Post-flight small talk

Hi again. Niko here.

This week’s prompt

Your Japanese friend is visiting you in your home country. You just picked them up at the airport, and the two of you are walking to your car. You decide to make some small talk.

(Feel free to create a backstory — e.g. “How’s your mom, sister, whatever?” “It’s been so long.” “Did you change your hair?” — or just go with standard post-flight comments, such as “How was the flight?” “Did you get any sleep on the plane?” “How many bags of peanuts did you eat?” Whatever.)

＊ You can submit a response in Japanese here. ＊

Please try to submit your response within 48 hours of receiving this email. Please only write one response per form submission.

Corrections will arrive in your inbox next week.

Last week’s corrections

You and a friend are about to leave a restaurant. You’re super sore from exercising yesterday, and you groan in pain as you get up out of your chair. Your friend asks どうしたの？(What’s the matter?)

Here are the two answers I came up with.

First:

筋肉痛ヤバい。
きんにくつう　ヤバい。
My muscles are so sore.
Lit. muscle pain + awful.

And my second one is even more simple:

筋肉痛。
きんにくつう。
I’m sore.
Lit. muscle pain.

I was pretty unsure whether or not I should add んだ to the end of these (well, んだ on the end of the first sentence, and なんだ on the end of the second sentence).

On the one hand, when I think about what I should say, I feel like it should be included. After all, I’m giving an explanation for the painful groan, right?

But then, I just don’t think I would have included it in my actual spoken Japanese… and I’m not really sure why. So I went with my gut and left off the んだ.

I asked Rei what she thinks.

The option she says was correct: