Japanese Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, teachers, and linguists wanting to discuss the finer points of the Japanese language. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I was thinking more ways to express the reason for doing something, for instance, in these three sentences:
I want to go to Japan to work.
I study hard to get high marks.
I will go to the concert to avoid being at home.
I can only come up with ために. Is there another way to say it? Can I actually use ために in all those three cases?
Thanks!
You actually can't use ため for all of them.
ため specifically connotes that the second action is under the control of whoever performs the first action. Your first example is a good case for this: you are going to Japan, and you are in control of whether or not you work (theoretically - if you phrased this as 'to find work', you wouldn't be able to use ため).
The alternative to ため(に) is よう(に). よう specifically connotes that the second action isn't under the control of whoever performs the first action. Your second example is a good case for this: You study hard and hope that you get good marks, but you're not the one controlling whether or not you get good marks (at least directly).
With verbs of motion (行く、来る、戻る, etc) you can use the 連用形 form of the verb plus に directly - for example, 取りに行く 'go in order to get'. You can't separate the purpose from the motion verb, though - *働きに日本に行く is ungrammatical.
