“The time I kill is killing me.” – Mason Cooley
Whoa, some real grammar! Hey, those last 8ish chapters were pretty important. I know people who spend years having trouble with the concept of “time” in Japanese. Hopefully the way it was laid out here will help you to gain a deeper understanding of how it all works.
But now for something completely different. It’s still about time, but it’s not time itself. You’re going to learn a bit of grammar that covers the concept of talking about “when _______ … ______” Let’s look at some example sentences in English to give you a better idea of what I’m talking about. After that we’ll get into the Japanese side of things.
I watch TV when I eat breakfast.
I go by car when I go to Washington.
I use chopsticks when I eat Japanese food.
Starting to see what I’m talking about here? We’re going to start out simple by covering nouns and adjectives first. Then we’ll get into verbs which are a little bit more complicated, I think.