Page 22 tripped me up in a few places 
けいぶが話はじめると、秋田さんは秋田さんで、金山さんのわるくちをいいまくった。
What does this [noun]は[noun]で structure mean? I feel like I’ve seen it before, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it means, and it’s hard to search for.
秋田さんは花も木も自然のままにのびるのがすきで、切るのはいやなのだそうだ。
I don’t like the word まま at the best of times 
does this mean something like “trees and flowers growing as it is in nature”? As in, he likes it when trees and flowers grow naturally / grow as they would in the wild?
The missing puzzle for me was 悪口を言 translating as saying insults
Also 捲る translating going over and over
I understand the full phrase as:
When the cop starts talking, Akita San, being himself, cannot help but reacts with millions of insults.
Me, being Myself, cannot help but add millions of metaphors hoping to capture the meaning 
Haha, thanks. I didn’t have a problem with the vocabulary (in fact I think I added those two to the sheet 
), it was just specifically the grammar of that ~は~で bit. I suppose I was thinking of it like somebody commenting on a character they know well (like “well you know Emily, of course she blah blah…”), which seemed nonsensical for a person Spitz has never met before.
But having stared at your translation for ages I realised that it’s actually commenting on the fact that, being told Kaneyama has labelled him the likely culprit, it makes sense that he’s going to react in that way.
Thank you!
I haven’t read this page yet, so I’m responding without context.
I believe this で is simply the て form of だ, so you have a 「秋田さんは秋田さんだ」 here.
Every sentence has a subject, but it’s not always spoken. (In English, an unspecified subject is spoken as “he” or “she” or “they” or “it”, etc.) If we were to put the unspecified subject into the Japanese, we could write it as ∅が (just as an exercise in seeing the sentence’s meaning in full): 「秋田さんは∅が秋田さんだ」 (Again, this is just for visualization. Japanese won’t actually use 「∅が」 when writing a sentence!)
The particle は doesn’t contribute anything to the meaning of the sentence. It just gives us some context. If we remove that, we can focus on the core of the sentence: 「∅が秋田さんだ」
It’s an “A is B” sentence. In English, this would be “He is Akita,” where the unspecified subject has been replaced with the non-specific “he”.
If we put the は back in to give the context, this may be “As for Akita, he is Akita,” or “Speaking of Akita, he is Akita.” Maybe a little more wordy, you could say, “When it comes to Akita, he’s going to be Akita.”
Page 22
Thank you for confirming my suspicions after I looked for Nは Nで in DBJG and found only Nは Nだ. This then fits very well with @Marusiaside’s interpretation.
I was also having trouble with the の in this sentence, thinking it should be に, which led to me being confused as to who was the agent but then I thought to check the example sentences for the WK vocab item 悪口 and saw that it is に when directed at the person, but の when behind their back.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head here - I interpreted it quite literally as grow in a natural state, but think your second one, grow naturally sounds best.
So about this sentence from page 21, after Kaneyamasan said it must’ve been the doing of that evil Akitasan:
うーん、そんなことで、ひとの家にしのびこんだりするかなあ。
What should I make of そんなことで? Who is the subect here? I am so confused 
Especially with it being followed by ‘ah well, it can’t be helped’. WHAT can’t be helped?!
And page 22, it says that Akitasan used to be a professional baseball player, どこかで見た人だと思ったら. “If he thought that […] was seen somewhere”. Who was seen somewhere?
Page 21
I might be totally wrong, but I assumed そんなことで was refering to 秋田さん – because on the previous page, 金山さん just finished saying it could only be him…
Page 22
Not too sure about the たら there, I just kind of skipped that detail
I understood it as following on from the reason given for why Kaneyama thinks Akita is the culprit. So Spitz is musing “is that really the kind of thing one would break into a person’s house over…?”
で can indicate a causal effect, so そんなことで is like “because of such a thing”.
I think
editing to add a response to this aspect too -
I think, to paraphrase mightily, that he’s basically musing that there’s nothing for it [but to go with this lead]. In other words, he thinks it’s unlikely that what Kaneyama described is really a convincing motive, but it can’t be helped, and they’ll have to follow up on it.
I read it as “I thought he was a from somewhere seen person”, i.e. “I thought I knew him from somewhere” - and then realises he’s a former baseball player.
