I was actually planning to ask about this too, but I really didn’t understand what was going on. Seeing your attempted translation though has turned the light on…
I believe the second part is not 行っているようだ but 言っているようだ. It’s what Alps seems / looks like he’s saying.
That then means the と is just the quotation marker, and the baffling よ is simply a sentence ender at the end of the sentence being quoted.
This is the interpretation I had as well. But the comma in the middle really through me for a loop. Even though I always tell myself to ignore them they still trip me up.
Maybe I should study up on how commas are used in Japanese
I don’t think the new graffiti tells us much yet, but If you haven’t seen one of these before it’s called a henohenomoheji. It’s a face that Japanese school children draw using the hiragana in the name. Here’s the wikipedia entry. The へ from the other eyebrow is cut off in the book.
The two umbrella paintings… Don’t Japanese kids sometimes write their name and that of their crush under an umbrella painting because it’s said that two people sharing an umbrella indicates a romantic relationship? There’s even a term for that.
Can’t really read the katakana, though… Is it Akifu & Akira and Tako & Kuma?
I have no idea if that’s supposed to be some kind of clue or not… Other than (ten?)kuma also being written on Tempura guy’s apron, I have no idea how it could relate to any of the involved parties.
Maybe the painter guy has a son who’s also tall and likes to play a prank by painting weird stuff on people’s walls?
I’m having a lot of trouble with the first 2 sentences on page 85. Something about regaining honor - Spitz’s? Alps’? - and I cannot for the life of me work out if it’s positive or negative. Any analysis much appreciated!
Wait… page 75? don’t think we’re even up to 85 yet!
The first sentence is the one nienque and I discussed in the first couple of posts up-thread; let us know if there’s anything further in particular you’re puzzled by!
The second sentence is:
うーん、やっぱり名誉回復のチャンスはあげないといけないか。
The context of the previous sentence probably helps, but yes, it’s talking about how he has to give Alps a chance to redeem himself (after he failed to identify the culprit yesterday).
The part at the end is probably the most confusing aspect - あげないといけない. This is a grammatical construction which means that you must do something or are obliged to do something. So, he “must” give Alps a chance. あげない = あげる = to give.
It’s a bit confusing being a double negative, but いけない essentially means “wrong” or “not good”. The first verb in the negative is combined with the conditional と, for あげないと. So the first part is literally “if I don’t [give]”. Combined with いけない it gives you something like “if I don’t give, it would be wrong”.
Ah, thank you so much! A double negative hadn’t occurred to me and that makes absolute sense, especially seeing how to split it up. Poor Alps, so eager to help!
(except where they’re part of a compound like つれていく here…)
