“Time is the longest distance between two places.” – Tennessee Williams
The individual days of the week are also a bit challenging. Just like in English, each day of the week has its own name. We have Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. The Japanese have 月曜日, 火曜日, 水曜日, and so on. Luckily for you, there’s a pattern.
ELEMENT + 曜日 (day of the week)
And, you should know most of the “elements” already. Remember which is which is the hard part.
a 月曜日（げつようび）＝ Monday
a 火曜日（かようび）＝ Tuesday
a 水曜日（すいようび）＝ Wednesday
a 木曜日（もくようび）＝ Thursday
a 金曜日（きんようび）＝ Friday
a 土曜日（どようび）＝ Saturday
a 日曜日（にちようび）＝ Sunday
So, you probably recognize all the elements, and possibly remember all the kanji readings for them (hint: they’re all on’yomi readings), but the ordering and associating each one with the right day of the week is where it gets tough. If only it could be １曜日, ２曜日, ３曜日 or something like that, right?
I’m not sure if there’s a particularly easy way to do this, but there are a few things we can do to help you to remember. The first is a song I learned a long time ago. Strangely, it helped quite a bit. Want to hear?
a Sing It! ♬♫♪
We can also use the letters that each one starts with and come up with a mnemonic based off those since they’re all different:
G – Great
K – Kings
S – Serve
M – My
K – Kids
D – Dinner
N – Now
Of course, feel free to come up with your own. The goal here is to help you to get to the point where you’re able to recall what day of the week is which, even if you have to struggle with it a bit. Struggling and getting it is 100x better than looking it up, memory-wise.
Before moving on, learn the mnemonic (above) or come up with your own. Also make sure you know what each letter symbolizes (i.e. S = 水, G = 月, etc). When you’re able to do that, move onto the practice. We need to put that memory of yours to work.