Japanese Numbers: How to Count from 1 to 100 and Beyond

The two reading systems (start here)

Japanese doesn't have one set of number words. It has two, and you'll run into both within days of starting, so it's worth sorting them out now.

The Sino-Japanese set (ichi, ni, san) arrived from China along with the kanji. It's the workhorse. Prices, phone numbers, dates, clock times, maths, addresses, and every number above ten use this set.

The native Japanese set (hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu) is homegrown and much older. It only runs from one to ten, then stops. You reach for it when you're counting things and no specific counter fits, which happens a lot in shops and restaurants.

Rōmaji here is Hepburn, so a macron marks a long vowel: jū is a stretched "joo", kyū a stretched "kyoo". Japanese also gives every syllable roughly the same length and weight, so read the sound hints evenly rather than punching one the way English does.

Sino-Japanese numbers 1-10

Native Japanese numbers 1-10

These all end in つ (tsu) except the last one, and they're used with no counter attached. Point at a pastry, say futatsu, and you've ordered two.

Learn the Sino-Japanese set first. It carries every large number, price, and date. The native ten is a small bonus on top, and it never grows past tō. If you've already met the hiragana chart, you can read both columns above out loud right now.

Japanese numbers 11-19: the pattern English wishes it had

English makes you memorize eleven, twelve, and thirteen as separate words. Japanese just says ten-one, ten-two, ten-three. No surprises live in this range, so you get nine free numbers the moment you know one through ten.

Japanese numbers 20-100 by tens

The tens flip the same pieces around. Instead of ten-plus-digit, you say digit-plus-ten: 2 x 10 is nijū, 3 x 10 is sanjū. Again, nothing to memorize beyond the first ten words.

Now build any two-digit number by gluing a ten to a digit, in that order. No "and", no hyphen, no extra word:

• 21 = 二十一 (nijūichi), literally two-ten-one
• 47 = 四十七 (yonjūnana), four-ten-seven
• 68 = 六十八 (rokujūhachi), six-ten-eight
• 99 = 九十九 (kyūjūkyū), nine-ten-nine

That single rule covers the Japanese numbers 1-100 in full. Say 99 out loud once and you've earned the whole range.

Hundreds, thousands, and 万 (man)

Three new words unlock everything up to 99,999.

Watch that third row, because it's a rule and not a style choice. One hundred is just 百 (hyaku) and one thousand is just 千 (sen), but ten thousand is never bare 万. It has to be 一万 (ichiman).

Building is the same gluing job as before. 200 is 二百 (nihyaku), 500 is 五百 (gohyaku), 2,000 is 二千 (nisen), 5,000 is 五千 (gosen). String the units left to right, largest first, and skip any that are zero:

• 356 = 三百五十六 (sanbyaku gojūroku)
• 1,024 = 千二十四 (sen nijūyon)
• 8,700 = 八千七百 (hassen nanahyaku)

You'll notice 三百 came out as sanbyaku and 八千 as hassen. Those sound changes get their own section below.

Why 100,000 in Japanese is 十万 (jūman)

This is the single biggest stumbling block for English speakers, and it isn't about vocabulary. It's about where the language puts its commas in its head.

English regroups every three digits: thousand, million, billion. Japanese regroups every four: 万 (man) at 10,000, 億 (oku) at 100,000,000, 兆 (chō) at a trillion. So Japanese has no word that means "hundred thousand" or "million". It counts how many 万 you have and says that instead.

Cruelly, modern Japanese still writes commas every three digits, exactly like English. The page says 100,000 and your mouth has to say ten-man. Here's the conversion table worth keeping open:

The trick that makes it fast. Stop reading the number in English first. Instead, cover the last four digits with your thumb, read whatever is left, and say 万. Take 250,000: cover the final 0000, you're left with 25, so it's 二十五万 (nijūgoman). Take 3,400,000: cover 0000, you're left with 340, so it's 三百四十万 (sanbyaku yonjūman).

億 (oku), briefly. One oku is 100,000,000, or a hundred million. You'll meet it in news reports, budgets, and population figures, always as 一億 (ichioku) rather than bare 億. Beyond that sits 兆 (chō) at a trillion, which you can safely file away until much later.

Nothing here is irregular, it's just a different grid. Once your thumb learns to cover four digits instead of three, this stops being hard. Korean numbers use the same four-digit grouping, so the effort transfers if you ever pick up Korean.

The sound changes you can't skip

Japanese numbers are regular in structure and irregular in sound. When certain digits meet certain units, the consonant shifts to make the pair easier to say. These are the real difficulty of the system, and there are fewer of them than you fear.

Everything else in those ranges behaves. 200 is nihyaku, 400 yonhyaku, 500 gohyaku, 700 nanahyaku, 900 kyūhyaku. 2,000 is nisen, 4,000 yonsen, 5,000 gosen, 6,000 rokusen, 7,000 nanasen, 9,000 kyūsen. So the whole list of exceptions in the hundreds and thousands is: 300, 600, 800, 3,000, 8,000.

