Saying no to your kid

Hello, Ty here.

A quick note, from here on out I’m gonna be referring to my fiancé as Lei (instead of Rei) to avoid confusion with the Rei that Niko is married to.

This week’s prompt

You're out shopping with your kid. They start begging you for a Nintendo Switch, but you tell them why you won't/can't buy them one right now.

自分の子供と一緒にショッピングしている。子供にスイッチほしい！ってねだられたが、今は買わない/買えない。理由を説明する。

じぶん　の　こども　と　いっしょ　に　しょっぴんぐ　している。　こども　に　すぅいっち　ほしい！　って　ねだられた　が、　いま　は　かわない/かえねい。　りゆう　を　せつめい　する。

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Last week’s corrections

A friend is asking you if there’s any interesting anime, TV show, movie, etc. you’ve watched recently. There’s one you liked but you forgot the title. You try to explain a bit of the show to them to see if they know it.

I always found topics like this to be a bit tough for me personally.

Whenever I talk to my friends in Japanese about a story, I feel like the talk often starts and ends with 面白い(おもしろい)[it’s good (interesting)].

This could be the specific people I’ve talked to or maybe my lack of ability to eloquently describe stories, but either way, this means trying to explain the contents of a story sometimes isn’t a skill that doesn’t get enough training, at least in my experience.

Something I noticed when going over the corrections (and it’s hard to express this in writing) is the use of filler words while we’re trying to think of the title.

For example, I would use some words like えっとー[umm], あれ[that], その[umm/that] near the start.

えっとー、あれ。あれだよ。そのー、緑と黒の市松模様の着物みたいなの着てる鬼殺し屋の話。
えっとー、　あれ。　あれ　だ　よ。　そのー、　みどり　と　くろ　の　いちまつもよう　の　きもの　みたい　なの　きてる　おにごろしや　の　はなし。
Uhh… y’know. Right? The uhh…. the story about an oni killer who wears a green and black checkered kimono-lookin’ thing.

I feel like being able to properly use あれだよ in a normal conversation is a superpower. For some reason, it has avoided me for years. Definitely keep your ears peeled for this to absorb its use in as many natural conversations as possible.

I also learned how to use a word called 要素(ようそ)[elements] which is a word I’ve kind of heard before but never really known how to use thanks to the corrections below.

Let’s take a look at them: