"How much is this in Japanese?" is いくらですか (ikura desu ka). Say it alone while you hold up the item, or add これ (kore, "this") to the front for a touch more clarity: これはいくらですか (kore wa ikura desu ka). Either version works at a market stall, a boutique till, or a taxi meter. If you already know what the thing is called, swap in the name instead of kore, like このシャツはいくらですか for "how much is this shirt." Asking is the easy part. Catching the number that comes back is where most travelers stall, especially once a price crosses 10,000 yen, where Japanese counting splits off from English entirely.
Ikura desu ka, and which version to use
いくら (ikura) alone, dropped with a rising tone, works fine among friends or at a very casual stall. Add ですか (desu ka) and you've got the polite default that's safe anywhere, from a department store to a ryokan front desk. For anything you're physically holding or pointing at, kore wa ikura desu ka removes all doubt about what you're asking the price of.
A short exchange at a stall might go like this:
You: すみません、これはいくらですか？ (Sumimasen, kore wa ikura desu ka?) "Excuse me, how much is this?" Vendor: 五百円です。(Go-hyaku-en desu.) "It's 500 yen."
Short. Direct. No haggling expected on either side.
Catching the number that comes back
English counts in thousands. Japanese counts in units of 10,000, called 万 (man), and that switch is where most people lose the thread. 30,000 yen isn't built as "thirty thousand," it's built as 三万円 (san-man en), three ten-thousands. Miss that shift and a price can sound ten times bigger or smaller than it actually is.
| Yen | Reading |
|---|---|
| 100円 | hyaku en |
| 500円 | go-hyaku en |
| 1,000円 | sen en |
| 3,000円 | san-zen en |
| 5,000円 | go-sen en |
| 10,000円 | ichi-man en |
| 25,000円 | ni-man go-sen en |
Notice the jump at 10,000. Everything under it reads like ordinary thousands and hundreds. Cross into man territory and the whole structure resets around ten-thousands instead.
Where you'll actually use it
Ikura desu ka earns its keep in a few specific spots. Markets and street stalls top the list: fresh produce, souvenirs, festival food stands, anywhere a price isn't posted nearby. Flea markets (フリーマーケット) are the one place bargaining is genuinely welcome, and a polite もう少し安くなりますか (mou sukoshi yasuku narimasu ka, "can it be a little cheaper?") won't land as rude there. Taxis are worth it too, when you want a rough fare estimate before the meter starts running rather than after. So is a small restaurant with a handwritten daily special and no price printed on the board at all.
Convenience stores and most retail chains show the price on a screen or a tag, so you'll rarely need to ask out loud there. It's everywhere else, the places without a display, where the phrase does the real work.
Two things that trip people up
Outside of flea markets, bargaining isn't part of Japanese retail culture at all. Asking a shop to lower a marked price, politely or not, tends to land as odd rather than savvy, and it won't move the number. But that courtesy doesn't extend past the flea market gate.
Tax status is the quieter trap. Some tags still show a 税抜き (zeinuki, tax excluded) figure out of old habit, even at shops where the register already adds tax automatically, so the number a vendor says out loud, or the total printed on your receipt, can land a little higher than whatever was written on the tag you were looking at. It's not a scam. It's just a mismatch between the label and the till.
When the tag itself has nothing you can read
Handwritten flea market tags, kanji numerals instead of arabic digits, a faded sticker on an antique, sometimes the obstacle isn't the language, it's the actual writing. Rather than guessing, point a camera translator at the tag and let it read the number back to you directly. The same trick works on Japanese signs with no bilingual signage nearby, and on a photo you've already taken, covered in more depth in translating Japanese from a photo.
Ikura desu ka gets the question out. A camera pointed at whatever answers it, price tag, receipt, handwritten board, gets you the rest. Between the phrase and the numbers 1 to 10 that build every price you'll hear, there's very little left in a Japanese shop you can't handle on your own. Yomi reads the tags, receipts and menus your Japanese hasn't caught up to yet, fully offline, right on your iPhone. For the rest of the trip, greetings, directions, ordering food, see the full phrasebook for travelers.