I think everything in the house is wearing a 腹巻き!
This lady needs to join a yarn-bombing group. 
Also, how cool is it that the Japanese word for thermos is 魔法びん? 
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Yep I thought that was pretty awesome. 
I’m having a lot of trouble with page 170 on the blue book. I’m hoping to get more from the context as I keep reading, but I’m missing the point of what the old lady is saying. It sounds like she’s talking about her son leaving for his ship on the peninsula, bringing a bundle, some wine, etc. But I can’t tell if she’s just rambling or if it’s Kiki’s job to deliver him something (his 腹巻き perhaps). If anyone wants to summarize that section that would be great… If I can’t work past it because of not understanding this part, I’ll ask more specific questions later.
Happy to summarise that section later today. If it helps to know, I have read further ahead and some things have deliberately been left vague early to provide a surprise element later on.
In other news, this is what a ポンポン船 sounds like, apparently:
(“putt-putt-putt-putt-putt” if you can’t put the sound on)
And, for some listening comprehension, here are video instructions in Japanese on how to make a toy ポンポン船 powered by a candle. Although sadly it doesn’t have the same sound effects.
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Thanks for letting me know. I’ll power through and see if it becomes clearer. I’ll read your summary after that.
OK, this is from pp187-188 red book. Hopefully it all makes sense (and if it doesn’t now, it will later. It’s quite a humorous chapter).
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After hearing how the old lady recommended that the zoo animals wear haramaki to avoid getting abdominal chills, Kiki assumes she will be delivering the very large blue and white haramaki, which the old lady has just finished knitting, to the elephant at the zoo.
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However the old lady says it is for her son, the captain of a pop-pop boat, who left home early this morning saying he was transporting something important to the Morimo Peninsula at the tip of Koriko Bay.
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This important thing apparently being fine wine in bottles large enough that you could put your arm around them, but if you don’t transport them very gently then the flavour falls out with a clunk. “I’ve never heard that sort of a noise” she tells Kiki.
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She goes on to say that there are two mountains on the peninsula, and so it seem it was decided that a boat would shake less than a car, except that surely there are more than two mountains worth of waves in the sea…
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Have you finished the chapter already? Roughly how many more pages will I have to read for it to make sense? Just trying to get an idea of when I should read your explanation of those pages if I’m still lost at a certain point.
I’ve skim read it all but now going back in more detail.
From where we are now, I would summarise 6-7 pages as - おばあちゃん talks about her son - おばあちゃん gives Kiki instructions - Kiki goes looking for the ポンポン船 - Kiki finds the ポンポン船 - then several pages of Kiki figuring out what is going on… (hope this is helpful without giving too much information away!)
A question from me.
After おばあちゃん pauses for breath on p188 red book, キキは大きな腹巻を受け取るには受け取りましたが、首をかしげてしまいました。I’m pretty sure I understand the overall meaning of the sentence, but I’m not familiar with the 受け取るには受け取りました construction. If anyone can point me to an explanation I would appreciate it!
When I read through that part, I also had a moment of “huh”. I did some searching, and ～には…が was the best I could find to explain the grammar. I think that with what happens later in the chapter this point makes the meaning of that line more clear…
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Thank you @LucasDesu, that is very helpful.
It also helped when I realised later that there are two meanings to 受け取る…! (Go me! 
)
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On page 171 of the blue book, one line says:
「キキは大きな腹巻きを受け取るには受け取りましたが…」
Is [non-past verb]には[past verb] a specific grammar point?
EDIT: I didn’t realize you guys just talked about it… Hopefully it’ll become clear later.
Also, Kiki seems to be as confused as I am, so that makes me feel a little better. 
This is going to seem like a trivial question, but I’m having trouble with this sentence for some reason. It’s on page 172 of the blue book.
「岸壁には大きな客船が二艘、そしてもう一艘はちょうどタグボートに押されて停止しようとしていました。」
Questions:
- With passive verbs, に marks the actor right? So the tugboat is the one doing the pushing?
- Related to that, is the 一艘 the tugboat itself (and it’s pushing one of the two passenger boats), or a third passenger boat which is being pushed by the tugboat?
- 停止しようとしていました - Is this describing the tugboat trying to stop (intransitive), the passenger boat trying to stop (intransitive) or the tugboat trying to stop the passenger boat (transitive)?
- Finally, what is the purpose of ちょうど in this sentence?
