Makes much more sense. Thanks 
2 Likes
°˖✧◝(o^▽^o)◜✧˖°
2 Likes
Yeah, my feeling as well! 
A couple small questions, anyway…
家のなか means inside the house, right? Ichi.moe giving me in the middle of a field for なか <.<
Page 78
だれもいないはずのだいどころでおさらのわれる音がした
だれも - everyone
いない - negative stay/be
はずの - bound to be/expected to be; what is the role of の here?
だいどころで - in the kitchen
おさらの - honoroable plates; not sure about the の here again.
われる - to break
音がした - to make/hear a sound
I get the gist of it, that nobody was in the kitchen who could have caused the noise, but I’m not sure how to put it together into an English equivalent.
Page 80
ゆかにおちたケーキに、カポネがかぶりついていた
I’m not sure about this. I first thought it meant that Capone is lucky that the cake didn’t fall on his head, but there’s no negative in there to indicate that. So does it mean Capone’s lucky it fell on the floor? Which of the dozen definition fits かぶる best?
Page 82
だいどころのなかをみまわしたあたしには、だれのしわざかすぐにわかった
“When I looked around the inside of the kitchen, I knew immediately understood whose doing it was.”? What is the か doing after しわざ?
4 Likes
Yep!
I don’t have the book to hand so I might have the wrong end of the stick, but I think this is かぶりつく (かぶり付く) - “to bite into; to sink one’s teeth into” - which seems like it might fit your context a bit better?
This looks like an embedded question - she immediately knew 「who’s deed it was」.
Could you blur out the bit about it falling on the floor? And maybe the bit about the noise in the kitchen?
6 Likes
I saw page 80 sentence not being blurred so I assumed it was fine, but I hid everything now. Sorry! Speaking of that, I think I’ll just put every question about sentences in a summary spoiler from now on. It looks a lot cleaner and there’s less scrolling.
Ohh, makes a lot more sense, thanks! I didn’t think about putting these to together and see if its one whole word. 
So many subtle things in Japanese! Thanks. It still conveys the same general meaning, right?
1 Like
I only learnt this after being burned many times over it’s always worthwhile checking, though you do get a feel for which kinds of things get mashed together - lots of verbs ending with 付く, 混む, 出す etc.
Yep! Using か like this marks a question phrase, essentially. This [だれのしわざ] is the ‘thing’ that she すぐにわかった’d.
There isn’t an equivalent in English because we don’t have particles in the first place, but we do similarly have embedded questions. It’s what takes a sentence from “where is the bus stop?” to “do you know where the bus stop is?”, or “who ate this cake?” to “I know who ate this cake” (the resulting sentence may or may not be a question itself).
In this case “whose deed was it?” to “I knew whose deed it was”.
5 Likes
With a negative verb, it’s “noone”.
はず is a noun, so you need a の to connect it to だいどころ
だれもいないはずのだいどころ = the kitchen where there ought to have been noone there
In this case, the の is connecting おさら to 音 - don’t be distracted by the われる in between, because that’s also connected to the 音. For a literal translation, it’s something like “the plate’s sound-of-smashing”.
Putting it all together, I’d translate it as:
From the kitchen, which we’d thought was empty, came the sound of a plate smashing.
8 Likes
I am more confused about あたしには.
I surveyed the interior of the kitchen あたしには, I immediately understood whose doing it was.
I found a grammar point saying には means ‘in order to’, but that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me here…
1 Like
Page 72
おにいちゃんは野球部、弟はサッカー部でいまかられんしゅうにいくところらしい。
I had trouble figuring out the meaning of ところ here. Does it mean “about to; on the verge of (after present form of a verb)” in this context (see jisho, meaning 10)? Also, how does いまから (hence; from now; from the present moment; from this time forward) fit in here?
My attempt at translating:
It seems “from the present moment” they are about to go to practice, as for the older brother at the baseball club and as for the younger brother at the soccer club.
2 Likes
page 78
So if はず is a noun, then, in “grammatical terms”, だれもいない is a relative clause that gives more information about the supposed state (of the kitchen)?
1 Like
Well, more precisely, だれもいない tells you something about はず, and だれもいないはず tells you something about the kitchen.
3 Likes
Okay, thanks! That’s what I thought after you explained that はず is a noun.
