If your weekend descriptions still sound like “土曜日に映画を見て、ご飯を食べて、寝ました,” you are reading this just in time. Native Japanese speakers prefer a different listing tool when the actions are representative rather than chronological — and that tool is 〜たり〜たり. Once you switch to it, your sentences sound dramatically more natural with zero extra vocabulary.
1. The Conjugation
Take the plain past form (た-form) of the verb and add り. The same rule applies to nouns and adjectives.
| Type | Plain Past | たり Form |
|---|---|---|
| Verb | 食べた | 食べたり |
| Godan verb | 行った | 行ったり |
| i-adjective | 高かった | 高かったり |
| na-adjective | 静かだった | 静かだったり |
| Noun | 学生だった | 学生だったり |
2. The Non-Exhaustive Meaning
This is the killer point most textbooks bury in a footnote: 〜たり〜たり implies there are more items in the list than you mentioned. It is a sample, not a complete enumeration.
「週末は映画を見たり、買い物をしたりします。」
On weekends I do things like watch movies and shop (and other stuff too).
Compare to the て-chain version, which sounds more like a complete report: “On the weekend I watched a movie, and shopped, and that’s it.”
3. The Trailing する Is Mandatory
You cannot drop する at the end. する nominalises the listed actions and carries the tense for the whole sentence. Drop it and your sentence feels truncated and slightly broken.
- ✗ 「映画を見たり、買い物をしたり。」 (sounds unfinished)
- ✓ 「映画を見たり、買い物をしたりします。」
- ✓ 「映画を見たり、買い物をしたりしました。」 (past)
4. The One-Item Variant
You can list just one action with 〜たりする and the “and other similar things” meaning still survives. This is a high-frequency native pattern.
「最近、ゲームをしたりしています。」
Lately I’ve been doing things like playing games (among other things).
Foreign learners almost never reach for this single-item たりする form, and it is one of the highest-leverage upgrades to your spoken Japanese.
5. The Alternation Meaning
A second use case: alternating opposite states. Here both items in the list usually contrast each other.
- 「天気が良かったり、悪かったりします。」 The weather is good and bad in turns.
- 「彼は来たり、来なかったりします。」 He sometimes comes, sometimes doesn’t.
6. The Three Classic Mistakes
- Forgetting する: 「映画を見たり、買い物をしたり。」 — broken to natives.
- Using で instead of past base: 「読んでり」 → wrong. The base is the た-form, not the て-form. 読んだり is correct.
- Treating it as a chronological “and”: たりたり is for samples, not steps. If your actions happened in order, use て.
7. The N4 Discrimination Drill
Build a deck where the same scene is described twice — once with 〜て and once with 〜たり — and force yourself to label which one matches the spoken English prompt “sequence” vs “sample.” Three days of this and the reflex locks in.
The Quick Decision Tree
- Are you giving a complete chronological sequence? → 〜て
- Are you giving a few examples among many? → 〜たり〜たりする
- Are you describing alternating states? → 〜たり〜たりする
- Are you mentioning just one representative action? → 〜たりする
Drill 〜たり〜たり Inside Kanjijo
The Kanjijo N4 grammar deck includes audio-paired cloze cards, exclusive mnemonics and OCR scanning so you can capture every たり you see in real Japanese — manga, menus, NHK Easy — and turn it into a review immediately.
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Frequently Asked Questions
It is a non-exhaustive list pattern — “things like A, B and so on” — closed by する.
Take the plain past form and add り. 食べた → 食べたり, 行った → 行ったり, した → したり.
する nominalises the listed actions and carries the tense. Drop it and the sentence feels broken.
Yes — a single 〜たりする implies other similar actions and is a high-frequency native pattern.
〜て is a chronological sequence; 〜たり〜たり is a non-ordered representative sample.