Today, too, we are going to learn how to read numbers in conjunction with a quantifier “en” that is a unit for counting how much the price is. Asking and answering a question about how much the price is can be a conversation as the following example;
A : Kono Kuruma wa Ikura desuka. (How much is this car?)
B : Kono Kuruma wa San Byaku Man en desu. (This car is three million yen.)
As of today, January 24, 2026, 1 US dollar is 156 Japanese yen. So you need to use “a bigger number” when saying the prices of commodities. Let’s us start with 1000 today.
1000 en = Sen’ en (one thousand-yen)
1004 en = Sen Yo en (one thousand and four-yen)
1040 en = Sen Yon Juu en (one thousand and fourty-yen)
1400 en = Sen Yon Hyaku en (one thousand and four hundred-yen)
2000 en = Ni Sen’ en (two thousand-yen)
3000 en = San Zen’ en (three thousand-yen)
4000 en = Yon Sen’ en (four thousand-yen)
5000 en = Go Sen’ en (five thousand-yen)
6000 en = Roku Sen’ en (six thousand-yen)
7000 en = Nana Sen’ en (seven thousand-yen)
8000 en = Hassen’ en (eight thousand-yen)
You see “ss” in Hassen’en. Since “s” is a fricative sound, the first “s” is leak of fricative sound with length of one mora.
9000 en = Kyuu Sen’ en (nine thousand-yen)
10,000 en = Ichi Man’ en (ten thousand-yen)
20,000 en = Ni Man’ en (twenty thousand-yen)
30,000 en = Sam Man’ en (twenty thousand-yen)
100,000 en = Juu Man’ en (one hundred thousand-yen)
200,000 en = Ni Juu Man’ en (two hundred thousand-yen)
1,000,000 en = Hyaku Man’ en (one million-yen)
10,000,000 en = Issen Man’ en (ten million-yen)
100,000,000 en = Ichi Oku en (one hundred million-yen)
As you see above, comma is used for every three digits. In fact, it is rational to put comma for every four digits in Japanese, because Man is 10^4, Oku is 10^8, Chou is 10^12, and Kei is 10^16. However, also in Japanese, a big number has commas in three digits. When you see a big number, and you want to know how big the number is, read the number from the end with the following;
Ichi – Juu – Hyaku – Sen – Man – Juu Man – Hyaku Man-…
This simply means that One – Ten – One hundred – One thousand – Ten thousand – One hundred thousand – One million
Agony or Fun?! Second Language Learning 