Listening help required (what is that word!)
 

Hi everyone! （みんな　こにちは！）

I've been learning Japanese for about 2 months now, spending a few hours a day reading and listening and making steady progress.

I moved to Pimsleur Japanese II today (finished I last week) but, I'm hearing some words I'm having problems transcribing (and thus can't look up). Would you mind helping me?

The current one I'm stuck on is..

わたしたち　は　レツラン　（　すへろを　）　　たべ ました
We ate in the restaurant.

The part in brackets is what I'm not sure about (that's obviously wrong but it's what it sounds like), for me, I'd just of had で in there. Any clues as to what the word might be? I thought maybe 'suru' but nope, sounds more like suheru or suhiru.

Thanks in advance!

We ate in the restaurant.

If I translate to japanese, "私たちはレストランで食事をしました"
or more simply "私たちはレストランで食べました"

anyway, i cant guess what did they ete ;p

You've basically asked an impossible-to-answer question. Imagine this in English:

"I ate (hopplico) at the restaurant." What is that word really?

Ah yes, because of the を it's pointing to what it is they have eaten.. so I guess knowing the word isn't that important as such :D

Thanks!

/goes off to make a hopplico sandwich ;)

My wild guess would be おひる = lunch.

But more importantly, you need to write こんにちは correctly. There are no spacings in written Japanese, either.

Is おひる　an abbreviation? Or something like that? I've only seen, lunch as 昼ご飯？

It's no abbrviation. It's just a word meaning "lunch". 昼ご飯 is also another word meaning "lunch", but since it lacks the finess (namely, too direct) that お昼（おひる） has you won't hear it as often as you would expect.

Is there a similar case with the other two major meals of the day?

For some reason, no. We don't say お朝　or お夜/お晩.

But many of us do avoid using the word (suffix) ご飯, meaning that you won't hear 朝ご飯 or　晩ご飯 as often as you might expect.

If someone says in Japanese, "朝（or 今朝）はトーストとコーヒーでした。", you know he's talking about his brealfast. We just tend to avoid direct-sounding words like "eat" and "meal". Direct transltion of that, of course, is "Morning (or This morning) was coffee and toast." Strange as it may sound, that is just about the most natural way of saying, "I had coffee and toast for breakfast this morning."