I don’t know if I’m just making this up but I seem to remember GENKI teaching another way of saying you made up your mind there and then, but since I can’t recall what the grammar point is, there’s a chance I’m talking out my proverbial.
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There’s also とする which is a softer version of にする essentially.
And of course ことにする is just にする applied to a nominalised verb, but some resources teach these separately for some reason. Maybe GENKI does as well?
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GENKI doesn’t even teach こと as a way to nominalise verbs, but teaches you like 3 or 4 grammar points with it in…(I’m not sure it’s even in Quartet 1)
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That’s… certainly a choice 
But then again, I have Opinions™ on the way Japanese grammar is taught anyway and few of them are positive
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If you’re shopping and you try on some clothes, and you decide what you’re going to buy, you could say これにする. Likewise, at a restaurant you might say [Dish name] にする if you’ve decided what to order.
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I’m not sure I’m understanding/parsing this right. Context is A talking to B about X that just disappeared
観察しろというのは…見るじゃなくて観ることだ…聞くじゃなくて聴くことだ
My attempt: Let’s observe, or that is to say, instead of looking, we should watch… Instead of hearing, we should listen.
Yes? No?
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Yes. 10 characters.
Is it a manga or a book? Which one?
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It’s a manga
jojo naturally
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I feel like 観察しろというのは is more like A is reprimanding B for letting X go away. Something like “When I told you to keep an eye on X, I meant…” and then all the rest.
That’s the feeling I got from reading that, at least, but I might be totally off lol
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That would work well, although in the other context of the scene. A and B had no clue what X was going to/could do, but earlier in the same scene, A was trying to get B to be cautious. Thank you!
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Hello, I’m kinda lost reading this sentence (it’s citing an example of students’ work for the Robocon):
車輪などは、FAX用紙や、ゴムテープの巻いてあった芯に発泡ゴムを巻き、丁寧にヤスリを掛けて仕上げる
I’m confused about the 巻いてあった part. Google translate just came up with “the core of” (fax paper or rubber tape). I wonder what the 巻く verb is doing there?
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Does this help?
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Oh yes, I studied that before, but what I don’t get is why is the core in the state 巻いてあった here. I thought what they did is take the core out of a rubber tape or fax paper, then wrap something else around it. 
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They made a 芯 of FAX用紙 or ゴムテープ.
If there’s a picture or something, I’m sure it would be apparent.
巻く is just the action they used to turn FAX用紙 or ゴムテープ into a 芯.
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In this sentence, what’s the function of 抜いた?
当店では産地直送の選び抜いた野菜さいだけを使っております
The English translation was given as “At this store, we only use select vegetables that have been delivered directly from the farms.” What nuance does it add that 選んだ wouldn’t cover?
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Perhaps:
Alternatively, 抜く may be used in situations where (A) is something that is done to a very deep or substantial degree. This nuance is less like ‘to pull through’, and closer to ‘thoroughly’, or simply ‘deeply’. This meaning tends to appear with verbs that don’t have an obvious end, like 知る ‘to know’.
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Ah, thank you!
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Mmm. This doesn’t seem to show up in dictionaries so I guess it’s considered mostly a use of that grammar pattern, but I did find a thesaurus entry for it that gives it two possible meanings:
複数のものの中から優れたものを特に注意して選び出すこと
複数のものの中から一部を選ぶこと
The past tense in particular turns up in Google search in a ton of marketing copy that wants to imply that first “carefully selected high quality” meaning, for example
美味を絶賛される、熊野牛の中からさらに選び抜いたロース肉
The English translation of your sentence uses “select vegetables” to the same effect, which is definitely a “marketing copy” kind of phrasing 
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Going through the latest edition of Genki, it has the following for asking for someone’s telephone number:
電話番号は何番ですか。
Based on exposure, I “felt” that Genki is just using it as an opportunity to teach counters and it would be more common to have it as:
電話番号は何ですか。
Though I think the first one is more technically correct.
Google kind of backs this up as I get 102,000 results for the first and 539,000 for the later, though I know that’s not a perfect metric.
That said, I’m pretty sure in most cases people would actually use:
電話番号をお願いします。
or
電話番号を教えてください。
Any thoughts?
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The first google hit I get is a hinative question about this where a Japanese speaker says the version with 何番 is more natural. A lot of the rest look like language-learning related and/or autogenerated sites. Searching for the 何番 version gets me things like bank website FAQ pages for questions like ご本人確認コードを通知する発信元の電話番号は何番ですか, and overall more results and more “real” looking ones. (Searching for phrase in quotes in both cases – otherwise Google’s fuzzy matching defeats the intention.)
(I don’t think this forum is a great place to ask “naturalness” questions, though – too few high level speakers and no native speakers.)
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