Wanted to make sure because of the translation/explanation being given. I guess it’s just difficult to try to “translate” this part into English the “Japanese way” (translating はず as a noun instead of saying “ought to be / supposed to be / expected to be” and on top of that considering the possesive particle の).
1 Like
The second definition of には in jisho is “but; however” (and also something about contrasting statements is mentioned).
So if you take a look at the two sentences before, and considering what her friend is thinking who the culprit is, I think maybe Hanae is using には to state that she knows who did it in contrast to her friend who doesn’t (or is wrongfully accusing someone else)…?
1 Like
Me, every time I see ところ: 
But actually, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. They are just about to go to practice, it seems.
2 Likes
@Radish8 @Belthazar Thank you! =)
Hah, nice catch! I was confused about this too and forgot to mention it in my post.
1 Like
The very core of the sentence is:
(subjectが) わかった
The subject here is unspoken, but because わかった is an intransitive verb, and based on context, we can assume the subject to be Hanae. Hanae is the one for which something has become clear.
Let’s include the が so we’re clear on who the subject is.
(あたしが) わかった
Adding words back in, we can build on top of this. We have an adverb, which modifies the verb. It didn’t just become clear, it immediately became clear.
(あたしが) すぐにわかった
What was it that immediately became clear? It was:
「だれのしわざか」
I’ve added quotes just because the clause reads like a question. “Whose deed?”
(あたしが) 「だれのしわざか」すぐにわかった
Now we have, I realized immediately who did the deed.
Imagine if Hanae wasn’t the narrator. The narrator is a disconnected author, and you read the following exchange:
Emi: “So, you’re saying the cat did it?”
Narrator: Having surveyed the kitchen, she realized immediately who did the deed.
Who is “she”? In English, these word “she” has no meaning. It stands in for a subject. In Japanese, every sentence has a subject, and the subject is marked by the particle が. But if the subject is known from context, there’s no reason to speak it. Just like in English, if the subject is known by context, you can replace the subject with “she” (or “he”, “it”, “they”).
In the above exchange, you’d probably think the narrator was talking about Emi. In order for the reader to know we’re talking about Hanae now, the topic is shifted in a way that lets the reader know Hanae is the one being talked about.
(Shift in topic)は (あたしが) 「だれのしわざか」すぐにわかった
The core of the topic shift is あたしに.
However, I’m going to go out on a limb here and posit that this には is short for にとっては, and the あたしにとって portion has the meaning of “for me” or “as far as I am concerned”.
However, あたし is not by itself. It’s modified by:
「だいどころのなかをみまわした」
Surveyed inside the kitchen.
Prefixing this onto あたし:
（だいどころのなかをみまわした）あたし
Me, who surveyed inside the kitchen.
And then put that にとって in there:
（だいどころのなかをみまわした）あたしに(とって)
For me, who surveyed inside the kitchen.
Let’s fit this in as the topic:
（だいどころのなかをみまわした）あたしに(とって)は (あたしが) 「だれのしわざか」すぐにわかった
For me, having surveyed the kitchen (in contrast to Emi), I immediately realized who did the need.
I added something in parenthesis to show the “contrastive は” doing its job being in contrast. In contrast to what Emi said, here’s what Hanae’s take.
Edit: Side note here, notice how everything before the は doesn’t actually change the meaning of the sentence. It gives you context on who the subject it, and gives a contrast from Emi’s suggestion, but everything before は has no bearing on what the subject (はなえ) is doing (「だれのしわざか」すぐにわかった).
7 Likes
Wow, what a post. Thank you so much! I feel like I’ve just studied some kind of masterclass. Brilliant! Thank you!
Hello! I just started reading this story today. I was a bit nervous it would be to difficult, but with the vocabulary list it wasn’t too bad! I am so glad i found this group!
7 Likes
I can’t tell you how happy it makes me that more people are joining us 
Just in case anybody didn’t see, we’re currently voting on the pace for story three:
@riiibu just wanted to ask whether your dental (I think?) surgery went okay?
6 Likes
Finished! Kind of weird when it took four weeks of reading to do the first case…
theory time
It’s definitely one of the boys, because there’s a fork (single) on the table. I wonder if we’re supposed to be able to tell which one it is…
I guess it could be the older one because he doesn’t seem to have his baseball bat when he leaves? I feel like quite a Thing was made out of their clubs and the game they were playing initially. He almost certainly forgot his bat in the doorframe, came back for it, snuck some cake.
Loving Capone’s cake face 
3 Likes