Counting things in Japanese is very easy in its basic form. If you want to master it, it can however be quite tricky, even though you will get along fine with the basic ways of counting.

There are two things that sets counting in Japanese apart from western languages. First of all, Japanese also have a word for 10.000, which confuses our brains a bit  when it comes to big numbers. For instance, one million would be said in japanese as hyaku man, which translates to hundred ten-thousand.

The second thing is that Japanese has specialized ways of counting different things. For instance a pen is counted with the words for long slender objects, while paper is counted with the words for flat objects. 

Look at the examples below, it will probably make things a bit clearer. 

Basic Numbers

Numbers in Japanese are composed by adding the greater number to the left, and the smaller to the right. To change from ten to twenty, a two is added before the character meaning ten. Here are some examples:

Counters

In Japanese, you often add an ending to the number in order to show what you are counting. As a real new beginner, make sure you learn the general and people counters, and then take the others one by one later. Also refer to the List of Counters .

Ordinal Numbers (-me)

But you can also count the order using the specific counters for each type of object by adding -me to the end of the counter. This is illustrated in the following table:

Ordinal Numbers (dai-) 

A construct that sounds a bit more formal is the dai- prefix. If you add it to the beginning of a word it will also mark that it is at a specific order. It also sounds more related to big things, such as property or big machines. 

第一ターミナルで会いましょう
daiichi ta-minaru de aimashou.
Let's meet at terminal one. (at an airport)

マクドナルドの日本第一号店は１９８０に開店しました。
makudonarudo no nihon ichidai ten ha 1980 ni kaiten shimashita
The first McDonalds restaurant in Japan opened in 1980.

Links

• For a more extensive description of different counters, see List of Counters.
• Learn about numbers in the lesson Numbers