はやい to modify the verb 行く (いく), “to go,” which is here translated to the plain volitional form 行こう (いこう). In other words, we want to use it as an adverb, so that’s why we change it to はやく

Like I said, 行こう is the plain volitional form of 行く, and it means “let’s go.” Eventually, I’ll make some video lessons that look at volitional verbs a bit more in depth, dealing with conjugation rules and all of that boring stuff, until then, I’ll just go with the 15-second version:

Anytime we want to say “Let’s [verb]” in Japanese, we use the volitional form. If we’re speaking in a casual setting, then we need the conjugation for type-1 verbs (like 行く), so we change the “u” sound at the end of the word to an “ou” sound. For example, 行く (iku) becomes 行こう (ikou) “let’s go!”

飲む (のむ), “to drink,” becomes 飲もう (のもう), “let’s drink!”

If you’re worried about other rules and stuff, then check out the Bunkai Beast Grammar Course, which talks about lots of boring grammatical stuff like this.

Anyways, Miki is hungry: ああ、お腹空いた, so that’s why she says はやく行こう. “quickly let’s go,” which I translated just to “Let’s go.” I probably also could have translated it to something like “Let’s get going!”

Toby then butts in by introducing himself…

トビ:

()めましてトビです。
はじめまして トビ です。
Hi, I’m Toby.

ミキ:

ミキです。よろしく。
I’m Miki. Nice to meet you.

初めまして is one of those phrases that you should just memorize. Technically it means something like “we’re meeting for the first time,” and it often gets translated to “nice to meet you.” I think that this can be a bit confusing, though, because sometimes it means “nice to meet you,” and sometimes it would be closer to saying something like “Hi (for the first time) “ in English. That’s why in this dialog, it’s only getting translated to “Hi.”

He also says トビです, which is a polite way of saying one’s name. Literally it means “Toby is,” but we don’t have to stretch our imaginations too much to understand that this is actually short for 私はトビです (わたし は トビ です), “I am Toby.”

Miki responds by saying ミキです。よろしく。

ミキです, as we’ve seen, means “I’m Miki.”

よろしく is a bit more complicated to explain, as this word technically doesn’t exist in English. Perhaps the simplest explanation is to just say that it means something like “Please treat me well.” However, if it’s said when meeting someone for the first time, or giving a self-introduction, it usually gets translated to “Nice to meet you,” which is what I used here.

If you take a Japanese class, your teacher will probably tell you that you should say 宜しくお願いします (よろしく おねがいします).

お願いします is a polite way of saying “please,” so we can imagine that this whole thing is “Please treat me well,” but it still gets translated to “nice to meet you,” either way.

I kind of agree, though, that saying only よろしく the first time that you meet someone is not very polite, and I would always opt for よろしくおねがいします the first time that I meet someone. Miki is not your average Japanese girl, though, as we’ll see throughout this series, and I get the sense here that she is trying to get out of this conversation with Toby as quickly as possible so that they can hurry up and go to the party, which is why she doesn’t hesitate to turn to Diego and say:

ミキ:

ねえーディエゴ、はやく()こうよ!
ねえー ディエゴ、 はやく いこう よ!
Hey, Diego, let’s go already!

餓死()する!
がし する!
I’m gonna starve to death!

Judging from Miki’s tone as she talks to Diego, it is really obvious that they are close friends, because if they weren’t, she would sound pretty rude.

Let’s start with this first sentence, where Miki says ねえーディエゴ

I’m not really good at saying it, but this ねえー sound that Miki is making means something like, “Hey.” Please take note that this phrase is quite feminine. So unless you’re a female or a child, I wouldn’t recommend using it. If you’re a guy, you’d probably be better off saying something like なあーディエゴ or おおいディエゴ

Then after that Miki says はやく行こうよ

This is almost the exact same sentence that she said earlier, only this time she’s stuck a よ onto it for assertion. That’s why, this time, instead of translating it to “Let’s go!” I translated it to “Let’s go already!”

Next she says 餓死する! This literally means “starve to death.” The two kanji show that quite clearly, as the first one means “starve” and the second one means “die.”

If you ever feel like being dramatic about how hungry you are, saying 餓死する might be a good option.

