Japanese Numbers: How to count one to a trillion?

The numbers from 0-10 are the most essential. Once you get this, you’ll be able to share your telephone number with your Japanese friends, plus they form the core of all other Japanese numbers!

Counting from ten to nineteen in Japanese is actually much easier than it is in English! You’ll see why in the table below. Can you spot the rule in the table below? (To save space, we’ll write kanji horizontally.)

Did you see the rule? It’s as simple as this:

Now let’s see how to say all the two-digit numbers. We’ll start with the multiples of 10 again. Can you figure out the rules behind the table below?

Pretty simple, right? Just put the number of 10s before じゅう[jū]!

And to form the numbers in between, you can just add the number from 1-9 at the end, like we did in the 10-19 section above:

In Japanese, you can count hundreds using the word ひゃく[hyaku](100). Here are the words for the multiples of 100:

You can create the numbers in between the multiple of 100 just by adding the words for the two-digit number at the end.

The last of our basic numbers is せん[sen](thousand), and it can be counted the same way!

Let’s look at a few final examples with numbers in between the 1000s:

The Japanese word 万[man] represents the number 10,000. You can count up to 1000 万[man] before you need to use a new unit word, so by adding this one word, you’ll be able to count up to 99,999,999!

Let’s first look at the numbers 10,000 - 90,000.

After 90,000, we continue counting 10s, 100s, and 1000s of 万[man]. Let’s look at some example numbers:

Remember, that if there are numbers in the 1000s, 100s, 10s, or 1s place, they’ll come after まん[man]!

Now can you figure out how to say 99,999,999? Take a deep breath and say…

Did you get it right? Well done!

Are you still breathing? Here’s the last stretch! We have two more unit words to learn: 億[oku](100,000,000) and 兆[chō](1,000,000,000). Because we now know the general construction and rules of Japanese big numbers, we will simply add a digit to each.

To read a negative number in Japanesse, simply add マイナス[mainasu](minus) at the beginning.

Pretty easy, right?

In Japanese, the decimal point is read as てん[ten], and is followed by a series of single digit numbers like this:

When 0 comes before the decimal point, it’s commonly pronounced as れい[rei]:

Please note that the pronunciations of いち[ichi](one) and はち[hachi](eight) change when they’re used before てん[ten]:

• いってんご

  itten go

  1.5

• はってんきゅう

  hatten kyū

  8.9

In Japanese we follow this formula. Notice that the denominator comes first!

The word ぶん[bun] (分 in kanji) means “to divide.” So よんぶん[yon bun] in the example above means, roughly, “something divided into four.” This must be followed by the particle の[no] before the number of “fourths” can be given.

Here are a couple of more examples:

• さんぶんのに

  san bun no ni

  two-thirds (2/3)

• いちとはちぶんのなな

  ichi to hachi bun no nana

  one and seven-eighths (1 7/8)

When reading a Japanese phone number out loud, you’ll usually use の[no] in place of a hyphen. Notice that we do this in writing and in the pronunciation. For example:

Here are some other things to notice:

• To keep overall rhythm, single-syllable numbers such as 2[ni]and 5[go] are often pronounced with a long vowel as in “nii” and “goo,” respectively. When writing in hiragana or romaji, however, don’t spell them with long vowels.

• 4 and 9 are often pronounced as よん[yon] and きゅう[kyū], respectively, since it’s more recognizable than single-syllable versions し[shi] and く[ku] in verbal communications.

• 7 is better pronounced as なな[nana] because しち[shichi](seven) and いち[ichi](one) sound similar, especially when you are on the phone.

The Japanese multiplication table is called くく[kuku] because the last entry is 9 x 9. It starts with…

…and ends with…

Even though a Japanese unit of numbers consists of 4 digits, we still put a comma after every three zeros! This is a source of headache even for native Japanese speakers, who often have to count zeros to figure out how to read each big number.

But have no fear! Here’s a useful tip to quickly figure out how to read a big number in Japanese. It’s called the rule of “ せん[sen]・ ひゃく[hyaku]・ じゅう[jū]・ いち[ichi]”:

• The first comma indicates せん[1,000](one thousand)

• The second comma indicates ひゃくまん[1,000,000](one million)

• The third comma indicates じゅうおく[1,000,000,000](one billion)

• The fourth comma indicates いっちょう[1,000,000,000,000](one trillion)

So, as the number of commas increase by 1, the number preceding the unit decreases from せん to ひゃく to じゅう to いち. Hope this tip will take a bit of weight off your shoulders when reading big numbers in Japanese!

There are number jinxes in Japanese culture, just like in the English-speaking world!

🍀Lucky numbers:

• Traditionally, 8 has been considered lucky, partly because the shape of its kanji (八) suggests the ends (i.e., future outcomes) are expanding.

• Nowadays, however, many Japanese people consider 7 to be a lucky number as well!

😞Unlucky numbers:

• Some people try to avoid 4 because し[shi](four) sounds the same as the word for “death” in Japanese: 死[shi].

• Such people may also dislike 9 because く[ku] sounds similar to the word for “suffering.”