todays schedule: take pictures of Japanese appliances (air conditioning control - so we can turn it off )0 and washer/dryer (unit does both) email our absent hosts so that they can tell us how they work. Download Gimp in the process to make labels for all the buttons in photos.
Exchange JR pass vouchers
Do laundry.
Research Kyoto hostels and reserve space.

First day and a quarter

Wow! First time off the continent! Everyone is short and everything is written in Japanese. We are getting better at finding cheap food. We successfully found our way to the Friday Night Magic location, but I misread 20:00 as 6:00 so we got there so early that no one was there. We seem to constantly have just barely enough information to function. It is intense and invigorating (and I am sure at the end of my energy exhausting) to be here. There are many shrines and parks. I am really interested in learning Japanese now. But I will be a humble correspondent for those who are not with us.
The Tokyo part of this trip has been hugely facilitated by Diana Kes who has hosted us, fed us and helped us find our way around - all without never having met us before. Diana and her husband, Jacob connected with us through Dabney House (where Jacob and I lived at Caltech, but 20 years apart) She took an hour train ride to meet us at the airport. We spent a long time trying to hook up with wireless service before going through Customs because, never having travelled out of North America in my 51 years, I did not know that I needed to have a Japanese address handy for Customs and Immigration. So 20 minutes later of working through slow airport wi-fi we had her address off my gmail. Diana is also an American (Chicana to be more precise). It was amazing taking the train back through rural Japan before we got into the Tokyo suburbs. There were ride paddies and bamboo everywhere (I guess that I should have expected this). In all, I got maybe two hours of sleep before the 13 hour flight()and five the night before) and one hour on the flight
Then we dropped our bags off and Diana took us someplace to get ramen. The dish to the left was 880 Yen. You see pork, seaweed,　ごまとまご　（sesame egg - sesame: goma, tomago: egg) with scallions and grapefruit rind in the center . This was a push for me to eat as I am practically afraid of boiled eggs. It was fishy tasting (bonito flakes I assume).

We are staying in the Shinbashi District. This is an older financial center and so has been a high rent district for a long time so we go to be in two parks and two shrines today in randomly wandering and see things on maps to walk to.
Our first outing was to Atago Shrine across the street (you can see part of the word Atago on the menu in the first picture). There were steps as steep as the Hundred Steps in Fairmount Park

No JR Pass

I found out that I need to get my JR pass earlier than the day before I leave.
train schedule http://www.jorudan.co.jp/english/norikae/e-norikeyin.html
http://www.hyperdia.com/
just to get an idea of our necessary travel:
Tokyo - Nagoya
On board for 103 minutes (Traveling for 103 minutes)
One-way fare:10,070 yen Distance:366.0 km
Nagoya-Kyoto
On board for 120 minutes (Traveling for 133 minutes)
One-way fare:2,520 yen Distance:147.6 km
Kyoto-Hiroshima
On board for 96 minutes (Traveling for 102 minutes)
One-way fare:10,280 yen Distance:380.6 km
Hiroshima-Tokyo
On board for 154 minutes (Traveling for 209 minutes)
One-way fare:32,890 yen

give 111520 yen for the both of us. I think I will eat the $70 for Fed Ex to Japan. I had a friend listen to me and I decided to move my Tokyo-Nagoya travel plans from Tuesday to Thursday to give my passes time to arrive.

finally some decisions

we will get JR passes from 6/7 to 6/21.
Miyajima on the 20 (sleep in Hiroshima)
Arrive Hiroishima on June 18.
Arrive Kyoto June 13 (sleep in Kyoto 13-17)
Now ot make this happen.

Sentance enders

そうですよ - It is so! rendered into an assertion by ending with よ. Use そうです and そうですか？ alot.
ね at end of a sentence gives it a sense of reflection or agreement
ね at the end of a sentence with a rising inflection gives a sense of asking for agreement.
よね with rising inflection gives asking for agreement and asserting.
ね means hey! or yo!
The sentence ender の adds emphasis or acts as a question (this all depends on your tone – upward tone is a question, downward tone is a statement – you know how to do this). Might be feminine.

のよ

This is a combination of the sentence ender の and よ, which you learned earlier.

みんな　がくせい　なのよ
Everyone is a student

The の adds emphasis and the よ makes the sentence an assertion. You may have noticed the な in there as well. This is added in here to make sure people don’t think you’re saying “it’s everyone’s student’s ….” You don’t want people to think you’re talking about something the student is in possession of.

