Days of the Week in Japanese: Origin, Pronunciation & Examples

So, you’ve got scaling Tokyo Skytree planned for Monday, walking alongside geisha on Kyoto on Wednesday, and the electric nightlife of Osaka’s Dotonbori district from Friday to Sunday… but how are you going to tell anyone about your amazing plans if you don’t know how to say the days of the week in Japanese?!

Well, you’re in the right place. We’re here to teach you about the Japanese days of the week, including their pronunciation, literal meaning, mnemonic devices to help remember them, and even a few example sentences.

We haven’t got all day—get it?—so let’s get started.

Table Days of the Week in Japanese 📕✏️

Let’s get straight into it. Here are the days of the week in Japanese!

Remember the Japanese days of the week with these mnemonics!

Each Japanese day name ends with ようび (yobi), meaning “day of the week.” This in mind, focus on remembering the first kanji:

If you close your eyes and really picture each scene, it helps cement it in memory. Especially “knee cheese”—that one might be hard to forget.

Japanese vocabulary related to the days of the week…

How to use the days of the week in Japanese

Find out more: What is the Japanese particle for に?

Plot twist: Should beginners even learn the days?

Being honest—while learning the days of the week in Japanese is useful, it might not be the most efficient early goal. Why not?

For that reason, many structured courses don’t introduce weekdays until later lessons, after you’ve built some foundational grammar and core vocab. When you finally meet them, you’ll often see them taught with flashcards, example sentences, native audio, and spaced repetition—so you’re not just memorizing the Japanese days in isolation, but learning to use them.

Increasing your Japanese vocabulary

As you might imagine, the days of the week are pretty common words. They're included in our course. Here's how we teach them:

But here’s the thing… We don't teach the weekdays until lesson 176. There are so many words you can pick up before the days of the week, so that when you eventually do get there, you'll have a wider vocab to be able to learn more from flashcards that include images, example sentences, and audio from a native Japanese speaker.

What's also unique about Migaku's Japan Academy is that each sentence in our course contains only one new word, ensuring that you're always learning something without ever feeling overwhelmed.

Learn Japanese with Migaku

Now you know the Japanese days 📆

From Monday to Sunday, your Japanese is improving every day! Because if there’s one thing we know to be true every day of the week, it’s this:

So, even if you only have time for a little Japanese practice every day of the week, you’re still heading in the right direction. We’re rooting for you!