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Kiryu seems like the kind of guy who should know that effort is never meaningless, and this time is no exception<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Kazama Kiryu<\/strong> is the primary protagonist of Sega\u2019s Like a Dragon video game franchise<\/strong>, which previously was known as Yakuza<\/strong> in English-speaking territories. As such, when we first meet Kiryu, he\u2019s part of a criminal organization, and even when he\u2019s not he an official member, he spends much of the series lending his strength to one faction of gangsters or another.<\/p>\n But as fans will be quick to point out, Kiryu\u2019s role as a quasi-mobster is mainly a device by which to easily insert the character into dramatic, action-packed adventures where he can do things the police wouldn\u2019t be allowed to, like, for instance, beat up a mugger and roast the would-be robber\u2019s head in a microwave. Kiryu himself is never motivated by a lust for power or hunger for wealth, and if you\u2019re completing all the optional side missions, he\u2019ll actually spend as much time helping random people with everyday problems as he will doing yakuza stuff. He\u2019ll dress up as a mascot character to help promote local tourism, provide a home for stray cats, and try to overcome the language barrier to help a foreign resident who may or may not be in desperate need of a pizza.<\/p>\n And speaking of language barriers, Kiryu is now helping language-learners in the real world, thanks to the official Ryu ga Gotoku<\/em>\/Like a Dragon<\/em> Twitter account\u2019s \u201cLike a Dragon English Conversation That You Absolutely Will Never Use\u201d lesson<\/strong>.<\/p>\n “||\u25e4\uffe3\uffe3\uffe3\uffe3 \u300e\u9f8d\u304c\u5982\u304f\u300f\u30b7\u30ea\u30fc\u30ba\u306e\u30ef\u30f3\u30b7\u30fc\u30f3\u3067\u82f1\u8a9e\u3092\u5b66\u307c\u3046\uff01 \u8a18\u5ff5\u3059\u3079\u304d\u521d\u56de\u306e\u30d5\u30ec\u30fc\u30ba\u306f\u2026<\/p>\n \u300e\u4ffa\u306f\u8a93\u3063\u3066\u6bba\u3057\u306f\u3084\u3063\u3066\u307e\u305b\u3093\u3002\u300f<\/p>\n “I swear to you that I didn’t kill that\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/aQtDpGaaql<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 \u9f8d\u304c\u5982\u304f\u30b9\u30bf\u30b8\u30aa\u00a0\u516c\u5f0f (@ryugagotoku) September 22, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The lesson deals with the word chikau<\/strong>, which means \u201cto swear,\u201d<\/strong> in the sense of swearing that something is true. Taking a line from Yakuza 0<\/em>, the tweet shows Kiryu saying \u201cI swear to you that I didn\u2019t kill that man.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Now, while the intended target audience is native speakers of Japanese looking to pick up a new English phrase, with a little reverse engineering we can use this to learn some Japanese too. To start with, the whole sentence, \u201cI swear to you that I didn\u2019t kill that man,\u201d becomes \u201cOre wa chikatte koroshi wa yattemasen,\u201d<\/strong> but there\u2019s a bit of a caveat here, which is that the Japanese rendering of the line doesn\u2019t actually include \u201cthat man\u201d since it was inferable from the context of the conversation before Kiryu declared his innocence. So before we go deeper, let\u2019s add that in explicitly, which gives us:<\/p>\n Ore wa chikatte ano otoko wo koroshi wa yattemasen.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u25bc Also, for the record, even when cosplaying as Kiryu<\/a>, our ace reporter Mr. Sato didn\u2019t kill that man either.<\/p>\n However, much like \u201cI swear to you that I didn\u2019t kill that man,\u201d is a phrase you\u2019ll probably never have occasion to say in English, odds are you won\u2019t ever need to actually tell someone \u201cOre wa chikatte ano otoko wo koroshi wa yattemasen<\/em>.\u201d But if we take a minute and figure out how those pieces fit together, maybe we can swap in something a little more useful for those of us not living the yakuza life.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u25cf Ore wa = I<\/strong><\/p>\n We start off with ore<\/em>, which means \u201cI.\u201d However, one unique quirk of Japanese grammar is that you have to verbally mark the subject, which we do here with wa<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u25cf chikatte = swear<\/strong> Like we mentioned above, chikau<\/em> means \u201cswear.\u201d However, since it\u2019s being used in this sentence as a sort of helper verb, it takes on a different form, chikatte<\/em><\/p>\n \u25cf ano otoko wo = that man<\/strong> We\u2019ve got two Japanese grammar points to discus here. First, unlike in English, where the object comes after a verb, in Japanese the object usually comes before the verb, so we\u2019re going to need to say ano otoko<\/em>, \u201cthat man,\u201d before we get to the killing part. Also, sort of like how the subject has to be designated with wa<\/em>, the object has to be verbally marked with wo<\/em>, which is pronounced like a long-vowel O.<\/p>\n \u25cf koroshi wa = killing<\/strong> The standard form of the word for \u201ckill\u201d is korosu<\/em>, but Kiryu is making a dramatic, and emphatic, statement here. Koroshi<\/em> is the noun form of korosu<\/em>, and by slowing down the pace of the sentence just a bit, it\u2019s going to help give Kiryu\u2019s words some extra gravitas.