Question
I have started learning conversational Japanese and in class, I learned how to say, “I take a bus to school every morning” which is “maiasa basude gakkoo e ikimasu”.
I actually have to walk quite a bit to school after alighting from the bus. So how do I say “I take a bus and walk to school”? Can I say “watashi wa basu to aruite gakkoo e ikimasu”?
Answer by Professional Japanese Teacher
バスに乗(の)って、歩(ある)いて学校(がっこう)へ行(い)きます。
Basuni notte, aruite gakkoo e ikimasu.
I take a bus and walk to school.
This is a common question often asked by people learning Japanese. We usually use the hiragana character と “to” to mean the word “and”. However, “to” is used to join two nouns together. For example, りんごとオレンジ ringo to orenji (apple and orange), and バスと電車(でんしゃ) basu to densha (bus and train).
When you are joining two verbs as seen in your question (take a bus and walk), we cannot use “to”. We change the form of the verb to the te-form to join the words together. When used in this manner, the meaning of “and” is included in the sentence. I hope this answers your question.
