Movement towards action refers to sentences like the following:
| I am going to eat. |
| I am coming to meet her. |
| I went to watch a football game. |
In Japanese we use the following structure.
| 【Verb: Stem】に【行く】or【来る】 |
| To go/come to do something |
| 会いに来ます。 |
| To come and meet. |
| 明日は、銀座に寿司を食べに行きます。 |
| Tomorrow I’m going to go and eat sushi in Ginza [a place in Tokyo]. |
| 遊びに来ませんか？ |
| Won’t you come and hang out. |
| サーカーの試合を見に行きました。 |
| I went to watch a football game. |
It is easy to slip up on the grammar here. You might think that to say “I will go to study in the library” (for example) the grammar should be…
| 図書館で勉強しに行きます。(✘) |
| I went to watch a football game. |
… because the library is the place of action and the following, as we have seen, is correct:
| 図書館で勉強します。 |
| I will study in the library. |
However, when we want to express movement towards an action it is the final verb—“to go” or “to come”—which dictates the particle and therefore we must use に.
| 図書館に勉強しに行きます。 |
| I will go to study in the library. |
We need to be careful when using the directional particle.
| 東京駅へ行きます。(✔) |
| 東京駅に行きます。(✔) |
| I will go to Tokyo station. |
That’s fine. But the directional particle cannot be used to join the two verbs.
| 銀座へ寿司を食べへ行きます。(✘) |
| 銀座へ寿司を食べに行きます。(✔) |
| I will go to eat sushi in Ginza. |