NHK Easy News reading group

Thank you, my friend. :slight_smile:
I know story, but that is the best kind of story to practice reading.

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A very disturbing article.
But there is one thing I’m not sure of:

10日とおかには26にん入院にゅういんしています。

Does it mean that 26 people got hospitalized in 10 days or that 26 people got hospitalized on May 10th?
I think it’s the former, but I’d like to make sure, so I’m asking here.
Update: I’m reading the “point in time に” right now - and am starting to be inclined that it was the latter (they were hospitalized on May the 10th).
Am I correct in assuming that if they were hospitalized in 10 days, it would have been 10日の間に instead of 10日に?

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I think it’s neither. It’s mostly likely something like ‘on the 10th, 26 people were in hospital’.

I think so, yes. に really does tend to make a specific point or period in time that has just been mentioned.

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The wording in the regular article of 10日の時点で makes that even clearer. Basically “as of the 10th.”

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I was thinking a news article might have phrased it this way in English, but I didn’t know how to say it in Japanese. Thanks!

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From this article, 接種券の番号 – Jisho has neither the entire thing nor the first word by itself but I take it this is an identification number akin to a Social Security Number in the US?

接種 + 券 + 番号

The closest thing to an SSN in Japan is called マイナンバー. Not quite the same though.

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Thanks, I was short two of those first three kanji

I thought this sentence from a recent article offers a good example of how the infamous は and が particles can be used in the same sentence clause, where in this case が marks the subject:

3歳の子どもがいる日本の女性は「『はらぺこあおむし』子どもすごく好きで、0歳のときから読んでいました」と話していました。

Edit: Forgot the link!

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Here’s an article about a Japanese astronaut:

59歳人は宇宙に行ってはすごいね。

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Just read my first NHK news article!

I tried to extensively read it, just trying to get the gist of the story and not memorise each word I didn’t know (I just used Yomichan extension to quickly translate words I didn’t know).

So from what I understand, the price of eggs keep increasing massively in Japan. On the 16th of this month, they reached their highest price of 335yen per kg! Which is double the last highest price of 175yen.

This is because of the war in Ukraine causing bird feed to become expensive. There also a lot of bird flu going around which means lots of birds are dying so the supply of eggs is going down.

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Just found this thread today after fully reading my first article today. You can find a post about it here where I broke it down sentence by sentence and other people were able to help me through it. The article is about penguins at a zoo in Hokkaido going for a walk.

This is the article 北海道 旭山動物園でペンギンが散歩する

for anyone who is also starting out I made a list of all the vocab as they appear in the article and have linked the grammar points that I feel are the most useful for understanding the article (the links are for bunpro). I hope this might help someone maybe wanting to read something but doesn’t feel ready yet.

Vocabulary

北海度(ほっかいど)Hokkaido
旭山(あさひやま)Asahiyama
動物園(どうぶつえん)Zoo
ペンギン Penguin
散歩(さんぽ)Walk
旭川市(あさひかわし)Asahikawa city
毎年(まいとし)Every year
雪(ゆき)Snow
積もる(つもる)To pile up
始める(始める)To begin
始まる(始まる)To begin
冬(ふゆ)Winter
間(あいだ)Interval
動く(うごく)To move
運動(うんどう)Motion/ movement/ Exercise
ため Sake/ purpose
羽(?)Counter for birds
キングペンギン King penguin
白い(しろい)White
なる To become
道(みち)Road/ path
来る(くる)To come
外国(がいこく)Foreign country
客(きゃく)Guest/ visitor
少しずつ(すこしずつ)Little by little
増える(ふえる)To increase
赤ちゃん(あかちゃん)Baby
歩く(あるく)To walk
手(て)Hand
振る(ふる)To wave
写真(しゃしん)Photograph
撮る(とる)To take (a photo)
山口県(やまぐちけん)Yamaguchi prefecture
人(ひと)Person
体(からだ)Body
大きい(おおきい)Big
びっくり Surprise
かわいい Cute
話す(はなす)To talk

Grammar

ごろ
あまり~ない
なる
~てもらう
ため
くらい
から
やす
ずつ
沢山たくさん
よう
たり~たりする
~ている

And here is my translation of the article which took me all day and with a lot of help from the WK community

Every year at around the time the snow begins to pile up the penguin’s walk begins at Asahikawa city’s Asahiyama Zoo. During winter, the penguins become much less mobile so the zoo makes the penguins walk. On the 22nd, 17 king penguins walked for approximately 30 minutes along the 500m road that became white from the snow. Japan became easier to come for foreigners and little by little foreign visitors have increased. Also on the 22nd, many visitors waved and took photos of the penguins that walked like babies. A person from Yamaguchi said “I was surprised at how big the penguins were. The walking penguins were cute.”

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Was wondering why there are still no new NHK News today, though it might be a holiday, so I checked

And it turns out today is indeed a holiday: The Ocean Day :ocean:

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I thought the challenge news thread was about nhk easy news discussion :smile:

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Of particular interest to Wanikanians :crab:
Click on the underlined kani and you’ll get a nice visual!

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Joining this club as I already do this (though not consistently).

I remembered the Tokyo Medical School scandal, but didn’t realise it applied to regular high schools as well. At least they were gradually phasing it out, I guess?

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In this article on driverless buses, there was a line I didn’t quite get:

東京都は、車が多い所でも運転に問題がないかや、専用の道をどのくらいの幅にするかなどを調べて、これからもっと走ることができるようにしたいと考えています。

I guess it’s 幅する - is that part of the clause something like ‘To what extent the specialised lanes [for the robot buses] are being blocked [by other cars], etc’?

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専用の道をどのくらいの幅にするか - how wide should they make the special bus lanes?

幅にする - to make something the width of X

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Wow, my jdict/jisho completely failed me here

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The “archaism” tags there are a “probably not this meaning” hint :slight_smile: . There’s no dictionary entry for 幅にする in the sense used here because it’s not an idiom, it’s the grammar pattern Xにする “to make something X, to decide something should be X” that works for lots of X.

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