のね

This is a combination of の and ね, which you also learned earlier.

みんな　がくせい　なのね！
Everyone is a student (aren’t they?)

The の adds emphasis to the statement, and the ね adds agreement to the sentence. Basically what you’d expect when you add these two sentence enders together.

わ

The sentence ender わ softens the sentence. It makes it sound more “female” in a way, because feminine language is thought to be softer, kinder, and gentler.

わよ

When you combine the sentence enders わ and よ you are not only adding an assertion, you’re making it sound “softer” as well.

わね

As you can probably guess, adding わ and ね to the end of a sentence adds “agreement” or “reflection” to your sentence, plus you’re making it sound softer and more feminine.

かしら

This sentence ender adds a sense of “wonder” to a sentence or phrase. As in… “I wonder if he is Japanese?” The か is the question marker, so it’s like you’re asking yourself a question.

かれ　は　にほんじん　かしら？
I wonder if he is Japanese?

When using かしら you’ll want to drop the です.
Hint: If you remember の, わ, and かしら, you’ll be able to figure out the rest (as long as you know ね and よ).

Masculine

ぞ

ぞ is a lot like よ in that it indicates assertion, though it’s a bit more casual. It’s used with casual form (which you won’t learn until the beginning of Season 3) so you’ll have to take what you can out of the example for this one and just know what ぞ does (even if you don’t understand the example).

ぜんぶ　たべたぞ！
I ate it all!

ぞ is fairly positive sounding – the next sentence ender not so much.

ぜ

ぜ and ぞ are very similar, it’s mainly the feeling that’s different. In general, it’s not very polite (so you shouldn’t use it with people you don’t know really well) and it’s a bit more forceful (remember, in Japanese, more forceful = less polite). As long as you know this is a less polite version of ぞ, you’ll be fine.

かい

かい has the same usage as か (the question marker), except it’s more masculine. It’s actually considered to be a little gentler sounding than か. This is also used with casual form, so if you don’t understand the example, that’s okay. Just make sure you understand what it does (if you understand か, then you understand this).

ぜんぶ　たべたかい？
Did you eat it all?

かな／かなぁ

かな is the masculine version of the feminine かしら. For this, you’re actually combining question marker か and な (which adds some uncertainty to what you’re saying).

すし　を　たべたかなぁ。。。
I wonder if I ate the sushi…?

Counting in Japanese/how much/money

Counting up to 99,999 is rather simple.
number |place value|one's
so 23456 = 2|10,000|3|1,000|4|100|5|10|6
100 = ひゃく
1,000 = せん (in combination with other numbers)
10,000 = まん (in combination with other numbers)

100,000 = じゅうまん (10+10,000)

1,000,000 = ひゃくまん (100+10,000)

10,000,000 = いっせんまん (1,000 + 10,000)

If you want to do 100,000,000 (that’s 100 million), you’d use the word おく (億).

100,000,000 = いちおく

1,000,000,000 = じゅうおく

10,000,000,000 = ひゃくおく

100,000,000,000 = いっせんおく

There are some exceptions:
when 4 is used a number (not the one's) it is よん
when 7 is used as a number (not the ones) use なな
300 = さんびゃく
600 = ろっぴゃく
800 = はっぴゃく
1,000 = いっせん
8,000 = はっせん
10,000 = いちまん

これ　は　いくら　ですか？　＝　How much is this? or As for this, how much is it?

“yen” is えん (円). Just add えん onto a number, and voilà! You have yourself a price. Let’s look at some examples.

1,000えん = せんえん

Possisives

As an anarchist-communist parent, I tortured my syntax when talking to my baby about possession. We were walking through my housemates room at age two. "Jessica uses this room and has it set up in a way that works for her. It is not fair to rearrange the stuff in this room while she is using it without her permission." I wonder how they would do that in Japanese.
These examples should do it:

これ　は　わたし　の　えんぴつ　です。

This is my pencil

それ　は　ひとみさん　の　くるま　です。
That is Hitomi’s car.
あれ　は　わたしたち　の　じてんしゃ　でした。
That over there was our bicycle.
The の particle adds possession as a postfix to nouns or pronouns.
There is lot here: vocab for this/that/that over there/I/we/you