This is kind of how I read it too - but how does the たら fit in there? I’ve only seen たら for if/when situations, but can’t seem to make it work here…
Yes, I also thought this was odd.
たら can be used to describe an event that happens after another (as a consequence), or something that happens while doing something else (again, at least loosely as a consequence), so I don’t think it’s the “if” meaning here.
どこかで見た人だと思ったら definitely means, as Micki said, “thinking he was a person I had seen somewhere (before)”.
And I also agree with Micki that the gist is that he then realises that Akita was a baseball player. But I find it weird that the second half is written as a straight statement, rather than, say, being written from the point of view of Spitz realising, or recalling. Or even with Akita saying that statement.
I feel like there’s an unstated “it turned out that”, or that the たら somehow implies that. “Thinking he was a person I had seen somewhere, [it turns out] he was a former basketball player”. I suppose the second half, where it turns out Akita is somebody relatively famous, is like a natural resolution or “outcome” - it’s the explanation for why Spitz recognises him (I thought I knew him - he’s a former pro athlete).
Sorry, that was very rambly sort of talked myself through it…
Yeah this is exactly what threw me off – I missed the たら the first time, it’s only when @nienque asked earlier that I had another look and didn’t understand why it was even there
Your explanation of an unstated, natural outcome makes sense though thanks!
I wonder if と思ったら means something specific here, rather than it just being a straightforward use of the たら form of the verb. Jisho lists a couple of definitions of と思ったら. The first meaning follows a verb in past form which we don’t have here. But the second can mean - “when I think about” or “at the thought of”. Does that maybe fit here?
Ah that also seems to make sense in this context! I didn’t even think to look up a conjugated form in the dictionary
Speaking of if/when, there’s something to know about たら. My understanding is that the た is たら is from the past tense of a verb (such as the た in 思った). In English, this will mean when, but will not mean if.
Consider the following sentence:
「
I study every day 
I study every day when I get home. (correct meaning)We have the subordinate clause:「どこかで見た人だと思った」 “I thought I recognized (this) person.”
The たら lets us know that the result of thinking 秋田さん had been seen before is the main clause: 「秋田さんは元プロ野球の選手だった」 "Regarding Mr. Akita, he was a former professional baseball player.
I read this as: “I thought I’d seen this person before, and sure enough, he’s a former pro baseball player.” Note that I’m not using the word “when” here, and I’m adding some extra words to convey the kind of feel I get from it. (I could be wrong.)
If I wanted to write it using “when”, I might go with, “When I thought he looked like a person I’d seen before, (I realized) regarding Mr. Akita, he was a former pro baseball player.”
I think たら can sometimes mean if, but maybe not in the context of the sentence in question…
Wouldn’t a sentence like その本は面白かったら私も読んでみます translate to something like “If that book was good, I’ll read it too”?
But yes I agree with the unwritten [and sure enough] or [I realised] – it joins @Radish8’s implied [it turns out] nicely. When I read the page the first time I just filled in those non-existant blanks like this and moved on without wondering how the sentence works
When it comes to adjectives, I’m not certain what impact that has. I didn’t even consider adjectives.
For verbs, I’m under the impression that the past-tense in the たら form means that action has taken place (and thus is not an “if” but rather “when”)
But I’m still a learner, and I may be wrong.
To be honest I’m not really sure either, my tutor explains stuff in French 
(also grammar and I have never been great friends, I’m still working on that)
時間があったら、映画を見ます。
If I have time, I will watch a movie.
授業が終わったら、部屋を掃除します。
When the lesson has finished, I will clean the room.
Since this is probably getting a bit off-topic:
My response here is completely theoretical. I don’t know the answers, so I am simply pondering aloud.
In English, the following mean two different things:
In English, we say “If I have time” because it is not known whether the speaker will have time or not. And we say “when the lesson has finished” because we know the lesson will finish.
In the case of あったら and 終わったら, I’m under the impression that these use the past tense, and thus it’s a certainty that they have (or will later have) completed.
How does the Japanese たら differentiate between the unknown and the known? Is it a matter of context? I’d love to find some “learn Japanese” resources that really delve into the Japanese grammar on this.
Regardless, I think we have the general idea of what’s being said in the book =D