Counting in Japanese Trivia Quiz

Answer: ichi

You might have heard phrases such as "ichi-ban" or "number one".

Answer: ni

"Ni" is the number two in Japanese. Some words you might hear it in: "ni-gatsu" or February (second month), "ni-nensei" or second-year student.

Answer: triangle

"San" is the Japanese equivalent of three. Therefore, "san-kaku" means three angles, which would lead you to a triangle. Other words you might hear: "San-ji" or three o'clock, "san-nichi" or three days, and "san-kaku" or triangle.

Answer: shi

"Shi" is the word for the number four. As you may or may not know, "shi" is also the word for "death". Therefore, Japanese people will tend to avoid doing things involving the number four, or pronounce the word "yon" instead. For instance, when you give a gift of food, you should always make sure that the amount of food is never given in a multiple of four as it is considered unlucky.

Answer: go, roku, shichi, hachi, kyuu

From least to greatest is "go" (five), "roku" (six), "shichi" (seven), "hachi" (eight), and "kyuu" (nine).

Answer: yon and nana

The alternate ways of saying four and seven is "yon" and "nana" respectively. For instance, "yon-pun" means four minutes (you wouldn't use "shi-pun" in this case), and "nana-fun" means seven minutes (again, you wouldn't use "shichi-fun" in this case).

Answer: kyuu and ku

The two ways of saying nine is "kyuu" and "ku". As mentioned in the question, these two ways of saying nine are often misunderstood and to be able to know when to use which one takes practice and experience. For instance, "kyuu-kai" means 9th floor, while "ku-ji" means 9 o'clock.

Answer: juu

"Juu" is Japanese for ten. However, sometimes this word will leave out the last "u" depending on the circumstance. For instance, "juu-ji" means 10 o'clock, while "juppun" means 10 minutes. Some people will also interchange the short "ju" for "ji" instead, although this is rare.

Answer: hou

Interestingly enough, "zero" (pronounced zeh-roh) is commonly used for the word zero. "Rei" and "maru" are nicknames for zero, but aren't necessarily defined as zero.

Answer: hyaku

You might have heard of the comet named "hyaku-take" which was translated roughly to "hundred tails".

Answer: sen and ichiman

The Japanese counting system has two seperate words for these numbers. The reason? The Japanese counting system is based on units of 10,000 rather than what Westerners are used to (units of 1,000). Therefore there is no such thing as "jyuu-sen".

Answer: 31

Japanese numbers place the value before the unit. Therefore, "san-jyuu" literally means "three-tens" and "ichi" means "one" giving you 31.

Answer: go-hyaku roku-jyuu ni

Again, in Japanese counting, you place the value before the unit place. Therefore 500 is "go-hyaku" (literally five hundreds), 60 is "roku-jyuu" (literally 6 tens), and 2 is "ni". Put them all together and you have "go-hyaku roku-jyuu ni".

Answer: Hyaku-man

As the Japanese use "man" (10,000) as their base units rather than 1,000, the Japanese counting system can get a little confusing. In this case, "hyaku-man" literally means a hundred ten-thousands which would give you 6 zeros or 1,000,000. "Sen-sen" (which theoretically would mean a thousand thousands) does not exist in Japanese.

Answer: oku

Again, because of the Japanese counting system being based on units of 10,000, there is a need for a new original unit word when you reach 100,000,000. The Japanese do have a word for it, and it happens to be "oku". "Man man" and "hyaku sen sen" aren't real numbers in Japanese and sound like jibberish to a native Japanese speaker.

By the way, the choice "chou" is actually a real number. It is the next original unit, which in this case would be 1 trillion. To put it simple, think of the Japanese counting system putting commas after each 4 zeros. So man would look like 1,0000; oku would look like 1,0000,0000; and chou would look like 1,0000,0000,0000. Hope you learned something about the counting system of the Japanese!