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Lesson 69: Tackling Native Material

[Video Link]

Today we're going to go back to the kaidan, the scary Japanese story that we started a few episodes ago, so that we can tackle some more of the challenges of reading real native Japanese.

I've gathered all these episodes together in one playlist, so you can look at the whole kaidan in one place, and I'm putting that in a link just above my head right here.

Now, to recap the story so far, our heroine went to a drinking party at her senpai's apartment and, walking home late at night, she discovered that she'd left her keitai (her portable telephone) in Senpai's apartment.

So, she went back, knocked on the door, and there was no answer.

She tried the handle and the door was unlocked, so she walked in.

And it was completely dark in there, so she assumed that Senpai had gone to bed already.

She thought of putting the lights on and waking her, but remembering that she'd been pretty drunk at the time when she left she decided not to.

She groped around in the dark to find her keitai and then left. And that's the story so far.

So let's see what happened the next day.

"Yokujitsu" -- that means "next day".

This word "yoku" -- as you see, the kanji is feathers or wings and the kanji for stand. So we could say that it was the day standing in the wings waiting to come on stage, which it now has.

"Yokujitsu" -- The next day -- "kanojo-wa senpai-no apaato-no mae-wo toorikakaru to..." So we have the first logical clause here and we have a "to" which is the if/when conditional.

So something's going to follow it, but let's just look at this first one: "toorikakaru" means literally "pass hang", but what it means, what the Japanese dictionaries say is that it means "choudo sono basho-ni tooru", which means really "just happened to be passing that particular place".

So she didn't go there for any purpose, she just happened to be passing by.

"Nazeka oozei-no keikan-ga atsumatte iru" -- "oozei" means a large number, a crowd -- it refers to people -- "keikan", as I'm sure you know, is a policeman.

So, "nazeka..." ("nazeka" -- "for some reason") a lot of policeman were gathered -- "atsumatte iru".

"Atsumaru" is "gather"; "atsumate iru" -- "exist in a state of being gathered". A lot of policemen were gathered.

"Jijou-wo kiite kanojo-wa odoroita."

"Jijou" is "the situation or circumstances".

In English we'd probably say "She asked what was going on".

And "odoroita" usually gets translated as "be surprised" but it can be stronger than that, and we can see that it's stronger than that in this case.

When she asked the situation, she was startled or shocked.

And the "kanojo-wa" here also throws emphasis onto that "odoroita", and we're going to talk about that in a video in the near future, this emphasizing quality of -wa.

When she asked the situation, she was startled or shocked by what she heard.

"Nanto... --- "What! / What's this?"

"Nanto ano senpai-ga heya-de korosareta to iu no da" -- "That senpai, in that apartment, received the action of being killed."

And this is the receptive, isn't it?

She received the action "being killed".

"To iu no da" : "to iu" -- that's what she was told, that's what was said; "no da" -- now, we've talked about these "n da/ no da" endings in another video.

So this is really saying, "It was that senpai had, in that room, received the action of being killed."

That's what it was; that was what was going on.

When she asked about the situation, it was that the senpai had been killed in that room.

"Heya-wa arasarete ori" : "Arasu" is "storm or violate or mess up".

So, the room received the action of being messed up or violated.

And the helper receptive verb is in te-form and followed by "ori".

Now, "oru" -- as we talked about in a previous episode in this series, "oru" is a literary, slightly old-fashioned way of saying "iru".

So "arasarete oru" is the same as "arasarete iru": "was in a state of having received being violated or messed up".

And then that "oru" is put into its i-stem, "ori", which again, as we discussed before, is a slightly more literary way of joining two clauses in a compound sentence.

So this joins this clause to the next clause, which gives a conjecture about the situation: "The room was in a state of having received being messed up or violated, and..."

"Monotori-no hankou kamoshirenai to iu" : "monotori" is "mono" (thing) + "toru" (take), so "monotoru" -- "take thing"; "monotori" -- the noun of taking things, so "monotori" here is "theft"; "hankou" is a "criminal act", a "criminal going", literally, but a criminal act. So this was perhaps or probably a crime of theft, a burglary...

"to iu" -- "was said". And who said it?

Well, presumably the police. Now, the next part comes in quotation marks, those square Japanese quotation marks, and this is something she's thinking to herself.

And we're going to see there are a number of clauses joined together here, and then they'll all end with -tara before we pass on to the comment about them.

So all these clauses that culminate in the -tara ending are if-statements, conditional if-statements.

We've talked about the conditonal -tara, haven't we?

So, "ano toki" -- "at that time" -- "denki-wo tsukete senpai-wo okoshite" -- "if I had put on the light" -- "chanto tojimari-wo suru you ni tte".

Now, "chanto" means "properly or correctly"; "tojimari" -- "to" is "door", "shimaru" is "closing", so "tojimari" is "door-closing".

And then "-wo suru": you could just say "tojimari-wo suru" -- "do closing the door" -- but here it's saying "tojimari-wo suru you ni tte chuui-wo shitara".

"You ni" in this case means "making (something) become like (something)".

So what it's really saying is "made it so that the door was properly closed".

And then that "tte" is a shortening of "to iu" (we've talked about that).

So "to iu" meaning in this case "that kind of"; "chuui-wo shite" -- "chuui" is "care or caution" -- you often see signs in Japan "chuui-wo shite kudasai" -- "take care please / act cautiously".

