Learn to Count in Japanese: Numbers from 0 to 1000 Explained

You want to learn Japanese, and you decide to start with numbers. How hard can it be, right? As easy as 123, the phrase goes, after all!

Erm.

About that.

Counting in Japanese is kind of hard. There are two ways to say most numbers—a native Japanese way (kun'yomi) and a Sino-Japanese way (on'yomi)—and you need to use these special words (called counters) to count things.

We'll get to that. Brace yourself.

For now, let's start nice and easy:

Counting 1–10 in Japanese

Generally, for "normal" counting—like when you're playing hide and seek and counting to ten, or doing pushups—you'll use on'yomi readings... except for four and seven, where you'll sometimes use kun'yomi readings. (I am so sorry.)

Behold:

To address the obvious question on your mind: "For the love of Migachu's cute purple tail, why are there two different ways to say four and seven?"

Well, answering that question would be a long history lesson... but, in practice:

However, when using counters (discussed a few sections down below), when using numbers bigger than ten, and in almost all other cases—you'll use kun'yomi (よん and なな) to count four and seven.

Counting from 11–100 in Japanese

Sheesh, that was rough.

Thankfully, the rest of Japanese numbers are pretty straightforward. In fact, the Japanese counting system is even more consistent than ours in English!

When counting from 11–99, you'll have three columns of numbers: [X] [Y] [Z]

So... let's say you want to say twelve in Japanese. That's ten plus two, and in Japanese, it's literally just ten and two:

When you move up to twenty, now you have to begin specifying how many tens there are. So, twenty is two tens:

Now let's combine those two concepts with 99. That's nine tens plus nine, as shown below:

That's it! There's no funny business like "three ten" becoming "thirty" or "one five" becoming fifteen. It's a bit different than English, but it's completely consistent, and it'll be second nature in no time.

Counting numbers bigger than 100 in Japanese

For 100–999, the process is exactly the same—the only difference is that you now need the word for one hundred, which is 百(ひゃく).

To bust out those columns again, you'll end up using five numbers to count hundreds in Japanese:

When counting from 100–999, you'll have five columns of numbers: [V] [W] [X] [Y] [Z]

And here are a few examples for you:

Notice how that's 百二十三, and not 一百二十三. Remember, you only need to specify how many hundreds there are if there is more than one.

Counting Japanese numbers over 1,000

We won't walk through the whole song and dance again, but the same process repeats as you work up magnitudes of numbers. The only real surprise here is that Japanese people count big numbers in 10,000s, not in 1,000s like we do.

Here are the vocabulary words you'll need for big numbers:

There are two things to notice here:

Those points aside, though, we follow the same logic as we have so far:

How to count things in Japanese

Where Japanese numbers unfortunately get complex is that, outside of very limited situations, you can't actually count things using just numbers in Japanese.

To make sense of that, consider the following two sentences:

Notice how when we count some things, like "books", we can just attach a number directly to the noun in English... but when we count other things—like paper—we can't? That to count things like "paper" we need to use some helper words—bits, wads, pieces, reams, stacks, and so forth—in order to do our counting?

These "helper words" are called counters.

There are many different counters—one for long skinny things, another for people, another for animals, and so forth—and you can't count anything in Japanese without utilizing its respective counter.

This is a relatively complex topic, so that's all the detail we'll go into for now. If you're interested in it, we've got an entire blog post dedicated to Japanese counters and counting things in Japanese, which we invite you to read.

Japanese numbers are complex, so here's a structured way to learn them

A few years ago, we got nerdy and did some complex statistical work that's unfortunately over my head. (I write stuff because I'm not good at math). Anyway, the point is this:

Words aren't used equally often!

That key insight in mind, we set out to build the most efficient Japanese course in history.

You'll first read about how a certain grammatical structure works—such as those counters we talked about—and then commit those structures to memory by learning practical sentences where they're used. More than that, each of our sentences introduces one (and only one) new word at a time, so the learning curve is super smooth.

At a pace of 10 new words per day, or about half an hour of effort, you'll go from zero to "ready to begin stumbling through Japanese Netflix" in about six months.

The most important thing to remember if you want to learn Japanese

So, no doubt about it—Japanese numbers are complex. Your head is probably hurting right now. (At least mine was, way back when, when I learned how numbers work).

That's OK and normal.

Try not to stress out about it too much.

As you spend more time with Japanese, and you see Japanese numbers in action, you'll gradually develop a feel for how they work. It won't happen overnight, but it'll happen, even without a ton of conscious effort on your part.

To turn that into a mantra: