Lesson 6: Going Places & Clock Time

[verb]-masu ka. — “Do you / will you / does it [verb]?”

You met this shape back in Lesson 3 — Haraimasu. → Haraimasu ka. A verb alone is a whole sentence, so a verb + ka is a yes/no question, and the answer echoes the same verb back. Here it goes to work: it’s the polite way to ask about someone else’s plans — the job Lesson 5 told you -tai desu ka must never do — and, pointed at a bus or train, to ask whether it goes. Meet the verbs of motion:

Ikimasu.

ikimasu — go. The single most useful verb in travel.

Ikimasu ka.

Verb + ka. Asked of a person, it’s “are you going?”; asked of a bus with a point, it’s “does it go (there)?”

Kimasu ka.

kimasu — come.

Kaerimasu.

kaerimasu — return / go home. The end-of-day verb.

Basu ni norimasu.

norimasu — ride/board — and basu — bus. What you board takes ni (Lesson 4’s location particle, moonlighting).

Tomarimasu ka.

tomarimasu — stop. Point at a station on the route map and ask.

Eki ni ikitai desu.

eki — station — and there’s Lesson 5’s -tai keeping its promise: ikimasu → ikitai desu. Destination takes ni. Say this to any local and watch the pointing begin.

___ wa nan-ji desu ka. — “What time is ___?” ___ wa nan-ji kara / made desu ka. — “From / until what time is ___?”

nan-ji — what time. But first, the answers: the hour set, drilled as twelve fixed items — not assembled from numbers. Three of them refuse to match the numbers you learned in Lesson 3; drilling the set whole makes the irregulars invisible. Steady rhythm, all twelve:

ichi-ji ni-ji san-ji yo-ji

Irregular #1: yo-ji, never “yon-ji.” Four o’clock simply has its own name.

go-ji roku-ji shichi-ji

Irregular #2: shichi-ji — the one place shichi appears in this whole course.

hachi-ji ku-ji

Irregular #3: ku-ji, never “kyuu-ji.” That’s all three — the rest are exactly number + ji.

juu-ji juuichi-ji juuni-ji

Ima, nan-ji desu ka.

ima — now. “What time is it now?” — the everyday one.

San-ji han desu.

han — half past. And here is the minutes rule of this course: you will never say minutes. Hour + han gives you half past; everything else you round off with goro (“about”).

San-ji goro desu.

goro — approximately (for times). Hour, han, goro: that’s every time you’ll ever need to say. Exact minutes come from pointing at your phone — or kaite kudasai. (You’ll still need to hear exact minutes — announcements speak them — but you never say them yourself.)

Gogo san-ji han goro desu.

gogo — p.m. — stacks on the front (gozen is its a.m. twin). The full polite answer, assembled from four pieces you now own.

Mise wa nan-ji kara desu ka.

kara — from. Opening hours are “from when?”

Ku-ji kara go-ji made desu.

made — until. X kara Y made — from X to Y — works for hours, days, and places (eki made — “as far as the station”).

Gozen ku-ji kara desu.

gozen — a.m. — gogo’s morning twin, stacked up front the same way.

Gogo roku-ji han desu.

Written Japan runs on the 24-hour clock — departure boards, shop signs, tickets: 18:30, never “6:30 p.m.” You never say the big numbers: subtract twelve and answer from the hour set you own. (Announcements and boards do speak the full 24-hour numbers; you learn to catch those by ear, never to say them.)

Basu wa hachi-ji ni ikimasu ka.

hachi-ji ni — at 8:00. So far the hour has told the time; add ni and it pins an action to that time — Lesson 4’s ni (place) doing time duty, inside today’s [verb]-masu ka question. A clock time takes ni; a loose day word like kyou just sits out front with a comma.

The hard English idea: tense lives inside the verb — go, went, will go, would have gone… The MiniCore move: a time word up front carries the when; the verb barely changes. One new ending for the past — -mashita — kept for clarity, and the four-form paradigm is complete: -masu, -masen, -mashita, -masen deshita. Every verb you know, and every verb still coming, uses exactly these four.

