If I'm understanding your question right, you are wanting to know the pronunciation of these words? Matsuri: ma-tsu-ri Hashi: ha-shi Hako: ha-ko Here's a good website with a Japanese hiragana pronunciation chart: http://mylanguages.org/japanese_alphabet.php Hope this helps!

Hi, Ryan! Thank you, but I think I know enough about Japanese sillabics. I study Japanese for about 4 or 5 years. This question is kind of an experiment, I want to know how Japanese think about these words, how do they divide them mentally. I'd like to receive native speakers' answers.

Hello, I am not a native speaker (or even a speaker) of Japanese, but I enjoy learning about writing scripts in general so I have put some study into this (I am a conlanger actually) Japanese is a syllabry rather than an alphabet. What that means is that every Japanese "letter" in Hiragana or Katakana is actually a consonant AND a vowel sound. The equivalent is us writing "the" as one letter, rather than 3. So from my understanding (and please remember that I could be wrong, though I doubt it) is that Matsuri = Ma + Tsu + Ri Hashi = Ha + Shi Hako = Ha + ko