The pattern behind it. Three (san) voices the next consonant: h to b, s to z. One, six, eight, and ten chop themselves short and double it: ichi to ip, roku to rop, hachi to hap, jū to jup. That same pattern returns with almost every counter you'll learn, so getting it once pays off dozens of times.

Why 4 is yon and 9 is kyū

Four and nine each have two readings, and the choice isn't random. 四 can be shi or yon, and 九 can be ku or kyū. In everyday counting, Japanese speakers strongly favor yon and kyū, and seven leans on nana over shichi for a related reason.

The reason is homophones. し (shi) sounds exactly like 死 (shi), the word for death. く (ku) sounds like 苦 (ku), meaning suffering or agony. Wikipedia's article on Japanese superstitions notes that levels or rooms numbered 4 are sometimes skipped in hospitals and hotels, and that gift sets of plates come in threes or fives rather than fours. Seven is a separate case: なな (nana) simply sounds less like いち (ichi) over a bad phone line than しち (shichi) does.

Here's the part most guides leave out. Shi and ku are not banned, they're compulsory in a set of fixed expressions. Say yon here and you'll be understood, but you'll sound wrong:

That 四時 row is worth a second look. Four o'clock is yoji, using a third reading of 四 that appears in a handful of compounds. Japanese sits near the top of most hardest languages to learn rankings, and small forks like this are exactly why.

Japanese counters (josūshi): why you can't just say "two"

In English, two is two. Two cats, two pencils, two books, same word. Japanese doesn't work that way. To count objects you attach a counter (助数詞, josūshi) that matches the thing's shape or category, a bit like saying "two sheets of paper" or "three head of cattle" but for almost every noun.

Counters are the part of Japanese counting with no English equivalent, and there are hundreds of them. You need about eight to function. This is the point where an app with real drilling earns its keep, and we compare nine of them in the best apps to learn Japanese.

A small joke the language plays on beginners: 本 means "book" as a noun, but as a counter it counts long thin objects, not books. Books take 冊 (satsu). So three books is 本を三冊 (hon o sansatsu), which looks like a typo and isn't.

Counting people: 人 (nin)

The first two are irregular and completely unavoidable. One person is ひとり (hitori), two people is ふたり (futari), and neither uses "nin" at all. Four people is よにん (yonin), with a single n, and adding the extra n to make yonnin is the classic learner tell.

Long thin things: 本 (hon)

This one shows the full sound-change pattern, so if you learn a single counter properly, make it this one. Pens, bottles, umbrellas, trees, roads, and bananas all take 本.

See it? 1, 6, 8, and 10 double the consonant into pp. 3 voices it into b. The rest keep plain h. That's the same rule from the hundreds section, doing the same job. Tofugu's guide to the 本 counter has a longer list of what qualifies as long and thin, which is broader than you'd guess.

The other essentials at a glance

Good news at the bottom of that table: 枚 and 台 are perfectly regular. No doubling, no voicing, just the plain number plus the counter. Start with those two for an early win while the pp and bb forms settle in.

One last irregular you'll need early. Twenty years old is 二十歳, read はたち (hatachi), not nijussai. It's the age of adulthood in Japan and comes up constantly.

Japanese numbers in real life

Prices. The currency is 円, read えん (en), even though English calls it "yen". A 500 yen coin is 五百円 (gohyaku-en) and a 1,000 yen note is 千円 (sen-en). Restaurant menus lean hard on the hundreds, so gohyaku and happyaku are worth drilling early.

Phone numbers. Read them digit by digit, and say の (no) where the hyphen sits. Clarity beats speed, so speakers pick yon over shi, nana over shichi, and kyū over ku, and usually say ゼロ (zero) for 0. A number like 03-1234-9876 comes out as "zero san no ichi ni san yon no kyū hachi nana roku".

Dates. Months are refreshingly simple: number plus 月 (gatsu), giving ichigatsu for January through jūnigatsu for December, with only shigatsu, shichigatsu, and kugatsu breaking rank. Days of the month are the opposite. The 1st through the 10th, plus the 14th, 20th, and 24th, use native readings that have to be learned separately: 一日 is ついたち (tsuitachi), 二日 is ふつか (futsuka), 三日 is みっか (mikka), and the 20th is 二十日 (hatsuka). The sci.lang.japan FAQ lists the full set, which deserves its own study session.

Age. Use 歳 (sai): 五歳 (gosai) five years old, 三十歳 (sanjussai) thirty. Just remember はたち (hatachi) for twenty.

Time. Hours take 時 (ji) and minutes take 分, which flips between ふん (fun) and ぷん (pun) depending on what comes before it.

That last row hides a genuine pun. 十分 read as じゅっぷん (juppun) means ten minutes, but the same two characters read as じゅうぶん (jūbun) mean "enough". Context sorts it out, and native speakers make the joke on purpose.

Your 10-minute practice. Count 1 to 10 out loud in both systems, twice. Then say your phone number, your age, and today's date in Japanese, and read the price of the last thing you bought. Numbers are the one vocabulary set you can drill anywhere, with no partner. If you would rather have the repetition scheduled for you, our Duolingo Japanese review is honest about what the free tier does and does not drill. Price tags mix in loanwords, so the katakana chart pairs well with this lesson.