Kyou, ikimasu.

kyou — today.

Ashita, ikimasu.

ashita — tomorrow. Same verb, no future tense — the time word did all the work.

Kinou, ikimashita.

kinou — yesterday — and -mashita, the past shape: ikimasu → ikimashita.

Ikimasen deshita.

-masen deshita — the negative past: the no-shape plus deshita. That’s the fourth and final form; the conjugation table of this course is now closed.

Kinou, basu ga kimasen deshita.

The no-form takes the past too: kimasu → kimasen → kimasen deshita — the bus that never showed, the shop that had none. This is the shape for what didn’t happen.

Kyou, eki ni ikimasu. Sorekara, konbini ni ikimasu.

sorekara — “after that” — chains plans as separate, complete sentences. No clause grammar; just say them in order.

Kinou, sushi o tabemashita. Soshite, biiru o nomimashita.

soshite — “and (then).” And look at the retrofit: tabemashita, nomimashita — Lesson 5’s verbs took the past ending without being asked. All of them do.

Kinou, ichi-ji ni ikimashita. Sorekara, ni-ji ni kaerimashita.

Time pins the action; tense rides the verb. Ichi-ji ni ikimashita — went at 1:00 — then sorekara chains a second: ni-ji ni kaerimashita, came home at 2:00. Two clock times, two past verbs, zero new grammar.

Kyou, gogo yo-ji ni kaerimasu.

gogo and a clock time, now driving a verb: home at 4 p.m. today. Yo-ji is the irregular (never yon-ji), pinned with ni.

The one-sentence grammar lesson: in Japanese, a question word sits in exactly the slot where the answer will sit. No reordering, no “do-support,” nothing. Take any frame, replace any noun with nani/nan, dare, doko, itsu, ikura — done. Every frame you’ve learned just became a question factory.

Doko ni ikimasu ka.

Eki ni ikimasu → doko ni ikimasu ka. The answer will sit right where doko is.

Nani o kaimasu ka.

The same question-word move, with nani (“what”) dropped into the object slot.

Itsu ikimasu ka.

itsu — when — for days and dates. (Clock time stays with nan-ji: itsu → “tomorrow,” nan-ji → “9:30.”)

Nan-ji ni ikimasu ka.

nan-ji ni — at what time. Swap the hour for the question word, exactly as doko ni ikimasu ka swaps the place — and note the ni: a clock time takes it (san-ji ni), where itsu and the day words don’t.

But should you ask? Cheap questions invite expensive answers. The full ladder, from safest to riskiest — pick the lowest rung that gets what you need:

1. Yes/no — the answer is hai / iie / arimasen: always parseable.
2. Choice enumeration — offer the options yourself; the answer is one of your own words, echoed back.
3. Closed-set answers — ikura (a number), nan-ji (the hour set), doko (a point + a direction word): open in form, small in answer space.
4. True open questions (nani, dou) — last resort, with kaite kudasai standing by.

Basu desu ka, densha desu ka.

densha — train. Rung 2 in action — enumerate the choice yourself, and whatever they answer you already know the word, because you said it first.

Kono densha wa kuukou ni ikimasu ka.

kuukou — airport (a Lesson 0 rhythm word, now boarding). The rung-1 masterstroke: you don’t need to know where this train goes — you need to know if it goes where you’re going. Ask that, get hai or iie, done.

Ku-ji desu ka.

And the ladder’s companion for the half-catch — the commonest repair situation there is. An answer flew past but a fragment surfaced: …ku-ji… Don’t re-ask the whole question; hand the fragment back with ka. This is the echo check: they confirm it (hai) or fix it (iie, ku-ji han desu), and the exchange closes in two seconds. Any fragment works — an hour, a day-name, a price, a station — and you’ll use this little move more than any repair chunk, because catching part of an answer is what actually happens most.

One more particle finishes the transit kit: de — “by means of / at.” It marks how you go or where an action happens.

Basu de ikimasu.