If she had in this way acted cautiously by turning on the lights, waking Senpai, making sure that the door was properly closed -- and then this all ends with the -tara.

If she'd done this... "konna koto ni naranakatta no ni".

Now, "konna koto" is "a state of affairs like this / this state of affairs" ; "ni naranakatta no ni" : now, as we see, this is a logical clause and it needs a subject, it needs a ga-marked A-car.

So what is it? Well, it's a zero car, isn't it?

"(Zero-ga) konna koto ni naranakatta" -- "It would not have become a thing like this."

Now, what does that mean?

I think we can see a very close English analogy to this.

In English we would probably say, "it wouldn't have come to this."

What she's saying is, "it wouldn't have become this kind of situation."

So it's very much the same kind of expression strategy.

If she'd done all those things: if she'd made sure everything was safe and proper in the house, even at the risk of disturbing a drunken senpai, this terrible thing wouldn't have happened.

"Kanojo-ga jiseki-no nen de ippai ni narinagara."

"Jiseki" is "self-blame / self-reproach" -- "seki" here, this kanji is the same as the kanji for "semeru" -- "criticize or blame" -- and the "ji" is "self", so "jiseki... de ippai narinagara" -- "-nagara", as I think we know, is a helper word, meaning doing the verb it's attached to while doing something else.

Now, what she's doing here is becoming full of "jiseki-no nen" -- "thoughts (or feelings) of self blame".

So, while becoming full of feelings of self-blame, "kinou sono heya-ni ita koto-wo keikan-ni hanasu to" -- now, "to" is giving us an if/when statement, but we'll just deal with this to start with.

"Kinou sono heya-ni ita koto" means "the fact that she was in the room yesterday".

Now, we know she's talking about a person (or an animal) here because it's "ita", so the only thing it can be is herself, the fact that she was in the room.

Had it been "kinou sono heya-ni atta koto", it might be saying "the thing that took place in the room yesterday".

Well, we know it can't be that because it's "ita" not "atta".

So, we're talking about a person; we're talking about her.

"Kinou sono heya-ni ita koto-wo keikan-ni hanasu" and then "to", which is our if/when statement.

So, when she told the police the fact that she'd been in the room yesterday..."heya-no oku-kara keiji-ga arawarete".

Now again, it's ending in the te-form; it's going to lead on to something else.

So it's a complex sentence, but it's not really difficult because it's made up of clear logical clauses building one on another into a larger whole.

So, "heya-no oku-kara keiji-ga arawarete": from the interior of the room, from inside the room -- "oku", "the inside /the interior" -- "keiji", that's a police detective, "arawarete" -- "appeared".

A police detective appeared from inside the room, and..."kanojo-ni mite hoshii mono-ga aru to itta".

Now, "mite hoshii" means "want someone else to see" just as, as we explained in a previous lesson, "mite morau" means "have someone else see", "mite hoshii" means "want someone else to see".

And just as with "morau", the person who you have doing the seeing or want to do the seeing (or want to do anything else) is marked with -ni as the target of a pull-sentence.

So, "morau" and "hoshii", they are receiving pull-type sentences, so their indirect object is the person doing the thing that we want them to do, that we receive them doing etc.

So, it's saying "kanojo-ni mite hoshii mono-ga aru" -- "a want-her-to-see thing exists".

"There's something I want you to look at" is how we'd put it in English. "To itta" -- the detective said, there's something I want you to look at.

And in quotes these are the words of the detective: "Heya-no naka-de" -- "inside the room" -- "konna memo-wo mitsuketa n desu ga" -- "this kind of memo (or really, this memo) we found -- "mitsuketa", "found/discovered/saw" -- we discovered this memo -- "n desu ga".

"N desu ga" -- once again we have this "n desu / no desu" ending. So what he's saying, "It is that we found this memo in the room".

That's what it is / this is the thing: "It is that we found this memo in the room, but..." -- "ga kore-no imi-ga wakaranakute"

Once again we're leading into something else.

"Its meaning does not do understandable, and...

"komatte n desu yo" -- "komaru" is "be at a loss / not know what to do" so "because its meaning does not do understandable..." because we can't understand its meaning, as we say in English, "...we're at a loss".

And again that "n desu" ending: "It is that because we can't understand its meaning, we're at a loss."

"Kanojo-wa sono memo-wo mite aozameta."

She looked at the memo and... "aozameru".

In English that usually gets translated as "turned pale".

What it literally means is: "ao" is of course "blue" and the "zameru" here means to "fade or lose color".

So she faded to blue, is what it's literally saying.

And you've probably seen in anime and manga etc. that this is in fact how they tend to represent this situation.

You often see people's face shaded blue, usually from the forehead down to about the middle of the face.

So turning blue is the way they represent what in English we call "turning pale", and we see it when someone is shocked or sick or something like that. So, her face turned pale.

"Soko-ni-wa kou kakarete ita" -- "In that place", that's to say, on that piece of paper, "it had received being written this way / it was in a state of having received being written this way".

In English we'd just say "this is what was written".

And what was written?

"Denki-wo tsukenakute yokatta na" : "It's a good thing you didn't turn the lights on."

So what do you make of that?

Who wrote that memo?

And what did he or she mean by it?

What went on in the room that night?

I'm just an android, so this isn't my area of expertise.