Unfortunately for Miki, her suggestion to hurry up and leave gets brushed off again, as Diego says:

ディエゴ:

ほかのみんなは?
Where’s everybody else?

Like we already saw earlier, saying something like みんなは? (literally, “everyone” plus the topic marker は) is actually a shortened version of a fuller sentence, that would be something like みんなはどこ? “Where is everybody?” or “Where is everyone?”

The only thing that we haven’t really seen yet is this ほかの at the front of the sentence. In the dialog, this gets translated to “else,” but ほかの really just means “the other (something)” or “other (something).” In this case, that “something” is みんな, everybody, so a word-for-word, stilted translation of this whole thing would be “the other / everybody / as for / [question],” and the unspoken word どこ for “where.” Or, in more natural English, “Where’s everybody else?

Let’s look at Miki’s response:

ディエゴ:

ほかのみんなは?
Where’s everybody else?

ミキ:

もうお()だって。
もう おみせ だって。
They’re already at the restaurant.

だからはやく()こうよ!
だから はやく いこう よ!
So let’s get going already!

First let’s take a look at this sentence: [もうお店だって]

もう means “already”
お店 means “store” or “shop,” or, in as in this case “restaurant” or “izakaya.”
だ is a copula expressing state-of-being, as we’ve seen before
って is our handy quotation mark substitute that we talked about earlier.

So if we have “already / restaurant / is / [quotation]” we can use our super brain powers to understand that this means “They’re already at the restaurant.” Or, perhaps a bit more literally, “They said they’re already at the restaurant.”

Then we get yet another sentence that is almost exactly like one that we saw before:

だからはやく()こうよ!

だから translated literally is something like “is because,” but it’s often put onto the front of sentences like this in order to express “That’s why…” We already saw that はやく行こうよ means “let’s go already!” so by adding だから to the front of it, we get “That’s why let’s go already!” or, more naturally, “So let’s get going already!”

Anytime you want to repeat a point that you’ve been trying to make, especially if its in a casual setting and you’re feeling a bit fed up, feel free to stick a だから onto the front of it in order to create this nuance of “That’s why I’m saying… [something].” It’s really useful.

Hang in there. We’re almost finished…

ミキ:

もうお()だって。
もう おみせ だって。
They’re already at the restaurant.

だからはやく()こうよ!
だから はやく いこう よ!
So let’s get going already!

ディエゴ:

じゃあ()こう。
じゃあ いこう。
OK, let’s go.

ミキ:

うん!
Yeah!

ごはん!ごはん!
Food! Food!

Diego comes back to Miki with じゃあ行こう

As we’ve seen, 行こう means “Let’s go,” and じゃあ, which is an extremely common word, means something like “well then” or “then.” In this case, I’ve translated it to “OK,” making the whole sentence “OK, let’s go.”

I could talk more about じゃあ, but we’ll definitely see it multiple times in the future, so there’s no need to worry about it too much if you don’t understand it yet.

Miki responds with: うん, which we all know from earlier videos means “Yeah!” and then she says ごはん!ごはん!, which I translated (quite directly) to mean “Food! Food!”

The first thing that I need to point out is that you should probably avoid yelling “Food!” while you’re out in public, much as I would advise you to do in English.

The second thing that I want to point out is that when I originally wrote this line for Miki, I wrote めし、めし, which means pretty much the same thing: “Food! Food!” and they both literally mean just “rice,” but they get used to mean “food” or sometimes even “meal.” In fact, if we wrote these with kanji, they’re pretty much the same word: ご飯、ご飯 (ごはん、ごはん)and 飯、飯 (めし、めし).

The first time that my script checker read this, she said “People don’t yell things like this out in public.” Once I painfully explained that the problem is Miki, not her Japanese, they proceeded to also correct my Japanese, saying that an eccentric male might say めし、めし, but an eccentric female like Miki would be more likely to say ごはん、ごはん. Boring people would be more likely to say something normal, or perhaps even nothing at all.

Anyways, with that, we’ve made it through the entire first dialog! Sweet! Go reward yourself with some cake or something. And if you’re totally lost about anything, please leave questions in the comments section of this video’s page.

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