That was a lot of questions for such a simple sentence.
ひつじねこ anyone?
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I’m not sure, but I alluded to [non-past verb]には[verb]が in my earlier post. I believe you’re right about Kiki being quite confused by the situation.
I wouldn’t necessarily classify this sentence as “simple” because there is a lot going on here. Thanks for asking because it made understand the sentence even better.
That is correct.
Yes, since the tugboat is the agent, it’s doing the action (押す).
I believe it’s a third boat that was pushed by the tugboat. I say this based on the first two being mentioned, then separated by a comma and「…そしてもう一艘は…」“And then another boat which…”. I do have a little doubt about this because of the は in the sentence, but stand by my idea.
I think it’s saying that the ship (not the tugboat) is about to stop (or stopping). The ship is the topic so anything after that is in reference to the ship: it was pushed by the tugboat as it was coming to a stop. See ようとしている for more details (there’s a link to a video which also explains this grammar).
I believe it refers to “at that moment”
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Page 173:
「テテ号と書いてある船はないかと探しました」
テテ号と書いてある船 = ship with テテ号 written on it.
探しました = searched for
How does the ないか fit into this? It seems weird paired with 探す, like she’s searching for the ship not being there or something like that.
Also, I’m not quite sure why と is being used instead of を.
EDIT:
I saw that the red book column in the vocab sheet skipped directly from page 190 to 192. @Kyasurin (or someone else with that copy), is there a nice picture or something on page 191 you could share?
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I think it’s using an embedded question as a different way of phrasing the same information
- She searched for a boat with テテ号 written on it. Here you could say テテ号と書いてある船を探しました
vs. - She searched to see whether or not there was a boat with テテ号 written on it. テテ号と書いてある船はないかと探しました。
I don’t know how to explain the grammar, but at this point the 船 is connected to the verb ある (in the form of ない) and so you can’t use を before 探しました.
Hopefully a 先輩 can clarify further/better!
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Pictures!
p 183 おばあちゃん is knitting
p 186 Jiji is underwhelmed by his new 腹巻
p 191 On the deck of the テテ号
Edited to say @seanblue I carefully edited out any trace of my pencil marks around the smaller pictures just for you! 
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To dovetail and corroborate with @Kyasurin it is an embedded question. I agree with the interpretation Kyasurin used as well.
As you may already know, と has many hats in Japanese one of which is for quotation. Here’s a resource for quotation と but not using a quotation verb.
My understanding is that because there’s an embedded question, it really a quotation of what Kiki was thinking at the time while she was looking for the boat.
Hopefully that helps.
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Right, I guess I’ve seen と used before with embedded questions. Maybe my problem is that I’m thinking too much in English. You just wouldn’t say you’re searching for something not being there in English, and I guess I’m letting that bias my interpretation of the sentence.
@Kyasurin Is “whether or not” the correct direct interpretation for the sentence? I agree that that is the likely meaning. Based on the link @LucasDesu posted, that interpretation seems correct.
Sample sentence from the link:
死んだかと心配してる。 = I am worried whether he died (or not).
Now I’m wondering what the conotation is between making the embedded “whether or not” question positive or negative. For example:
「死んだかと心配してる」
versus
「死ななかったかと心配してる」
Is there any subtle difference between those two sentences?
I wrote “whether or not” to show the link to the negative form of the Japanese verb, but in English perhaps we would just say “She searched to see whether there was a boat with テテ号 written on it”.
Lucas’s embedded question link suggests that the negative form is more commonly used in Japanese when checking for something, whereas we would use the positive form in English.
When I was answering your earlier question I was asking myself what I’d have written, and the closest grammar point I learned was ~かどうか which I think is quite similar to ~ないか
I’m tempted to suggest your first example sentence means you are genuinely worried that you haven’t seen your sweet elderly neighbour while the second one means you are worried you didn’t poison him/her successfully and the annoying old so-and-so is still alive… but I really don’t know, sorry!
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I think you’re right, but you also have to look at the context coming up into this sentence. So when she gets to the bay she sees a ton of boats: three passenger boats, a tugboat, and a ridiculous number of small boats. She probably deduced that the one she was looking for wasn’t in this group of boats, but for the sake of thoroughness, she searched among the throng of boats to confirm that it wasn’t among the boats in the bay. Looking at it this way makes more since why the embedded question was written with ない rather than ある.
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