VEHICLE de ikimasu — by bus, by train, by taxi.

Takushii de ikimasu.

takushii — taxi (four beats, long final vowel — Lesson 0 again).

Chikatetsu de ikimasu.

chikatetsu — subway — Lesson 0’s four-beat rhythm word, now in service.

Kaado de haraimasu.

de marks the means for money too — and there’s Lesson 3’s haraimasu, back on duty.

Kuukou e ikimasu.

e — toward. You’ll hear it everywhere (kochira e douzo!); in your own mouth, ni does the same job fine — knowing e is mostly for your ears.

Ashita, gozen shichi-ji ni, takushii de ikimasu.

ashita throws the same stack into the future — gozen shichi-ji ni takushii de ikimasu, “tomorrow at 7 a.m. I’ll go by taxi.” The verb never flinched.

Juuichi-ji kara juuni-ji made, densha wa arimasen.

arimasen turns it negative: between 11:00 and 12:00, no trains run. Juuichi-ji kara juuni-ji made is the range, densha wa arimasen Lesson 4’s “there isn’t” — the late-night check every last-train plan needs.

Kinou, gozen juu-ji ni, basu de kuukou made ikimashita.

Everything stacks. One tiny verb — ikimashita — carries a day (kinou), a time of day (gozen), a clock time (juu-ji ni), a means (basu de), and a destination (kuukou made). Every slot is a piece you already owned; drop in as many as you need and the sentence gets exactly as specific as you want — no conjugation, no clauses.

chikai — near.

Kuukou wa tooi desu.

tooi — far. Chikai (near) / tooi (far) is the pair that decides whether you walk it or ride.

Densha wa hayai desu. Basu wa osoi desu.

hayai — fast (also “early”) — and osoi — slow (also “late”). Lesson 3’s comparison-by-enumeration, planning your route.

Kippu wa ikura desu ka.

kippu — ticket. You’ve had its held-beat rhythm since Lesson 0; now it has a price.

Hikouki wa nan-ji desu ka.

hikouki — airplane, meeting today’s new frame.

Migi desu.

migi — right, in your mouth since Lesson 0’s tap-drill.

Hidari desu ka.

hidari — left. Both slot into ___ desu. when you’re the one pointing, and flip to ___ desu ka. to check a direction back.

Koko de machimasu.

machimasu — wait — with de marking where the waiting happens. (The matte inside Lesson 7’s request chunks is this verb; consider it previewed.)

Ni-jikan desu ka. Nagai desu.

-jikan — hours of duration (ni-jikan = two hours; don’t confuse with ni-ji, 2 o’clock) — and nagai — long (pair: mijikai, short). Echo-check the wait, then editorialize.

Basu wa nagai desu. Densha wa mijikai desu.

mijikai in action — enumeration decides the route, Lesson 3 style.

Eki no mae desu.

mae — front / before — with Lesson 2’s no: X no mae = in front of X. The default meeting spot in Japan.

Ato de ikimasu.

ato — after — ato de = later: the gentlest way to postpone anything.

made + Lesson 5’s onegaishimasu: the complete taxi instruction. Swap in any destination — Hoteru made onegaishimasu. — or just show the written address (Lesson 4’s advice stands). And the driver may beat you to it — his “where to?” is Dochira made desu ka., a line to recognize by ear.

Kono basu wa eki ni ikimasu ka.

The yes/no flip as a reflex. Drill it against its open twin (Kono basu wa doko ni ikimasu ka → route recitation at native speed) until the flip is what comes out under pressure.

Nan-ji kara desu ka.

Point at the shop, the museum, the noren curtain — ask.

Nan-ji made desu ka.

The closing-time question (the until twin of nan-ji kara): last entry, last order, last train. The answer is an hour you know — Go-ji made desu, until five.

Kinou ikimashita. Demo, kyou mo ikimasu.

Past tense + demo — “but” — your first taste of chaining sentences with connectives (Lesson 9 makes a system of it). For now, memorize the shape whole; note Lesson 5’s mo sneaking in too.