Booster: Long Stay & Daily Life

In this booster

Somewhere around week two, a trip quietly changes species: you stop visiting Japan and start briefly living in it. Different systems take over — a furnished weekly rental instead of a hotel (its reception is what this pack means by “front desk”), the laundromat, the neighborhood supermarket, the garbage calendar, eventually a haircut — and none of them appear in guidebooks, because tourists go home before needing them. This pack is those systems. It runs on Lesson 3’s arimasu ka / ikura, Lesson 4’s doko desu ka, and Lesson 7’s yoyaku — no new grammar: every sentence here is a frame you already own, wearing new nouns. Boosters assume the finished core (Lessons 1–9).

Tap each sentence and listen first, repeat it aloud, then check yourself against the text and meaning that appear. Tap again to listen as often as you like.

A place to land

First, the question the rest of this pack assumes an answer to: where are you actually staying? Not a leased apartment — in Japan that means a guarantor, key money, and a two-year contract. The week-plus traveler’s real options sit in the furnished middle ground between hotel and apartment:

• The weekly mansion (uiikurii manshon) — a furnished studio rented by the week or month: no guarantor, no key money, utilities included. This is the default choice, and the one with a real front desk — which is why this pack’s dialog happens at one. (One false friend to defuse early: manshon means an ordinary mid-rise apartment building, not a mansion.)
• Serviced apartments — booked like a hotel, shaped like an apartment: kitchenette, often an in-room washer, English-speaking reception. The pricier, frictionless version of the same idea.
• The share house (shea hausu) — a private room with shared kitchen and bath, usually a month-ish minimum. The cheap, social option, common in Tokyo and Osaka.
• Guesthouses and hostels — many quietly discount by the week, and some run monthly rates. Always worth asking.

For a night or two you already have packs: Capsule Hotel at the budget end, Ryokan at the beautiful end. This pack picks up where they stop — the multi-week version of having somewhere to be.

Whichever you choose, a washing machine of your own is the exception, not the rule — which is exactly why the next section exists.

The laundry room

The supermarket hour

Garbage: the system nobody warns you about

The first true long-stay shock isn’t language — it’s that garbage is sorted, scheduled, and personal. The rules, in five lines:

• Everything separates: moeru gomi (burnable — food scraps, paper), moenai gomi (non-burnable — metal, ceramics, small plastics vary by city), and recyclables — petto botoru (PET bottles, caps and labels off), cans, glass — each its own stream.
• Each stream has its own morning on a neighborhood calendar (your host or front desk has it — the dialog below gets it into your hands). Out by 8 a.m. on the right day, never the night before (crows are why).
• Public bins barely exist — konbini bins are for what you bought there. Your pockets carry the day’s wrappers home; every long-stayer develops the habit within a week.
• Wrong-day bags come back. Rejected garbage gets stickered and returned to your door — the politest walk of shame in the world, and completely avoidable with the calendar.

The haircut

And the styling conversation? Don’t have it. The move you learned at the ticket machine works perfectly here: a phone photo of the haircut you want, plus Kore, onegaishimasu. Barbers worldwide prefer the photo to the words, and yours are no exception.

Dialog

Week one at the weekly-mansion front desk, sorting out the systems. Listen cold first — no peeking — then check yourself line by line.

Week one in seven lines — and the staff’s karendaa is a katakana loanword you met the moment he said it.

What they’ll say to you

Three lines for your ears — the rental counter, the barber’s chair, and everywhere else. You never say these.

Manshitsu desu.

manshitsu — every room taken; the “sold out” of lodging. One word, whole answer: when it comes back after your arimasu ka, the search continues down the street.

Kyou wa dou nasaimasu ka.

The chair question. Every answer you need is already in your camera roll.

Osaki ni douzo.

osaki ni douzo — “after you,” offered at laundromat machines, elevators, and register lines daily. It’s Lesson 1’s douzo wearing a courtesy prefix; accept with a nod and the same douzo energy back.

How to behave: living here, briefly

• The sticker hour is a legitimate lifestyle. Evening hangaku and waribiki shopping at the suupaa is how a long stay eats well cheaply — nobody judges the basket of half-price sashimi; half the neighborhood is holding one too.
• Garbage is the neighborhood’s one strong opinion of you. Right stream, right morning, by 8 a.m., never overnight. When in doubt, ask with the drilled question — hosts vastly prefer explaining the calendar to re-sorting your bag.
• Apartment walls are thin and evenings are quiet. Phone calls, laundry machines, and vacuum cleaners rest after about 10 p.m. — the same quiet-hours instinct the camping pack taught, now with neighbors instead of tents.
• Bought a used bike? Make sure the bouhan touroku (anti-theft registration) transfers to you — the sticker on the frame is what police actually check, and the Cycling pack has the rest of the street rules.

Vocabulary reference

Recognize only — never say these:

Anki deck

Download the booster deck — sentence cards are the course; suspend the vocab cards unless a word won’t stick.