夜市: Week 7 Discussion

Japanese Language Reading
#1

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夜市 Home Thread

Week 7

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Start Date: June 20th
Previous week: Week 6
Next week: Week 8

Reading:

End Page End Percentage End Phrase Page Count
108 48% そのようなやりとりのあと私たちは歩きだしたのだ。 14

Discussion Rules

  • Please use spoiler tags for major events in the current chapter(s) and any content in future chapters.
  • When asking for help, please mention the chapter and page number. Also mention what version of the book you are reading.
  • Don’t be afraid of asking questions, even if they seem embarrassing at first. All of us are here to learn.
  • To you lurkers out there: Join the conversation, it’s fun! :durtle:

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夜市 (Night Market)
夜市: Week 8 Discussion
#2

氷菓子

Is that a reference to the previous book of the club? (No it’s not)

I’m actually surprised at how easy it was for her to find back the path. I thought you would need special circumstances to be able to enter it. So I thought that coming from that side, you would only see the next house behind the hedge :thinking: also, I wonder if the headache is caused by the fact it’s not a “proper” entrance to the path, contrary to the one the lady pointed out.

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#3

Your spoiler tag isn’t spoilering for some reason.

I guess this is an anthology about parents not keeping very good track of their kids? I’m intrigued. I think the headache thing is just a device to identify the path. Looking forward to the ghosts showing up…

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#4

Been busy this week so I’m only finally getting around to reading this chunk now – something that always sticks out to me is the second-person ぼく, used here as 「ぼく歩ける？」I don’t see it too often and I’m sure it would have tripped me up if I hadn’t learned about it in Tofugu’s excellent article on pronouns.

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#5

I don’t know about you guys, but if I were that kid I would never trust some random おばさん around a desert area, especially in Japan xD. Kinda scary to feel that if he tells about that road to someone something bad could happen. I would definitely never tell anyone!

I had some grammar nitpick to make, around the 46% mark:

頭を抱えながら細い石段をあがり、(…)

It’s about the あがり. As far as I know, 上がる is a intransitive verb (自動詞) and that means it would use a particle like が, に or は for example, to express that the action did it by itself. But I understood that it was the proganonist who was doing the action of climbing those stairs. So why did the writer use it instead of あげる? It’s something related to the third person narrative? I may have run into a similar sentence before but didn’t notice it until now :thinking:

Then a quick search into google gave me this simple explanation from the “famous” Tae Kim grammar guide: “The only time you can use the 「を」 particle for intransitive verbs is when a location is the direct object of a motion verb as briefly described in the previous section.”

So, considering that the location of the stone stairs was the direct object of the verb, it makes a bit more sense know I guess. If anyone has a futher insight into this, fell free to share!

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#6

(sorry, my first hypothesis was nice but wrong :joy: so only this part remains…)

I found that there are really many occasions around transitive and intransitive verbs and their particles that feel like exceptions or “wrong usage” but it seems they are just the way it works in Japanese :sweat_smile:

Here you can see with which particles 上がる often appears, and を is not really frequent but not super-rare either. Especially when you check out the different usages of を上がる (by clicking on it in the left column) you can see that 階段を上がる is by far the most frequent one with almost one third of the usages, and even 石段を上がる is present. So I’d say this is something like a set expression here.

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#7

を can be used with intransitive movement verbs to indicate the space being traversed. I don’t think you can call it the “direct object” though (上がる wouldn’t be an intransitive verb if it could take a direct object). It’s more of a post-position (so a bit like “through”).

Separately, there are a few cases where を can be used in place of が but I don’t think it’s worth learning them since they’re relatively rare (I don’t think I’ve come across them in the wild yet) and quite complicated.

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#8

To add to what the other said, while that’s what’s happening here indeed, it’s not the only time you can do that.
Gaze upon this list of usage and weep:

To be fair, most of those aren’t used in modern Japanese. Most common are 1 to 4 of the first part.

Do you mean things like 水を飲みたい instead of 水が飲みたい?

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#9

Amongst others…there’s a really interesting page on imabi on the topic that I’m putting off trying to understand for now. I feel like it’s only going to confuse things until I’ve had more practice.
https://www.imabi.net/gavswo.htm

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#10

ありがとうみんな! That was really helpful!!

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#11

Okay, got this week’s reading done! I’m a little behind, but that just motivates me all the more! :muscle: I told myself I need to start actually posting my questions here instead of just highlighting then ignoring them; I also like to think I’m helping other (future) readers with my ignorance. I don’t see many questions on the 夜市 threads after the early weeks; surely I’m not the only one reading without 100% comprehension? Anyway, here we go: (%s are from the Kindle version; they’re a little wonky for some reason)

  1. 44% (page one of 風の古道): どうしたわけか、私はどの公園で父とはぐれてしまった。

Is どうしたわけか some variation of “for some reason”?

