9.1 Places, Directions, Home, School & Town Nouns

Getting Around: Place, Home, School and Town Nouns

At N5, a large share of the vocabulary questions and almost every listening dialogue is built from a compact set of everyday place, home, and direction words. If you can instantly recognise where a scene is set — a station (えき, eki), a hospital (びょういん, byōin), a bank (ぎんこう, ginkō) — and where things sit relative to one another, you can answer both the picture-matching listening items and the fill-in-the-blank vocabulary items. This section groups these nouns the way the test presents them: public buildings, the rooms and objects inside a home, transport and streets, and the position words that glue a sentence together.

Public buildings and places around town

These are the location nouns that anchor N5 dialogues about directions, shopping, and daily errands. Learn them as a set, because listening questions often list three or four of them as answer choices and you must pick the one that matches どこ (doko, 'where').

The grammar that ties all of these together is AはBです (A wa B desu, 'A is B') and the existence pattern 〜が あります / います ('there is …'). Remember the split: inanimate places and objects take あります (arimasu), while people and animals take います (imasu). A frequent N5 item shows a small map or picture and asks どこですか (doko desu ka, 'where is it?'). Read the answer choices for the place noun first, then confirm the position word. For example, 「ぎんこうは えきの となりです」(Ginkō wa eki no tonari desu) means 'The bank is next to the station.'

Rooms and household items

The home is the second-most common N5 setting. You need the rooms and the objects that furnish them, because the exam loves to place one object 'on', 'under', or 'next to' another and ask where it is.

Notice that some of these — ドア (doa), テーブル (tēburu), ベッド (beddo), トイレ (toire) — are katakana loanwords, which are covered in depth in section 9.2. A typical sentence is 「つくえの うえに ほんが あります」(Tsukue no ue ni hon ga arimasu, 'There is a book on the desk'). The object being located (ほん) takes が, the place takes に, and the verb is あります because a book is inanimate. Swap in a cat and the verb changes: 「ねこが いすの したに います」(Neko ga isu no shita ni imasu, 'A cat is under the chair').

Town, roads and transport

Transport nouns appear constantly in listening dialogues about commuting and directions. They almost always combine with the particle で (de), which marks the means of doing something: でんしゃで (densha de, 'by train').

A model reading passage from the question bank reads: 「やまださんは まいにち でんしゃで かいしゃに いきます。うちから えきまで あるいて じゅっぷん かかります」(Yamada-san wa mainichi densha de kaisha ni ikimasu…, 'Mr. Yamada goes to work by train every day; it takes ten minutes to walk from home to the station'). Here から (kara, 'from') and まで (made, 'to/until') mark the start and end points, で marks the means, and に marks the destination. When a question asks どうやって (dōyatte, 'how / by what means'), the answer is the transport noun tied to で.

Direction and position words in context

Position words are relational nouns: they attach to a landmark with の (no) and then to a place particle. Master these eight and you can decode most 'where is it' items.

A useful distinction the exam exploits is となり (tonari) versus よこ (yoko) versus あいだ (aida): となり means 'next to' something of the same kind (the bank next to the station), よこ means simply 'at the side of', and あいだ means 'between' two named things — 「ぎんこうと ゆうびんきょくの あいだ」(between the bank and the post office). In direction dialogues, listen for まっすぐ (massugu, 'straight ahead') and まがってください (magatte kudasai, 'please turn'), often followed by みぎ (right) or ひだり (left). A classic route line is 「あの みちを まっすぐ いって、みぎに まがってください」('Go straight down that road and turn right'). Because a single wrong direction word flips the whole answer, always confirm the final position word before you commit.

How these nouns are tested, and common traps

These words show up in three question formats, so it pays to rehearse each. In the reading (よみかた, yomikata) items, you may see a place written in kanji — 学校 (gakkō, school), 駅 (eki, station), or 病院 (byōin, hospital) — and must choose the correct hiragana reading, so pair each vocabulary word with its kanji as you study. In the contextual fill-in items, a sentence has a blank and four place or position words as choices; the surrounding verb decides the answer, for example ほんを かります ('borrow books') points to としょかん. In the listening items, a dialogue gives directions and you pick the matching picture, so the position and turn words carry the answer.

Watch three recurring traps. First, the あります / います split: choosing あります for a person, or います for a building, is an instant error — living things (people, animals) always take います. Second, the に versus で split: use に for the place where something simply exists (「へやに テレビが あります」) but で for the place where an action happens (「こうえんで あそびます」, 'play in the park'). Third, relative-time nouns take no particle: きょう (today) and まいにち (every day) never use に, whereas a clock time like ７じ does. A final callout: do not confuse the near-homophones かいしゃ (kaisha, company) and きっさてん (kissaten, café), or うち (uchi, one's own home) and いえ (ie, house in general) — the exam swaps them as distractors, and reading the whole sentence, not just one word, keeps you safe.