How can PB & J teach Japanese? Recipes are just delicious little projects to practice and study from.

Hey everyone!
It has been a while since I made an insight on here due to last year being particularly busy— but during that time I had been thinking for a while about the idea that recipes seem like a great way to study and practice your Japanese! Much like many of the ideas talked about in previous Insights, a recipe would count as a project to get you engaged in the process of practice. Not only that, but each recipe can hold a bounty of relevant vocabulary for people that like to eat (e.g. most of them); as well as using common grammar concepts!

So I wanted to try out sharing the quickest and most simplified recipe I could think of in Japanese to illustrate this potential study tool: a peanut butter and jelly sandwich! ~Yum yum

Go to the recipe to save some TL;DR time, or feel free to read the rest of the article as per the classically long recipe blogging format we know and love on the internet. As a note, the rest of the post will mostly be priming you with the vocabulary and grammar details to use while reading the recipe.



Vocabulary for the recipe:

Much of the vocabulary for this example will be using easier loanwords from English for ingredients, tools, and measurements used in the recipe. That will ease leaning into the format of this kind of project as a concept. However, there are still a few purely Japanese words here and there too.


Ingredient words

Note: in the text recipe below, these will be highlighted in yellow

ピーナッツバター (piinattsu bataa)
Peanut butter
ゼリー (zerii)
Jelly
パン (pan)
Bread
The aforementioned vocabulary for ingredient words used in this recipe, but with cute pictures accompanied.



Measurement words (e.g. counters)

Note: in the text recipe below, these will be highlighted in red

テーブルスプーン (teeburuspupuun)
Tablespoon
まい (mai)
Units of sheets (in this case, slices of bread)
まいめ (mai me)
The ordered number of a sheet (e.g. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.)
The aforementioned vocabulary for measurement words used in this recipe, but with cute pictures accompanied.



Action words

Note: in the text recipe below, these will be highlighted in blue

ぬる (nuru)
To spread
おしあわせる (oshi awaseru)
To push together
Note: This is actually a compound of 2 different verbs: to push something and to unite something
たべる (taberu)
To eat
The aforementioned vocabulary for action words used in this recipe, but with cute pictures accompanied.



The recipe:

Ingredients

  • パンの2まい
  • ピーナッツバターの1テーブルスプーン
  • ゼリーの1テーブルスプーン

Directions

  1. 1まいめのパンのうえにピーナッツバターをぬる。
  2. 2まいめのパンのうえにゼリーをぬる。
  3. 2まいのパンをおしあわせる。
  4. たべる❣
The described recipe from earlier, but as an image with cute pictures of sandwiches and jams.