Appearances ～そう・～よう
About this unit
Japanese takes epistemology personally: HOW you know something changes the grammar you use to say it. This cake looks delicious (おいしそう), the forecast says it'll clear up (はれるそうです), it seems spring has come (来たようです), tomorrow will probably be perfect (まんかいでしょう). Four shades of almost-knowing, learned in the season built entirely around watching and predicting: hanami week, when the whole country becomes amateur blossom forecasters.
語彙 · Vocabulary
Read the words 語彙
Read straight down the list once, out loud if you can. Don't grind them here, the Anki deck at the bottom does the memorizing. Right now you only want the shapes and sounds to feel familiar.
| Word | Reading | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 桜 | さくら | cherry blossom; cherry tree |
| 咲きます | さきます | to bloom |
| 散ります | ちります | to fall; to scatter (petals) |
| 花びら | はなびら | petal |
| 満開 | まんかい | full bloom |
| 色 | いろ | color |
| ピンク | ピンク | pink |
| かわいい | かわいい | cute |
| 美しい | うつくしい | beautiful |
| 景色 | けしき | scenery |
| お弁当 | おべんとう | boxed lunch |
| 様子 | ようす | appearance; state of things |
| 吹きます | ふきます | to blow (wind) |
| 文化 | ぶんか | culture |
| 漢字 | かんじ | kanji; Chinese characters |
| 英語 | えいご | English (language) |
| 紙 | かみ | paper |
| 写ります | うつります | to be photographed; to appear (in a photo) |
| 写します | うつします | to photograph; to copy |
| 似ています | にています | to resemble |
| そっくり | そっくり | the spitting image |
| 違います | ちがいます | to differ; to be wrong |
| 比べます | くらべます | to compare |
| 曇ります | くもります | to cloud over |
| 暖かい | あたたかい | warm |
| 涼しい | すずしい | cool (weather) |
| うわさ | うわさ | rumor |
| ニュース | ニュース | news |
| 文章 | ぶんしょう | writing; text |
| 英会話 | えいかいわ | English conversation (lessons) |
| シート | シート | picnic sheet; tarp |
| 公園 | こうえん | park |
| 昼寝 | ひるね | nap |
| 乾杯 | かんぱい | cheers!; a toast |
| ごちそう | ごちそう | feast; treat |
| 桜餅 | さくらもち | sakura mochi (sweet) |
Learn the kanji 漢字
The 10 kanji for this unit. Tap any card to flip between its meaning and its readings, and say the reading aloud as it flips.
Read it in context 会話
Everything above, working together. Read the conversation top to bottom, out loud. Every line is built only from words and kanji you have already met, so resist the English, tap a word only if you are truly stuck.
Late March. The cherry trees along the river are on the verge, the forecast is promising, and Yuki has made a culinary announcement that worries everyone.
These units are short on purpose. The grammar only clicks when the words are already automatic, so front-load the deck here, and let spaced repetition do the memorizing while the lesson does the teaching.
- Import this unit's deck. Generate it with
npm run content:deck, then importn4-unit11-deck.apkginto Anki or Migaku. (SRS connection status lives on your dashboard.) - Learn all 36 words as new cards. Get through the whole deck in a sitting or two, you're aiming for recognition, not mastery yet.
- Review daily until every card reaches a 3–5 day interval. When the whole deck has settled at that spacing, the words are holding on their own and won't fight you during the grammar.
- Then come back. You'll read the patterns instead of decoding the words, and that's when a "small" unit actually soaks in.
Tick the box above once the deck is soaking in, then the grammar unlocks.
文法 · Grammar
Take one pattern at a time. Read the rule, then read each example out loud until the shape feels obvious. The words should already be automatic from your deck, so all you are learning here is how they lock together.
文化 · Culture note
A short read on the world these words live in. Nothing to drill here, just the context that makes the grammar feel like something people actually say.
Every spring, Japan turns the brief life of a flower into a national event. The 桜前線, cherry-blossom front, is tracked on the news like weather, advancing north from Okinawa in January to Hokkaido in May, with forecast maps, percentage-bloom reports (三分咲き, 五分咲き, 満開), and solemn expert predictions issued in exactly this unit's grammar: 週末はまんかいになるでしょう.
Hanami itself is a picnic with the intensity of a festival. Parks fill with blue tarps staked out at dawn, junior employees are traditionally dispatched to hold the best spots all day, and evenings bring 夜桜, blossoms lit against the dark, with food stalls and lanterns. The drinking, eating, and singing under the trees has been going on for over a thousand years; Heian aristocrats wrote poems, modern office workers do karaoke, the trees don't judge.
The whole point is transience. Full bloom lasts less than a week; one warm rain or windy afternoon and the petals fall, beautifully, all at once, like Tanaka's snow. Japanese aesthetics has a name for finding beauty precisely in this brevity: もののあわれ, the gentle ache of passing things. It's why the falling is watched as intently as the blooming, and why はかない (fleeting) is a compliment in Japanese.
Placement credited this unit, the worksheet and quiz are optional.
生教材 · Immersion
This week in the wild
Appearance grammar is the language of reactions, and Japanese media is built on reaction. Food shows, forecasts, and travel vlogs run almost entirely on そう, よう, and でしょう. Easy hunting this week.
You will not understand everything, that is the point. Success is recognizing this unit's patterns in the wild, not full comprehension. Tick what you tried and move on.
発話 · Speaking
Ghosting
Reactions must be instant to be real, おいしそう said four seconds late is just data. Drill these to reflex speed; the prompts are the exact sentences you'll say at every meal, forecast, and photo album for the rest of your Japanese life.
Three passes per line: listen, speak along with the voice (that's the ghost), then speak alone. Out loud, whispering doesn't build the muscle. Prompt drills show English first: answer in Japanese before revealing.
Audio uses your browser's Japanese voice. If you hear nothing, your system may need a Japanese voice installed, read the lines aloud from the text instead; the ghost pass still works.
練習 · Worksheet
Type each missing form in hiragana, then check your answers.
Check your answers to continue, it doesn't matter how many you miss.
Unit Quiz JLPT FORMAT
Pass mark 80% · instant explanations · passing unlocks the next unit