Everyday scenes in Japan, from introductions to a visit to the bank. In each one you say your role’s lines out loud.
おわび
Before your trip, you borrowed a camera from someone a year above you in your seminar group. You dropped it on some temple steps, and now it won’t work. You’ve come to give it back — and the first thing they ask is how the trip went.
旅行はどうでしたか。写真、たくさん撮れましたか。
shortabout 2 min
おわび
The meeting was moved to another room and an email went round about it, but you were out all morning and never saw it. The usual meeting room was empty, and by the time you found the right one, the meeting was over. The person who called it is still there: you need to apologise and find out what was decided without you.
遅れてすみません。いつもの会議室に誰もいなくて、中止かと思ったんです。
shortabout 2 min
さそい
A small group of colleagues goes out to see the blossom every year, and this year you are being asked along for the first time. The day is already settled — next Saturday — and nobody is going to move it. Except that the park you walk past every morning is in bloom already: the year is early, and by Saturday there will be nothing left to look at. You are the only one who knows, and it has to be said now.
来週の土曜日、みんなでお花見に行くんですが、一緒に行きませんか。
shortabout 2 min
おことわり
You once mentioned having a car, and a colleague from the next department remembered. Now it’s the lunch break, and the conversation turns to that very car. Only the car is your dad’s, not yours — and lending it isn’t your call.
車、持ってるって言ってましたよね。
shortabout 2 min
おことわり
Everyone is staying late tonight: the table for tomorrow’s meeting has to be checked, and it was only decided today. But today is your day to pick up your child — and that has to happen before six-thirty. You need to tell the person running the preparations now, before the working day is over.
今夜の残業のことなんですが、きょうは私が子どもを迎えに行く日なんです。
shortabout 2 min
おねがい
On Saturday afternoon you have a job interview, for a job after graduation. But you’re also down for a shift at your part-time job that day, and you can’t leave halfway through. It’s your break, and a coworker from your shifts is here — someone you don’t know well enough to just ask outright.
土曜日って、バイト入っていますか。
shortabout 2 min
ざつだん
Morning, rain since dawn. The train ran fifteen minutes late and you had to run from the station. Your colleague by the door has been riding the same line for years and isn’t surprised by the news — only asks whether it was late again. To you it was one unlucky morning; here it turns out to be a property of the line that everyone has known about for a long time. And with it comes the explanation for something you had been explaining to yourself another way: why, on rainy days, your colleague is always in ahead of you.
ひどい雨ですね。電車が十五分遅れて、駅から走ってきたんです。
shortabout 2 min