  1. 44% (2nd page): 車一台分かもうすこしの幅がある、未舗装の田舎道だった。

What is 分かもうdoing here?

  1. 45% (page 3): [too much to comfortably type on my phone]、どの家も玄関を道側に向けていなかった。

I’ve seen this どの~も construction several times throughout the story; how does it work, exactly, and what does it mean? Also, is this sentence fragment commenting on how the fronts of the houses don’t face the road?

  1. 47% (first page of chap 2): 誰か暇を持て余しているクラスの友達でもいないだろうかと思ったのだ。

I’m having a bit of trouble parsing this sentence; 持て余している is modifying 友達 and not クラス, correct? So, “I didn’t expect any of my school friends with free time on their hands to be there.”? Unless that でもいない is doing something I’m not accounting for?

  1. 球技をやらせると手に負えないぐらい下手という点で、彼は私と共通していた。

Is this saying that both he and his friend are bad at sports?

  1. 私は彼に気がつかれないように自転車で背後にまわりこんで、ベルを鳴らした。

What function is 彼に fulfilling here?

  1. 48%: “アイス食ってるって見てわかんないの?”

Two questions here: what is the って before 見て doing? It’s not the quotative って, right? Second, is the sentence basically saying, “eat ice cream and look around, I dunno.”?

  1. カズキは気の抜けた声で答えて、私に手招きをした。

What does a “気の抜けた” voice sound like? Absent-minded?

  1. 50%: カズキが目をしばたたいた。

What the heck is しばたたいた?

  1. 十二歳で友達と一緒ならできぬはずもない。

I wanted to confirm that できぬはずもない is a net positive: “Surely I could do it, being both twelve and together with a friend.”

Thanks in advance! I don’t see a blur option on mobile for all the Qs; if needed I can go back and edit later when I have access to a computer. Hopefully I can finish up week 8 reading soon and be able to post a bunch of questions there as well.

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#12

Questions are always appreciated :smiley:

Yes. I think it’s nothing more than the sum of its parts.
A quick googling showed that it comes reasonably often as a set, though, but I don’t think it’s an actual expression.
Here’s a random hinative post confirming the meaning.

Second question:
車一台分 the part (space) of a single car
か or
もうすこし a bit more

どの which
も (in this context) ever
どのAも whichever A; all and every single A

-> not a single house was facing toward the path.

That’s how I understand it.

Well, 球技 specifically, based on your quote. Maybe they are pro level swimmers :stuck_out_tongue: [quote=“eefara, post:11, topic:44457”]
What function is 彼に fulfilling here?
[/quote]

“By him”. “私” doesn’t want him to notice.

It’s an informal は. The sentence means “I’m eating ice cream; can’t you tell (just) by looking?”

It’s more like “stupidly”. I don’t know exactly what he said though.
My dictionary has this for 気の抜けた: 何も考えておらず、愚かな印象を与えるさま

Past tense of 瞬く to blink. So, “blinked”.

Yes, it is a net positive.

It’s under the cogwheel on my phone, but I think it’s fine as it is anyway.

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#13

Definitely not! I’m probably around 80% comprehension. Right now most of my active grammar acquisition is through Tobira. My reading is more for passive rapid exposure to vocab and grammar, but not with a goal of 100% comprehension. In the future, when I finish Tobira (and possibly others, TBD) I’ll probably replace my textbook study time with active reading like you are doing now, and use that to drive my active studying.

That said, it’s great when you post your questions. For me, it feels like I get bonus grammar lessons.

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#14

As far as I can remember I haven’t found any grammar throughout this book that I didn’t know, so all my unknowns are due to new vocabulary (which is pretty easy to look up). With that said…

I’m totally on board with this. This is how I’ve done all my reading from practically the beginning and it apparently works, so I’m planning to stick with it for a while. Even with a grasp on all the grammar, there have been sentences where I don’t bother looking up words because it feels like an unimportant speedbump, or cases which I’ll only look up after seeing them a few times so I can learn the reading (e.g. 竹林 came up a few times before I bothered checking the dictionary; it’s pretty obvious that it means “bamboo grove” but I wouldn’t have expected ちくりん as the reading).

5 Likes
#15

Thank you for all the help, especially you, @Naphthalene. :heart: I’m gonna see if I can clean up that question post; I didn’t realize how bad it looked on a computer monitor. Then it’s off to post week 8 questions…

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