I’m a little lost on Page 110, specifically the location that the money should be left in front of. I’ve tried searching for 忠犬タチ公 with not much luck, but based on the first word and the image I’m guessing a statue of a faithful dog?
Edit: Never mind, I kept reading and got my answer. That’s what I get for trying to fill out the vocab sheet without all the context!
Yesterday I sat down to read thinking I was doing it at last minute as always, checked the pages to read, and realized that we were on break! So I took the opportunity to start this case on the right foot. Turns out, it’s much more difficult when you don’t have the word sheet and the discussion with the difficult sentences already answered!
Page 109:
「テストの答案用紙に百万円もですか?」
I can guess the meaning (not sure though): “A million yen for the test answer sheet?”, and if this is correct, why the も? (maybe to express that it’s too much?).
Page 110:
This is just out of curiosity, the dog name, タチ公 has to be a pun with ハチ公, something to do with money considering Tachiko made his owner rich, maybe? Does anyone know what this “tachi” may be referring to?
I presume this play on words was straight forward for Japanese children but much more difficult for non native speakers! I presume most of us with an interest in Japanese will be familiar with the statue of Hachiko the dog outside Shibuya station. I didn’t know that in Japanese it’s known as 忠犬ハチ公. According to Wikipedia his name is a combination of the word eight (written in katakana) and 公 being a suffix once used for ancient Chinese dukes.
These were a tricky few pages. Just to confirm my understanding - what was stolen was a pile of marked answer papers, and the reason this is worth paying so much money to retrieve is because the scores of individual students are a secret, and their exposure would damage the cram school’s reputation?
Page 106
I think I get the general gist of it (cash flow issues, gotta show off those dogs to prospective adopters!), but the Japanese isn’t really clicking for me
はずかしいが
It was embarrassing, but
一ぴきでもおおく、
as much as possible,
犬をひきとってもらわないと、
if I don’t get the dogs adopted out,
お金がかかって、
it would take money,
おれがもいない。 (EDIT: sloppy typo, it should be もたない)
and I would no longer be there (wut?).
Page 113
I had some trouble with this sentence, but while I typed it out I understood it. Hope it’s helpful to someone else
そして、[…] というのだ
And he says that
犯人が金をうけとりにきたところで、
when the perpetrator has just come to take the money,
おれに「かかれ!」とさけんで、つかまえてほしい
he wants me to shout “attack!” and catch [him].
All I can make of it is profit, these days, I am grateful for - I’m grateful for profit these days.
which doesn’t seem to make much sense in context - the newspaper article didn’t make him any money.
This whole sentence is a brain full. I think it’s something along the lines of Long ago, where there was buried treasure, a rich proprietor/landlord cried “dig here, woof-woof!” to his dog. So he’s just explaining the reason for this new bronze statue? Is なんだそうだ just a way of clearly identifying the phrase as an explanation too?
Literally: [Tachiko] is a dog who long ago, at the place of buried treasure, “Dig here, woof woof”, he barked, and made his master a rich man. Hence the master built a statue in honour of the dog who made him a rich man. A bit different to the Hachiko story outside Shibuya station!
In the ending part, なんだ is an explanatory ending (a bit like のです; the な is added before the ん because the preceding word is a noun). I don’t think the そうだ adds much other than emphasis.