That’s not the same thing though. 食べる and “to eat” are both transitive. Since the two languages are in agreement, there’s nothing there that should be causing confusion. On the other hand, 分かる is intransitive, while “to understand” is transitive. In that case, I can see why the more literal “to be understandable” could be helpful since it keeps the transitivity in tact.
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Fair point. I guess I was complicating the issue. Thanks for clearing that up.
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I think you would love to read Jay Rubin’s (Haruki Murakami translator among other accomplishments) “Making Sense of Japanese” (do not be put-off by the romanji). Here is part of the table of contents:
Kudasaru, Kureru 51
Receiving in One Direction: Morau, Itadaku 54
The Causative, with and without Directionals 56
Passives, Passivication, and the Passive-Causative 63
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Just FYI: you can also say 日本は何時ですか。It’s not wrong either. The difference is that in this case, the ‘in’ is implied by context, since you’re discussing Japan as a topic.
As for 時 vs 時間 (I’m including all readings and usages of 時 that I’ve seen), I think we can say that 時 often refers to a point in time (or a period seen as a point in time e.g. ‘the year 2020’ vs ‘over a year’) whereas 時間 refers to an hour or some other duration (e.g. 時間がない would mean ‘(I) have no time’).
this use of the passive voice makes sense if you look at a sentence like ケーキはネコに食べられた。
but in my opinion there are limits to this approach if you consider sentences like ネコにケーキを食べられた or 雨に降られました or 近所のネコに鳴かれて、眠れませんでした.
but i agree with you, different approaches are useful to different people.
Isn’t this one indirect passive? I.e. The cat ate my cake (and I was negatively affected by that).
no, i think this one is direct passive: the cake was eaten by the cat.
indirect passive would be: (私は)ネコにケーキを食べられた
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Ah wait, I quoted the wrong sentence. I meant
well, then yes, it’s indirect passive 
I’m having trouble parsing this part of the sentence: 参考にまでと言って私に差出した
This is the inner monologue of a detective who has just finished interviewing someone. According to DeepL it means “he offered me a reference”, and while that does fit, I just can’t wrap my head around it. I think that the にまでと言って part is what’s throwing me for a loop, and I can’t find anything on the web explaining it.
Not exactly. Indirect passives don’t have a direct object.
From my trusty Japanese Linguistics Notes for once
Indirect passives exist
Phrases with no direct object but have an indirect object
Adversarial passives
Only uses -ni
Japanese linguist theorizes that Japanese is mainly through the speaker’s perspective- like when talking about about a film or story, Japanese speakers will talk about it from the main character’s perspective
If I remember right there was a very convoluted example of someone who got rained on. Like adversarial (? I originally spelt it “adversal” because that’s how I heard it, but I can’t spell to save my life) passives are mainly indirect passives.
Edit: Looked through the rest of my notes for the day and either I never caught the name of that Linguist or it was only in my physical notes. We didn’t get tested on who theorized what, so I don’t think I usually bothered.
hmm, maybe i’m wrong but i’m not convinced by your argument. in sentences like 雨に降られました there is of course no object marked by を, but if you use a transitive verb, the を is used in indirect passive constructions.
明子に足を踏まれた。akiko ni ashi o fumareta
明子が泥棒に財布を盗むられた。akiko ga dorobou ni saifu o nusumurareta.
Is “indirect passive” something different from “suffering passive?”
I would have called a sentence like 雨に降られた suffering passive.
I don’t know people are using different terms to mean the same thing, or if they are different terms but the categories overlap, or something else.
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But in that case it’s no longer an indirect passive.
All suffering passives are indirect passives as I recall. I believe there are some indirect passives that are not suffering passives though. Our professor and other native speakers in the class had a hard time thinking of examples.
Thank you for sharing a naming convention that I can spell without spellcheck.
As far as I know, suffering passives can have a direct object in the mix, so that relationship would seem to violate the proposed idea that indirect passives don’t have a direct object. Or it’s not the case that all suffering passives are indirect.
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i think your argument is contradictory.
akiko ni ashi o fumareta for example is suffering passive and therefore should be indirect passive as well. the only aspect that differentiates it from ame ni furareta is that the verb is transitive.
Edit: I checked some papers online and a grammar book and all give examples for indirect passive with を.
And @buburoi, I’ll reach out to my professor and try to ask for clarification. I would hope that I didn’t write things down that badly, but you both seem to have examples contrary to that.
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Would anyone tell me what predicates, clauses and relative clauses are in simply non technical english 
At the risk of getting myself schooled twice in a day, hopefully I can help. Anyone please correct me if I’m wrong.
Let’s use this sentence for an example:
The girl eating her lunch watched the squirrel while it searched for nuts.
First let’s boil this sentence down. “The girl watched the squirrel.” That’s the main idea.
The predicate is anything that’s not part of the subject. In our boiled down version, it’s “watched the squirrel.” Anything related to that watching is part of the predicate. So in our original example, it’s “watched the squirrel while it searched for nuts.”
A relative clause is a type of clause that describes a noun. It might help to think of it as a long adjective. Relative clauses help answer which/who. Which girl watched the squirrel? The one who was eating her lunch. We also know that since this relative clause describes the subject, that it’s not part of the predicate. It’s not describing the watching or the squirrel. In English, many relative clauses have who/that/which.
A clause is a piece of the sentence that has a subject and predicate (you can simplify this to a verb usually). So our main clause is the whole sentence, “The girl eating her lunch watched the squirrel while it searched for nuts.” Every sentence must have at least one clause. Let’s find more in this sentence. Our relative clause “The girl (who was) eating her lunch” is another. We have have a subject again, “the girl” and the verb/predicate “eating her lunch.” We have another too, it’s, “it searched for nuts.” “It (the squirrel)” and the verb, “searched.”
Does that make sense? Does that help?
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Dunno if I have this right, but I read this as “he went as far as offering me a reference”, parsing it something like
参考にまでと
言って
私に差出した
I also found this on stack exchange which suggests that the にまで is a more emphatic form of に, making it something like “as far as”…
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