猿も木から落ちる is one of my favs.

@Gigatron oooooh those things. thanks

Soooo I wanted to make some macarons and I bought a mix from the store… bad Idea.. now I have to translate the instructions into english.

I spent the last hour and a half looking up a bunch of the kanji I wasn’t sure about.. but I still wanna double check and see what you guys can come up with.

[The following was copied from the back of the box.. I don't think I made any mistakes...]
[* also, the little c's mean degrees Celsius]

* 平らなところ（テーブルなど）で、マカロンガイドの上に天板の大きさに合わせて切ってオーブンペーパーをのせ、端をセロハンテープ等で固定しておきます。
* オーブンを140ｃに予熱しておきます。

１．ボウルにメレングミックスと水を入れハンドミキサーの低速で軽く混ぜ合わせます。軽く泡立ってきたらハンドミキサー高速に変えて角がたつまでしっかり泡立て、メレングを作ります。「写真1」

２．（１）にマカロンミックスを入れ、ゴムベラで粉が見えなくなるまでサックリと混ぜます。「写真2」

３．（２）の生地をゴムベラでボウルの側面にこすりつけるように伸ばします。（マカロナージュ）「写真3」※生地につやがでて、生地をもちあげたときにゆっくり落ちる程度が目安です。

４．（３）の生地を絞り袋に入れ、先を1cmくらいハサミで切り、準備しておいたオーブンペーパーに生地を絞り出していきます。※絞った生地を乾燥させる必要はありません。「写真4」

５．絞った生地をオーブンペーパーごと天板に移し、140ｃに予熱したオーブンで15～20分程度焼きます。（オーブンの機種により焼き時間は多少異なります）焼き上げったらケーキクーラーに移して冷まします。

６．ストロベリーチョコレートをボウルに入れ、約60cの湯せんで溶かします。オーブンペーパーからマカロンをそっと外し、ストロベリーチョコレートをサンドしていきます。残りのチョコレートはマカロンの上コーティングし、ペンチョコで模様を描いたり、チョコレートが乾く前にアラザンをのせお好みのデコレーションをします。「写真5」

Wow, this was tougher than I thought. I had my own questions about this grammar myself. So I asked my friend and tried to break it down as best I can.

寿司を食べるはずだ
ru plus da = someone else’s situation, I make a strong assumption about what they will do in the future
To translate literally, you could say “I expect (that he) will eat sushi.” or “I expect him to eat sushi.” Also, you have some reason to think so. Someone told you so, or whatever. This is not used to express your thoughts on your own future actions. Even in English we don’t do this about our own actions.

寿司を食べたはずだ
ta plus da = someone else’s situation, I make a strong assumption about what they did in the past.
This is the same as above, but expresses a current expectation/assumption about a past action. Again, this is not used to express one’s own actions. It would be like saying, “I must have eaten sushi (yesterday).”

寿司を食べるはずだった
ru plus datta = i was planning to but became unable to do
This one can be used about one’s own actions and expresses you had evey intention of doing something, but became unable to do so. You went to the sushi restaurant and it was closed, or they were sold out of sushi at the grocery store, w/e and thus “I was expecting to eat sushi (but I couldn’t)”. We wouldn’t say “Did you ate?” or “I expected to ate”

寿司を食べたはずだった
ta plus datta.. This one was the hardest for my friend to explain. Basically it seems similar to “(But I thought) he ate sushi (yesterday)!” with the strong assumption attached to it and is used in a situation where something bad suddenly happened. The example my friend gave me was that..

I am person A, my friends person B and C went and had sushi yesterday but today I suddenly heard from my friend D or w/e that person B had fallen ill. I would be surprised because I was under the assumption that he was healthy and げんき but today I found out that wasn’t the case.

I hope that helps explain. Basically はず expresses a strong assumption like ‘must’ (It’s noon on a weekday so, he must be at work.). So be careful using はずだ about your own actions, past or present.

• This reply was modified 12 years, 8 months ago by  KiaiFighter.

Your biggest costs will likely be transportation and lodging.

Every time I have gone traveling in Japan, I have cut my costs by staying in hostels or internet cafes. (about 2000yen/night) and using train passes where I could.

Also, your food could also add up quickly depending what you want to eat/experience. When I went traveling, I had onigiri and coffee every morning. Noodles for lunch and bento on the train for dinner on my way to my next destination. This was cheap. But if this is your first time to come to Japan, there is so much great food to be had here. Everything from sashimi, to yakiniku and shabushabu and nabe (depending on the season) okonomiyaki, etc, the list goes on. Needless to say, for most, food is a big draw to Japan and shouldn’t be avoided.

In terms of peak travel times, try to avoid the 3 main holiday periods in Japan. Golden Week (End of April-Beg of May), Obon (Mid August) and Oshogatsu (New Year’s). Generally travel will be more expensive (sometimes train passes aren’t available) and everywhere will be much busier than normal.

1. your friend is lying
2. when you friend spoke to the japanese person, he didn’t specifically ask about the pronunciation, but misheard.
3. the japanese person was speaking english with your friend and thus used the american pronunciation because it is more widely accepted.

even the japanese students I teach english too ask me how they should pronounce japanese words that are used commonly in english (ie karate and karaoke, etc..) and have way different pronunciation in english. Let me assure you, they do pronounce it with japanese pronunciation when they are speaking japanese.

Yeah, just after watching the first episode, I called my friend and she said she had just been watching the same show! such a coincidence! she hadn’t told me about it before and she was about to tell me, but I could sense it, so I told her the same thing! lol
anyways, yeah, she really like it. she was just watching the latest episode, so I guess I have to check it out in full.