I found these two sentences on Wasabi to explain the usage of も
病院 も 東京病院がいい（です）。
As for hospitals, the Hospital of Tokyo is good, too.
ホテルは京都ホテル も いい（です）。
As for hotels, Kyoto Hotel is good, too.
Does the sentence :
病院 は 東京病院もいい（です）。
has the exactly same meaning as :
病院 も 東京病院がいい（です）。
or is there a difference in the meaning using the two combinations は and も resp. も and が ?
I had to go to the page to understand what was going on there. There’s another sentence…
大学 は 東京大学がいい
The も in the hospital sentence only makes sense in the context of continuing on from this sentence. You need to have it in there to understand what the も is adding to.
I’ll be honest, I don’t really encounter people using も like that where it’s specifying inclusion to the previously stated topic, but I guess I understand what they’re getting at.
So no, changing it to は would make it sound like it was disconnected or contrastive.
Ah ok, that means that I connected the thought of good universities and good hospitals in Tokyo with も here. And in this case changing it to は would lose this connection and thus the meaning because I would start a new topic?
Thank you for checking the page 
Hi, not sure if i’m doing this right. I’m just starting on grammar and I started my free trial on bunpro. Does anyone know if this is a sufficient site to learn Japanese grammar on? I see the DoJG books recommended a lot but those are well out of my price range. Thanks!
Hello everyone!
I started my japanese journey a couple months ago, and I found in the house some old manga that relatives brought back to japan.
In one of them (the story, from what I gather, is the metaphorical “birth” of a demon when a pottery artists strangles and buries his wife, super cheerful stuff), the narrator says the following:
土ばかり弄って生きて来た
I have trouble understanding the idiom behind “living and coming”. My first guess was something like “coming alive”, so the phrase could be “I came to life playing only with dirt”. DeepL suggest “I spent my whole life playing with dirt”. What do you think?
Semi-related question : without pronouns, my first instinct was to assume the narrator was not talking about himself but instead about the character of the story, so “He came to life […]”, but I went with deepL and switched to first person. Curious to how you’d translate that!
(For reference, the entire paragraph of the narrator is the following:
土ばかり弄って生きて来た
土しか持たない家にうまれたから土を見つめるだけで自分の一生が終えるものと思っていた
それが自分の宿命であるなら避けられない定めであるなら背負った血を憎まずに生きてゆくことが生命の自然だと思った
人間として生きてゆくなら人間としての家と血を拒まずにいきてゆこうと思った
)
\textcolor{pink}{\huge \textsf{WELCOME! ^-^}}
@ChewieBeardy
Take the time to check out the FAQ and GUIDE if you haven’t already.
There’s also a lot of good stuff on the forum to help you, like:
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I hope your Japanese learning journey goes well and that you enjoy your time with us on the forums.
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I wish I had something constructive to add on the grammar front… but… I’m useless at it myself. I’m working on it, I promise! One of these days I’ll be able to be more help than just welcoming.
Runs away while waving enthusiastic greetings
First of all, don’t ever trust auto translation to give you reliable answers. DeepL did it as if the context is uknown, all it can do is just assume the first person. The context sensitive part of Japanese is the biggest contributor to automatic translations being particularly bad for Japanese.
Second, addressing the actual question, てくる is an idiomatic espression that is kind of complicated to briefly put down, but basically can mean “up to now” or “come to.” Here it looks like the first one is the correct one.
So here I believe it is something literally like “[someone] had continued to live playing with just dirt.”
Usually, without further context, that someone is “I.” From the looks of it, you are at the beginning of the manga, so that would be the default assumption.
Given the rest of the context, it appears that “dirt” here is figuritive talking about them growing up in squalor.
So a natural translation may be “I have spent my life playing with only filth”
Also, if you are curious about a “natural” translation for the next line, it would be:
“When one is born in a house with nothing but dirt, one will only gaze at dirt. And so, I believed that is how my life would end.”
A very dramatic opening! With a little more creative room in English, I would add a “Nothing but dirt.” after “that is how my life would end.” but in Japanese it sounds more natural not to.
Thank you so much for your insightful reply! (And thank you Joeni for the warm welcome <3)!
Youre suggested translation makes sense! I suppose here the “coming” refers from a point in time rather than in space, if I had to guess the origin of the expression.
You have no idea how glad I was to see that my suggested translation for the second phrase was close to yours! I went with “I was born in a house with nothing but dirt in it, so I thought that a life staring only at dirt would be what I’d have” (I took the modifying aspect of を見つめる to 自分の一生 a bit literally).
Dramatic opening indeed~ the manga is a collection of short stories like that ( 人間交差点), can’t wait to see the theme of the others!
I’m stretching a bit the purpose of this thread (maybe I should create another one so as not to pollute here), but I’m a bit excited to share my interpretation of the last lines:
If this is my destiny, if this is an unavoidable law, then living on without hating one’s blood must be human nature.