<\/p>\n \u25cf yattemasen = did not do<\/strong> Since we changed the verb korosu<\/em> into the noun koroshi<\/em>, Kiryu has to cap off the sentence with a statement about whether he did, or did not, do the killing, and he does that with yattemasen<\/em>. Translated literally, yattemasen<\/em> is a present-tense verb meaning \u201cam not doing,\u201d but this verb conjugation can also be used in situations where there\u2019s some unsettled doubt as to whether or not a person has done something. Ah, and if you\u2019re thinking that we should have used koroshi wo yattemasen<\/em> instead of koroshi wa yattemasen<\/em>, since wo<\/em> is supposed to mark the object of a verb, that would be the usual rule, but Kiryu is making an allowable exception here, once again to give his words more weight, with a tone akin to \u201cAs for the killing of that man, I swear that I wasn\u2019t the one who did it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u25bc And, we repeat, it wasn\u2019t Mr. Sato either.<\/p>\n OK, so now that we\u2019ve gone through the building blocks of \u201cI swear I did not kill that man,\u201d can we use that knowledge to make a sentence that\u2019s more likely to be useful in daily life?<\/strong> Let\u2019s start by smoothing down some of the dramatic edginess.<\/p>\n \u25cf Watashi wa ano otoko wo koroshiteimasen.<\/strong> We\u2019ve made a couple of changes here. First, while ore<\/em> does mean \u201cI,\u201d it has a macho, arguably rough tone to it, depending on the atmosphere and topic of conversation, so we\u2019ve swapped in watashi<\/em>, the most general-purpose way of saying \u201cI\u201d in Japanese<\/a>. We\u2019ve also dropped chikatte<\/em>\/\u201cswear\u201d and simplified the verb down to a more straightforward way of saying \u201cdid not kill,\u201d koroshiteimasen<\/em>.<\/p>\n I\u2019m going to go out on a limb here and assume that during your time in Japan, you probably won\u2019t be accused of killing anyone, but now that we\u2019ve got a framework for making \u201cI did not\/have not \uff5e\u201d sentences, let\u2019s try plugging in some other vocabulary. For instance, if you want to tell someone you\u2019ve haven\u2019t eaten (tabeteimasen<\/em>) blowfish (fugu<\/em><\/a>) while on your trip in Japan, you could say:<\/strong><\/p>\n Watashi wa fugu wo tabeteimasen.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Or if you haven\u2019t yet bought (katteimasen<\/em>) those Catbus cookies<\/a> (Nekobasu kukki) from Tokyo\u2019s Ghibli-themed bakery?<\/p>\n Watashi wa Nekobasu kukki wo katteimasen.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n And once you know that ni<\/em> means \u201cto,\u201d you can explain that you haven\u2019t gone (itteimasen<\/em>) to Dejima<\/a><\/strong>, the only place foreigners were allowed to live in Japan for a period of about 200 years.<\/p>\n Watashi wa Dejima ni itteimasen.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The Like a Dragon English Conversation That You Absolutely Will Never Use tweet is labeled with a number 1, signaling that there are more non-usable phrases to come. Just remember, though, that even if you\u2019re never going to repeat Kiryu\u2019s dialogue verbatim, knowing why he says the words he does can help you find the right ones for you.<\/p>\n \u2026<\/p>\n Ah, I just realized we didn\u2019t go over the \u201cto you\u201d and \u201cthat\u201d parts of \u201cI swear to you that I didn\u2019t kill that man!\u201d<\/strong> In sentences like these in Japanese, there\u2019s no direct equivalent to \u201cthat,\u201d since it can be understood from context. As for \u201cto you,\u201d that\u2019s anata ni<\/em>, but again, it\u2019s understood from context, so there\u2019s no need to explicitly state it. We could go into more detail about that, but we should probably wrap this up before I talk your ears off about Japanese linguistics.<\/p>\n \u2026<\/p>\n Oh, and speaking of ears, did you know that there\u2019s a Japanese phrase, mimi ni tako ga dekiru<\/em>, which means \u201cto get callouses in your ears,\u201d that you use when someone keeps repeating the same thing to you over and over? And since the Japanese words for \u201ccallouses\u201d and \u201coctopus\u201d are homonyms, there\u2019s a pun that they turned into a fashion accessory<\/a>, and then, you see\u2026<\/p>\n Source: Twitter\/@ryugagotoku<\/a> via Hachima Kiko<\/a><\/em> Kiryu seems like the kind of guy who should know that effort is never meaningless, and this time is no exception. Kazama Kiryu is the primary protagonist of Sega\u2019s Like…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\u3000\u3000\u3000\u3000\u3000\u3000\u3000\u3000\u3000\uff3f\uff3f\uff3f\u25e2||”<\/p>\n
\u300e\u9f8d\u304c\u5982\u304f\u300f\u82f1\u4f1a\u8a71\u30b7\u30ea\u30fc\u30ba\u59cb\u52d5![\"\ud83c\udfc3\"](\"https:\/\/s.w.org\/images\/core\/emoji\/16.0.1\/72x72\/1f3c3.png\")
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\nOre wa chikatte\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n
\nOre wa chikatte ano otoko wo\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n
\nOre wa chikatte ano otoko wo koroshi\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n
\nOre wa chikatte ano otoko wo koroshi wa yattemasen.<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/09\/rg-3.jpg?w=640\")
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\nI did not kill that man.<\/p>\n\n
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\nPhotos \u00a9SoraNews24<\/em>
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