by Tomoyuki Higuchi
How do you say “It’s 5:30.” in Japanese?
Today’s phrase is :
It’s (current time).
(current time) 時だよ。
ji dayo
“時 (ji)” means “o’clock”.
When you want to say “It’s (current time).”, put the time just before “時 (ji)”.
For example, if the current time is “5:00”, you can say like this :
5時だよ。
goji dayo
Or if you want to speak politely :
5時です。
goji desu
The Time in Japanese
We always use a 12-hour clock in everyday conversation. We say “午前 (gozen)” for AM, “午後 (gogo)” for PM.
1:00 1時 ichi ji
2:00 2時 ni ji
3:00 3時 san ji
4:00 4時 yo ji
5:00 5時 go ji
6:00 6時 roku ji
7:00 7時 shichi ji
8:00 8時 hachi ji
9:00 9時 ku ji
10:00 10時 juu* ji
11:00 11時 juuichi* ji
12:00 12時 juuni* ji
*We pronounce “juu” like “jū”.
So how do you say “It’s 5:30.” ?
You can say like this :
5時半だよ。
goji han dayo
Or politely :
5時半です。
goji han desu
“半 (han)” means “a half”.