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Phrases that work · September 11, 2026 · 7 min read · by Jérémie Chiari
Counting in Japanese means learning to stick a small word onto the number. That word is called a counter, and it changes depending on the shape of whatever you're counting. Two pens aren't counted the same way as two people, or two beers. The number itself barely moves: ichi, ni, san, yon, go.
What changes is the syllable tacked on behind it, and the way that syllable bends the number when you say it out loud. That's exactly where things stall. You can know the first ten numbers in Japanese and still go silent in front of a server, just trying to order two coffees.
In an ordinary conversation, a handful of counters cover almost everything. A cashier, a waiter, a station agent hear the same few forms all day, every day. The rest you'll pick up later, when you actually need it. What matters today is saying a number out loud without stopping halfway through.
A counter is a short word that attaches to a number to announce what kind of thing you're talking about.
English does the same thing, just in patches. You say two slices of bread, three sheets of paper, four pairs of shoes. Japanese generalizes that reflex to almost everything you count. You don't say "two" on its own: you say two-flat-things, two-long-things, two-people.
An order then breaks into three blocks: the item, the number with its counter, the polite closing word. "Biiru o nihai kudasai" means "Two beers, please." Biiru is beer. Nihai is two [servings in a glass]. Kudasai is please. That order doesn't change, whatever the situation.
There's also a set of numbers that stands on its own, up to ten. It's your way out when the right counter escapes you:
In a café, "kōhī o futatsu kudasai" goes through without a hitch. Nobody corrects you for it. Past ten, though, that series stops dead, and you have to pick a real counter.
The first ten numbers take one evening to learn, but three of them have two competing pronunciations.
The base is one line: ichi (1), ni (2), san (3), yon (4), go (5), roku (6), nana (7), hachi (8), kyū (9), jū (10). After that you combine them: jūichi (11), nijū (20), sanjū (30), hyaku (100), sen (1,000). No irregular construction gets in the way, unlike English "eleven" or "twelve," which don't follow the pattern of "thirteen" onward.
The three numbers with a double face:
Hundreds and thousands also bend the sound: sanbyaku (300), roppyaku (600), happyaku (800), sanzen (3,000), hassen (8,000). This isn't a list of exceptions to memorize by rote. It's the same mechanism you'll see with counters, in the next section.
A word on how hard this actually is. The Foreign Service Institute (FSI), the US State Department's language school, places Japanese in its most demanding category for English speakers, at around 2,200 class hours. The numbers aren't why. Those you'll pick up fast.
A small family comes up constantly: people, flat objects, long objects, drinks, small objects, age, and money.
The pattern jumps out with hon, hai, and ko. In front of these counters, the numbers 1, 6, 8, and 10 double the consonant, and the h turns into a p. The number 3 turns that h into a b. Ippon, roppon, happon, juppon, sanbon. You hear it through use; you don't reason your way to it.
Time has its own set of forms, and you'll need them on day one: nanji desu ka (what time is it), kuji (nine o'clock), yoji (four o'clock), gofun (five minutes), juppun (ten minutes). The Japanese course drills these out loud, inside full sentences.
In every one of these situations, the same structure comes back: the item, the number with its counter, then kudasai or onegaishimasu.
These phrases have one real advantage. They take a second to say, and they trigger an immediate response. You don't need to understand that response in full for the exchange to move forward.
One note on ikutsu. It's the catch-all question, the one that saves you when you don't know which counter is expected. It works for objects, not for people, where you ask nannin instead.
It isn't the choice of counter that gives you away. It's the rhythm.
Japanese is built out of morae, units of roughly equal length. English stacks stressed and unstressed syllables instead, and squashes the unstressed ones into a schwa. That reflex distorts every number you say, and it outlasts the vocabulary by a long way.
Points to watch:
None of these mistakes stop you from being understood. They make you tiring to listen to, which isn't the same thing. And they get fixed by hearing your own voice, never by rereading a rule.
A counter sticks once you've said it inside a full sentence, out loud, several days in a row.
The routine is three moves. Count whatever's in front of you with the right counter, three pens, so sanbon. Say the whole sentence, not the isolated word. Repeat the same request in two different situations, once at a café, once at a station.
What's missing at that point is someone reacting and correcting you at the right moment. That's the idea behind our method: short lessons followed by a conversation where you actually produce sentences. The coach calls you at the time you chose, for ten minutes, and pronunciation gets graded sentence by sentence.
At Volpiko, Japanese is trained by speaking, from pre-A1 to C2. We don't teach you to write kana. We get you saying numbers and counters out loud, because that's exactly where things stall in a shop in Kyoto. Ten minutes a day is enough, and most learners notice the difference first in how fast they can get a full sentence out.
If you're studying for an exam, the JLPT, run by the Japan Foundation and JEES, describes five levels, from N5 to N1. Keep one thing in mind: it measures reading and listening comprehension, and it never asks you to speak. The day a counter slips your mind mid-sentence, it's other reflexes that save you, the ones that stop you from freezing halfway through.
Start with futari, nimai, and ippon. Those three forms cover walking into a restaurant, a station counter, and ordering drinks, which is already most of a day of travel. The rest will come out of curiosity, the day a server corrects you once. Counting in Japanese isn't a grammar chapter to swallow whole: it's a reflex of the mouth, and a reflex is built by speaking.
Five cover an ordinary day: nin for people, mai for flat objects like tickets, hon for long objects like bottles, hai for drinks served in a container, ko for small objects. Add the hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu series, which counts almost anything up to ten.
Use the -tsu series: hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu, yottsu, itsutsu, and so on up to tō. It works for most objects, and nobody will correct you for it in a shop. Past ten, fall back on ko, the counter for small objects with no particular shape.
4 is yon or shi. 7 is nana or shichi. Yon and nana dominate in speech. Shi is avoided because it sounds like the word for "death," and shichi gets confused with ichi over the phone. To count people, you say yonin, never shinin.
One person is hitori and two people is futari: both irregular, learned as they are. From three onward, the counter nin becomes regular: sannin, yonin, gonin. At the door of a restaurant, "futari desu" is enough, and the server will ask "nannin desu ka" if they need the exact number.
Count what's in front of you out loud, in a full sentence rather than an isolated word, every day. For instant feedback, a voice coach like Volpiko calls you for ten minutes a day and grades your pronunciation sentence by sentence, with 30 minutes of free conversation when you sign up, no card required.
Volpiko
On réveille ton coach. Encore une seconde, et tu parles.