Japanese Home: Run the Household

How to play: this is a language game wearing a Japanese house. You are お母さん, and you are not running the household — the house runs itself: she walks to the stove, the sink, the washing machine, the ironing board and the medicine cabinet on her own, and potters about sweeping and tending the 仏壇 when nothing is wanted. What you do is read Japanese and answer two questions.

Take as long as you like. There is no time limit and nothing to beat the clock to: a day is 10 questions, and it ends the moment you answer the last one. One question is up at a time, and the whole house stands still whenever anybody is talking — nobody walks, nobody asks for anything and nothing moves — so you can read every line as slowly as you need. If a row of answers is up, choosing one starts the house again; if there is no row — she says she is on it, somebody grumbles, somebody says thank you — tap the play button on the speech bubble when you have finished reading it. How long the day took is recorded on the end-of-day card, and your fastest run at each level is kept.

1 — Which job? Somebody says what is wanted: お兄ちゃんのワイシャツがしわしわです。 — “Kenta’s shirt is terribly creased.” Pick the chore off the row along the bottom. ⚠ The wrong answers are not random, they are the mistakes worth making once: お茶を入れる make tea against ミルクを作る make up a bottle — one verb, two objects — and 洗濯をする wash, 洗濯物を干す hang out, 服にアイロンをかける iron, all three taking 洗濯物 — one object, three verbs. Read half a phrase and it is a coin toss. Pick the wrong job and she is not stopped: she does it, sees it is not what was asked for, and starts again — which costs her the walk and the work, in front of you.

2 — Who is it for? She finishes and asks herself このワイシャツは誰のかな？ The answer is the name in the same sentence, and the row offers the household: お父さん Dad, お母さん Mum, おじいちゃん Grandad, おばあちゃん Grandma, お兄ちゃん big brother, 妹 little sister and 赤ちゃん the baby. Take it to the wrong person and they hand it back, kindly, and she walks on to the right one.

⚠ The family words ARE the lesson. Japanese drops the pronoun altogether and names the person instead, so it is the FAMILY WORD that says who is meant. A child asking for something is named 妹 or お兄ちゃん, not “I”; Grandma is おばあちゃん and Dad is お父さん. When the sentence names somebody, the answer is that person, and knowing the seven family words is the whole of the second read. Lines end ね or よ too — the particles that make a request sound like a request rather than an order.

The Level row is which level of the Home lesson tonight's day is — the same levels the course wall is divided into, numbered the same way. The Difficulty row is how much of each line is written: Beginner writes the say-it-like-this and the English under every line, Intermediate the say-it alone, Advanced the Japanese with nothing under it. The house fills in five stages over the lesson's early levels: level 1 is the two children and the school run, level 2 brings お父さん and his breakfast before work, level 3 おばあちゃん and her tea and medicine, level 4 赤ちゃん and the washing, and level 5 おじいちゃん and supper for the whole house — and past level 5 the house holds at its fullest while the lesson keeps going. From level 3 what was said fades a few seconds later — tap whoever said it to hear it again, free but for the time, which is the one tap left on the floor. The children go to school and come back, and お父さん goes to work and comes home before supper.

You cannot lose a day. Nothing is timed and nobody gives up, so nothing ends the day except answering its last question. What varies is your time and how many you got right.