You are learning numbers and prices: you will read the scene it happens in, learn 10 words and phrases, take apart the pattern behind them (japanese numbers + price questions), hear them in a conversation, rehearse them, and finish by saying one thing out loud to be graded.
Tsukiji Outer Market, early morning. The market that feeds Tokyo's restaurants. Vendors calling prices, fish gleaming on ice, the smell of ocean. You need to ask prices and understand the answer.
The Tsukiji Outer Market opens before dawn. By 6am, the tuna sellers have already been working for three hours. By 8am, the small stalls selling tamagoyaki, oysters on ice, and grilled scallops are packed with chefs and food obsessives and a growing number of tourists who know what the chefs know.
The stranger walks past a stall with enormous, glossy oysters. 「いくらですか？」 — ikura desu ka? The vendor holds up five fingers. Five hundred yen per oyster. In Paris this would be twelve euros. Here it is four hundred yen. The stranger points. 「これをください。」
The vendor opens the oyster with a small knife in one movement, hands it over on a bed of shaved ice. The stranger squeezes lemon, tilts the shell, says 「いただきます」 quietly, and drinks. The ocean. Cold and perfect.
「カードで払えますか？」 — The vendor shakes his head. 「現金のみです。」 Cash only. The ATM at the konbini across the street is already busy.