I haven’t read yet, but it’s probably 稲 (rice plants)
So they are going through (間) the lush green (青々とした) rice plants(稲). If you have ever seen rice paddy, you know what it looks like. (If not, google image I guess).
So, さえ usually means even, but from what I’ve learnt about this (particle?), I’ve only seen it used with nouns and verbs (bunpro and Tae-Kim only seem to use it for those, unless I am missing something).
Here however it seems to be used with an i-Adjective (暑苦しい) (or I guess it could be the adverb 暑苦しく?) I am guessing (from context) that the sentence means something along the line of “all the trees even made it appear oppressively hot”, but I’m not really confident.
yikes…these long sentences are as bad as the dialect haha…This whole thing took me a long time to decipher… @Naphthalene thanks for posting up part of the solution that whole rice plant thing I couldn’t find on my own.
I really found this part difficult so thought I’d post up what I came up with (maybe it will help someone else)…seems right but not sure if this is all completely correct or not:
with these large sentences, I’m not always sure about which particles are ending/suffix, direct object, emphasis…turns into sort of a mess for me…but …
リアカーつき耕運機は (As for the cultivator)
青々とした稲の間を、
青々とした (vibrant / green + suru to become/to turn into = became vibrant green)
稲の間を、(between the rice plants)
whole thing: between the rice plants that had turned vibrant green
雷のような音と、
雷 = (thunder - Nice one word for thunder and lightning!)
のような = grammar for noun like/similar to (のように・のような - Japanese Grammar Explained | Bunpro
音 = sound
と、= read as with
with what sounded like thunder (or lightning if you can hear the colors… )
もうもうとたつ土ぼこりをお供に、
もうもう = dense (fog of dust)
と = particle
たつ = to stand
土ぼこり = clouds of dust
を (particle)
お (honorific ?)
供に = together/along with
whole thing: along with dense standing clouds of dust
のろのろと進んでいく
のろのろ = slowly (seen this word before at the beginning of the book)
と (particle)
進んでいく = to advance + continuing
slowly advancing
My translation was (after what seemed like forever):
The cultivator continuing to slowly advance between the rice plants that had turned a vibrant bright green, along with sounds of thunder along with dense standing clouds of dust. (it’s not a sentence an English teacher would love but it’s good enough for me)
The English version of the book was much better than mine (hidden just in case you really don’t wanna cheat) :
The cultivator proceeded leisurely through the green rice plants accompanied by a thunderous noise and billows of dust.
I feel the standard English is just to say “lush green/vibrant green”. The とした part is just a way to connect 青々, which is not an adjective by itself, to a noun it qualifies.
I’m not sure what により means here. It doesn’t seem to be a comparison より, nor does it seem to be the により that means based on / according to.
My best guess is that かたまって comes from the verb 固まる that means “to gather; to huddle together” and that it is referring to the 家々 (many houses)? Unless it means “to harden” and somehow refers to the 土, but that doesn’t seem to make much sense given the sentence structure.
黒ずんだ seems to mean “to blacken / to darken” but I have no idea what it refers too, since later the 家々 are described as having red / cream colors.
As @seanblue says, it’s basically describing how リナ expected the houses in a tiny mountain village to look, as contrasted with how they actually look.
My explanation attempt
The main noun she’s thinking about is 家々. The 家々 have a few different properties attached to them:
They are 小さな.
They are 黒ずんだ. (Probably just meaning darkened with dirt and age, or possibly just made with dark-colored building materials.)
They are かまってたっている. I’m guessing this is a compound of 固まる and 建つ. That compound does come up in my IME, but it doesn’t seem to be a standard enough compound to merit a dictionary entry anywhere I see immediately. I think it’s probably conveying the image of something being built out of hardened dirt or clay.
I’m not terribly confident in how により or the stuff it’s attached to is working, but I [think] what it works out to mean is an explanation of by what means the building materials are hardened. In this case, they’re hardened or dried because of the dirt’s surface being reddened and dried out by the sun.
Edit: wanted to cancel my post when I saw @seanblue posting (and I should be social right now rather than on my phone, so I’m unlikely to post anything of quality) but posted by mistake.
I’m leaving the message for the で comment.
もよう = 模様. It’s a red polka dot pattern. 水玉 is apparently just an abbreviation for 水玉模様. Lack of kanji strikes again!
の + にいっ + と (for lack of a better split). I’m pretty sure にいっと is just an onomatopoeia for laughing/smiling, because it sounds like ニコニコ. Found this as supporting evidence.
The の is modifying the laughing face. ピエロの(にいっとわらった顔)
柄. Thanks for the hint by mentioning “handle”, because I couldn’t parse that.
Interestingly, the I believe the author also expected this to be hard to parse. Not sure about the physical version, but the digital version has a very suspicious " 、" mark next to え, where normally furigana would be:
After I saw it I suspected there might be a reason, so I eventually reached the 柄 entry in jisho.