The Announcement That Corrects Itself: A Tokyo Trip Timetable
You are a second-year student at a high school in Kumagaya. On Monday morning your homeroom teacher, Mr. Sato, makes this announcement about next week's Tokyo trip. You hear it twice.
'Listen carefully. On Friday, be at the west entrance of Kumagaya Station by 7:40. The bus leaves at eight - sorry, the bus leaves at 7:50, so ten minutes earlier than I said. Bring a lunch. We will eat at Ueno Park. Last week I said we would eat at the museum restaurant, but that plan is cancelled. The museum ticket is 600 yen, but if you show your school ID card, it is 400 yen. If it rains, we will go to the planetarium first, and we will have lunch in the museum lobby. Oh - Yuki, please get the attendance sheet from the office before Friday afternoon.'
You are writing a timetable card for your group of four.
1. Your group's card has two boxes: 'Meet at' and 'Bus leaves'. What do you write in each box, and how does Mr. Sato's correction change your answer?
Read the worked answer
Meet at 7:40 / Bus leaves 7:50.
Reasoning:
- 'By 7:40' is a deadline, so 7:40 is the latest acceptable arrival, not a suggested time.
- The first number you hear is eight. The word sorry is the repair signal: the speaker is replacing 8:00 with 7:50, and he even explains the size of the change ('ten minutes earlier'), which confirms the new figure.
- Listeners who write only the first number will arrive at 7:50 and miss the bus, because the bus leaves at the moment they arrive.
- The correction comes after the first number, so on the second hearing you should check the box you filled the first time rather than start again. A useful habit: every time you hear sorry, no, or actually, cross out the earlier figure immediately.
2. A classmate says, 'Good - if it rains we'll eat at the museum restaurant.' Is your classmate right? What exactly did Mr. Sato say about lunch?
Read the worked answer
No. The restaurant is cancelled in every case.
The announcement contains two separate changes that are easy to merge wrongly:
- The museum restaurant is cancelled completely - it is not a rain plan.
- Lunch is at Ueno Park in good weather, and in the museum lobby (not the restaurant) if it rains. In that case the planetarium comes first.
So the two weather plans are:
- Dry: park lunch, then the museum.
- Rain: planetarium, then lobby lunch.
The classmate has combined the word 'museum' with the word 'restaurant' from two different sentences. On this kind of question, write the plan as two columns (dry / rain) and put each detail under one column only.
3. Why does Mr. Sato say Yuki's name in the middle of the announcement, and what should Yuki write in her notebook?
Read the worked answer
A name plus an instruction means a personal job with a deadline.
Everything before the name is information for the whole class. When the teacher switches to a name, he is no longer informing everyone - he is assigning one student a task. Yuki should therefore note four elements rather than one:
- who: Yuki
- action: get the attendance sheet
- place: the office
- deadline: before Friday afternoon
A weak note such as 'attendance sheet' loses the deadline, and 'Friday' alone loses 'afternoon'. The deadline matters because Friday is the trip day, so the sheet must be collected earlier in the week. This is also a listening trap: students who stop concentrating after the weather plans miss the only instruction that applies to them personally.