Quick Reference

Meaning & Definition

Konshuu is one of the first calendar words Japanese learners memorize, and it earns that early spot: ima (now, this) plus shuu (week) gives you a compact, tidy way to point at the seven days you’re currently living in. It’s also the anchor for a whole family of week-based time words, so getting comfortable with it early pays off fast.

Konshuu breaks down cleanly into kon (今, a reading of “this/now” used only in time compounds) and shuu (週, week). Once you know this pattern, the rest of the week-family words fall into place: senshuu (先週, last week), konshuu (今週, this week), raishuu (来週, next week), and saraishuu (再来週, the week after next). Maishuu (毎週, every week) rounds out the set. In a sentence, konshuu usually works as a bare time adverb with no particle needed, as in konshuu wa isogashii (this week is busy). When it’s marking a specific action tied to a point within the week, it can take ni, though many learners are surprised how often no particle is used at all. A very common combination is konshuu-matsu (今週末), meaning “this weekend,” formed by adding matsu (end) to the base word. Like all of these week terms, konshuu is relative to the moment of speaking or writing, not to a fixed calendar week.

How to Use It

The trio to drill together is senshuu / konshuu / raishuu (last week / this week / next week) — learning them as a set makes each one stick faster than studying konshuu alone. Watch the reading: it’s konshuu, not a literal “ima-shuu.” As a time adverb, konshuu often stands with no particle at all (konshuu wa hima, “this week is free”), which trips up learners used to marking every noun. Don’t confuse the shuu family with the parallel kon- words for other calendar units: kyou (today) uses a different word entirely, but kongetsu (this month) and kotoshi (this year) follow the same “this + [unit]” logic as konshuu, just with irregular readings worth learning side by side. Finally, remember konshuu-matsu (this weekend) as its own high-frequency chunk — it’s used constantly in casual planning.

Example Sentences

Cultural Context

Japanese time vocabulary is built on a remarkably consistent grid: for each unit — 週 (week), 月 (month), 年 (year) — the same three prefixes 先 (last), 今 (this), 来 (next) attach to mark relative position. Once a learner internalizes senshuu/konshuu/raishuu for weeks, the pattern transfers almost automatically to sengetsu/kongetsu/raigetsu for months and kyonen/kotoshi/rainen for years (with a few irregular readings to note). This systematic quality is part of why Japanese scheduling language feels so learnable once the shape clicks into place.

Because konshuu is always relative to the moment of utterance rather than a fixed Monday-to-Sunday box on a calendar, it does real work in daily coordination — checking a weekly schedule, planning a trip, or setting a work deadline all lean on it constantly. In offices and group chats alike, phrases built from it, like konshuu-chuu (sometime this week) or konshuu-matsu (this weekend), are some of the most frequently typed time expressions in Japanese, making konshuu a genuinely high-value word for anyone building a working vocabulary of everyday scheduling.

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