If I’m to live like a human, then like a human, I’ll live without renouncing my blood and that house
The hardest part is definitely reconstructing the kanji on jisho by playing radical treasure hunt
Bunpro is really best used for SRSing grammar it’s not really best as your sole source of learning using only their example sentences alone. You definitely want to go over all the external readings, or use another source and have Bunpro be what you use to constantly be reviewing stuff.
For example, I mostly use a combo of Imabi, Maggie Sensei and Japanese Ammo with Misa as my grammar learning sources and then I add reviews in Bunpro as I encounter new grammar so that I can then use it as a secondary review reinforcement.
You don’t necessarily need to buy them all. The first one is likely going to be more than sufficient for now. When you get to a more advanced stage then you can think of buying the others. I bought them all simply because I found a good deal on Amazon for ‘used’ copies that were essentially new. So I get the entire set for under $100. I see right now you can get the first volume in ‘very good’ condition for under $40.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/4789004546/ref=sr_1_1_olp
Edited to clarify my point more.
To give an alternative perspective, I learnt pretty much all my grammar from BunPro, so it is doable (I did use TaeKim for a bit but got bored and stopped very quickly). Some people feel that textbooks are necessary though…
My advice would be try the free stuff first to see if any of that works for you, and if it doesn’t/you find it frustrating then start looking at buying stuff.
Thank you! I just started today but with a mix of bunpro and TaeKim it is slowly making sense. Definitely going to try the free/cheap stuff first.
I guess my point was, don’t just simply go over the example sentences and call it done. Make sure to at least go over the external readings provided as well. Their example sentences (some of which are fairly awkward and seem non-natural at times (such as their heavy usage of 私 even when unnecessary)) and their one line explanation alone is not fully sufficient to learn the grammar, at least IMO.
I would at least recommend using Imabi as a secondary source of examples and explanation before moving on to another grammar point.
Can’t say I noticed this but it has been a while (the later ones seem pretty good to me). The linked resources are good when it’s not clear, but I think you can get a lot of the value just by looking at all the examples…
I dunno about imabi. It’s a fantastic resource for reading about stuff in detail but I think it’s too dense and confusing (and poorly presented) to recommend as something to actually learn the language from…Tae Kim/Maggie sensei/Japanese Ammo/Cure Dolly all seem to be better for that to me.
Not dismissing the sentences in their entirety, but just don’t necessary use them as your model for how to write and speak. For example, their first example sentence for です is あなたです. 
That’s not really what I would think you’d want to provide as a ‘good’ example sentence for learners. Also for は the first two are 私はトムです。あなたはジムです。Nothing grammatically wrong in either case, but I would say those are somewhat subpar as good examples of natural speech or writing to emulate. 
Not going to disagree as I even use two of the four you mention. 
/end offtopic
I mean, so long as you follow those links for each source, I think its okay for it to be what you use to structure the order you learn grammar in. My flow is typically read what Bunpro says, attempt to look up the grammar point in DoAJG, go to the correct entry if it exists, read that, then follow it up with 1 or 2 other sources (usually with priority order of Maggie Sensei > Japanese Ammo > Imabi (since it tends to be closer to the DoJG series) > Most other things > Tae Kim only if necessary. Finally, I attempt to listen to the reading of the points, then try reading what it said. Then I add it for review.
But yeah, if you just meant to not just read the inital blurb and move on, I of course agree.
Hopefully my current edit helps clarify things. I don’t know if anyone else had this problem, but my first time using it I missed that there was all the external readings tab so using only their example sentences alone wasn’t sufficient for me. So I just wanted to make sure to call out that they see that tab and do use those external reading articles.
Hey guys, I was watching this curedolly video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIoyAZwPqz0) yesterday about 受身 or passive form, and in there she stated that in Japanese the “passive form” is really someone/something receiving an action from someone/something (correct me if I’m wrong).
And so I got kind of confused when I studied 「もらう」today, because other than literally receiving a physical thing from someone, you can also receive an action like " 私は手紙をお母さんに書いてもらった " right? Would anyone mind telling me the differences?
Passive is ‘having something done to’ you (or the subject).
ケーキが食べられた。The cake was eaten.
ケーキを食べられた。Somebody ate my cake (and I’m not happy about it).
〜てもらう is ‘having something done for’ you.
ケーキを食べてもらった Somebody ate my cake (and I’m happy about it).
i think curedolly is not referring to the actual verb もらう here, but tries to describe that (if you follow her logic) in japanese the subject is always acting. but in a sentence like „he was hit by the ball“ the subject is not acting, the ball is doing the hitting. therefore curedolly suggests another translation for japanese passive sentences that in contrast to the english version would translate „he was hit“ as „he received hitting“ or something like that. so the subject could still be the active part.
this receiving has nothing to do with もらう, this verb is active and the subject is acting.
i hope what i wrote is not confusing you even more … 
