lesson number one

counting in japanese is notoriously complicated.
japanese uses ‘classifiers’ to count or quantify specific families of objects. the ‘three’ in three pens (family of the cylindrical objects) is different from the ‘three’ in three cakes (family of the small chunky objects). classifiers roughly equal english words like ‘glassful’, ‘sheets of’, ‘pieces of’...

the list of families looks long and kind of whimsical to western minds. years of age, machines, floors, times, persons, animals, small chunky objects, cylindrical objects, glassfuls cupfuls, books, letters, days of the month – are all counted with different sets of numbers.

a couple of examples, for clarity.
sheets of paper and tickets, from the family of the ‘thin and flat objects’, are counted with ichimai (1) nimmai (2) sammai (3)... pizzas, however deep pan, belong to the same family. calzones (those folded pizzas no one ever orders) on the other hand are counted with hitotsu (1) futatsu (2) mitsu (3) ... the set for non-classified objects.
animals have a different classifier (ippiki (1) nihiki (2) sanbiki (3) ...). birds yet another one (ichiwa (1) niwa (2) sanwa (3) ...). but, rabbits are counted as birds – according to aichan because their ears resemble wings. wonder if it works the other way around for skiing ostriches... roadkill rabbits are again counted as thin and flat objects, like deep pan pizzas and tickets.

fortunately there’s minimix and point it around the bar for easy communication...