How many people to seat at fine Japanese restaurants serving their best gourmet meals

Basic Japanese - People counters -
How to count in Japanese for people.
Hito 人 the Japanese counter for the masses.

When counting people in Japanese we use the counter for person or hito 人 (ひと). Hito also has the reading of にん. The first two counters or words for 1 person and 2 persons are exceptions and are irregular. Just make sure you memorize these 2 words and even if you did say ichinin or ninin you might be understood anyway, even though those aren’t the way Japanese is used. The Japanese love to try to understand gaijin. When at a fine gourmet restaurant in Japan, the first thing the maitre d will ask is, “ how many people in your group,” to which you could reply any of the following. If two people then say futari. You will most likely hear the maitre d saying “ O- futari san desu ka?”, which means, “Table for two?” to which you could reply, “Hai so^ desu”, “Yes that is correct, 2.”

Nin 人 is the counter for people or persons so that we will have from 1-10 people the following:

hitori - 一人, 1 person
futari - 二人, 2 people
sannin - 三人, 3 people
yonnin - 四人, 4 people
gonin - 五人, 5 people
rokunin - 六人, 6 people
shichinin - 七人, 7 people
hachinin - 八人, 8 people
kyu^nin - 九人, 9 people
ju^nin - 十人, 10 people

If you can count to 100 in Japanese, then just add nin 人 to say how many people you are talking about. The same for any number up to infinity. The word for everyone or everybody is minna and depending on how polite you wish to address everyone by, you either add the polite san さん or sama 様 to minna皆making it minnasan 皆さん or minnasama 皆様.

More advanced examples:
hachiju^hachinin - 八十八人, 88 people
sennin - 千人,1000 people etc.

As always,
Ganbatte Ne! 頑張って ね!
Do Your Best!
Makurasuki