Flexibility of Japanese grammar I'm wondering how flexible Japanese grammar is for forming sentences, as in how important it is that words are arranged in a certain order. Differences in tone aren't that important, I'm more concerned with conveying the core information. For instance, in its basic form, I can only think of 2 ways to say the following sentence in English: 1. [1. Yesterday,] I went to the beach with my wife [2. yesterday] 2. My wife and I went to the beach yesterday You can place the "yesterday" at the start or at the end, but other than that the sentence is pretty rigid. Sentence 2 is almost the same, it just added an "and." How about in Japanese? In general, not just with this specific example. I know the sentence must be ended with a verb, but how flexible is Japanese grammar for conveying information like this? If you can think of a better sentence to illustrate how flexible Japanese grammar is, by all means please use that instead. 昨日、嫁と一緒に海に行きました 嫁と一緒に海に行きました 海に行きました、嫁と一緒に (wrong?)