Can I get away with hutatsu, futatsu/ mitsu… and hitori / hutari / san nin when ordering for things and saying how many in my party, while traveling in Japan?

9 comments

1. you can “survive” with english numbers in 99% of things as a tourist. hold up fingers as a backup. don’t sweat it all too much, just enjoy your visit.

2. hon/pon is for cylindrical objects, not “large things.”

3. hitotsu, futatsu and so on work if you don’t know the counter for something. If you are traveling as a tourist no one expects much Japanese, you will be fine.

4. the most versatile counter is -ko 個 it means thing. It is not the prettiest japanese when their is a more appropriate counter, but often usable.

   For people in restaurants etc., the proper word is -mei 名 but as others have said as a tourist holding up your finger is enough. (you might hear it anyways when the staff relays you to someone else, they usually repeat how many people they are passing on. so, you enter with “futari” but afterwards “nimei” is what you will hear)

   also pointing at something and saying kore これ (をお願いします。・いくらですか wo onegai shimasu / ikura desuka for this one please or how much is this） is super normal to do.

5. It’s totally fine to use hitotsu / futatsu / etc for objects, especially for orders.

   In restaurants the counter for people is usually “mei” — listen for something like “nanmei sama desuka”. Hitori and futari are perfectly fine answers there, and “san-nin” will be understood just fine, but “san-mei desu” is more idiomatic.

6. 全然大丈夫です！基本的に最初の数字さえわかっとければあとはなんとなくで乗り越えられる！

7. survive? sure. flourish? no. honestly the number of counters that come up regularly is more like 10 or 20, it’s not infinite. there’s technically way more, but expand your horizon one order of magnitude and you’ll cover way more ground.

8. Hitori, Futari, Sannin and Hitotsu, Futatsu, Mittsu are good enough.
   Another one that’s quite useful if you’re mentioning small objects would be ikko, niko, sanko etc.

   Not using the specialised counter words is fine if you’re just getting your point across as a foreigner. Everything else is a bonus. Just distinguish between people (hitori) and objects (hitotsu/ikko), and you’ll be good.

9. Just got back from Japan understanding about 20 or so words. Pointing, pictures and using fingers for numbers worked everywhere. Also, google lens and translate are really good if you want to read something or need something more specific.