Irises and blue flags - Help with Japanese Reader

Hello guys.

I'm working through Roy Andrew Miller's book "A Japanese Reader: Graded Lessons..." The book, if I can trust the Amazon reviews for a brief second, is seen as outdated, but it suits my needs, and is kind of fun, so I'm sticking with it (and besides, it has some excerpts from famous Japanese authors' works). The problem is that there is no help on reading the Japanese sentences aside from the vocabulary list, so I've come here to ask for your help to translate stuff. I've reached the Intermediate level section and have gotten stuck on the very first essay.

Here's the paragraph that's been giving me some trouble:

from しょうぶとあやめ (Irises and blue flag)

この端午の節句と関係の深いしょうぶは、はなは美しくありません。 花の美しいのは、はなしょうぶですが、じつはしょうぶが、さといも科の植物であるのに対して、はなしょうぶはあやめ科に属していて別の種類のものです。

(Words that might not be easy to catch:
さといも科： Araceae, a type of plant
はなしょうぶ： Blue flag, a type of iris?)

I'm all set with vocabulary. It's just how to make sense of everything that's got me stumped.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

dulac said:

Here's the paragraph that's been giving me some trouble:
from しょうぶとあやめ (Irises and blue flag)
この端午の節句と関係の深いしょうぶは、はなは美しくありません。 花の美しいのは、はなしょうぶですが、じつはしょうぶが、さといも科の植物であるのに対して、はなしょうぶはあやめ科に属していて別の種類のものです。

Click to expand...

この端午の節句と関係の深いショウブは、花は美しくありません。
As to "shoubu" which is closely related to Tango-no-sekku, its flowers are not beautiful.
花の美しいのはハナショウブですが、
It is hana-shoubu that has beautiful flowers
実はショウブがサトイモ科の植物であるのに対して、
While shoubu is of araceae (arum family),
ハナショウブはアヤメ科に属していて
hana-shoubu belongs to iridaceae (iris family)
別の種類のものです。
and is different species (from shoubu).


On Tango-no-sekku, we have a tradition to take a bath called 菖蒲湯（しょうぶゆ） - bunch of fragrant shoubu leaves in a bath tub.
Also we adorn the display of Tango-no-sekku (such as a figure of Kintarou, or a miniature suit of armour) with flowers called 菖蒲（しょうぶ）.
The latter is commonly called ショウブ but precisely speaking, its name is not ショウブ but ハナショウブ. Because of its being called ショウブ instead of ハナショウブ, often people mixed up the two, or many do not know there are two and they are different. (Personally there's another reason for this confusion - for 菖蒲湯, only leaves are used and the leaves look quite similar to those of ハナショウブ.)
The paragraph you quoqted is explaining about this "confusion" on ショウブ.

ショウブ（菖蒲）サトイモ科
ショウブ（菖蒲）
ハナショウブ（花菖蒲）アヤメ科
ハナショウブ（花菖蒲）
*This is a very good website to check the name of plants in Japanese.
植物園へようこそ！

great, thank you very much. that cleared up not just the sentences in question, but also rest of the essay

the cool thing about learning to read through this book is the cultural tidbits I can pick up in a context that doesn't feel like just a bunch of "textbook sentences".

oh, and thanks also for the links- they helped to give me good pictures of what they look like!

Your text book seems to be very interesting.
I agree with you - following just "textbook sentences" is very boring...

Enjoy learning with "A Japanese Reader: Graded Lessons..." and whenever you have questions, please post here. I'm happy to help (if necessary) and am sure so are other members.
Besides, I enjoy explaining things.

And we're forever grateful for that, undrentide.

I have that book too, but I haven't looked at it in a while. I got it back when I had pretty much just started out with Japanese, and found it to be frustrating once I got to the intermediate level, so I just quit reading it. I may pick it up again, though, and see what questions I have as well.

I hear ya Glenn, the book can be pretty rough with the learning curve, probably because the author had in mind a complementary text to go with it (plus the fact that they haven't updated it in a while). Argh.. Even though they seem to start at a beginner's level, it seems that the best way to proceed with the book is to have some background in the language beforehand- I couldn't imagine taking this on when I was just starting out! So I'm sure you'll be able to tackle it ^_^.

and thanks again, Undrentide- it's always a pleasure to find someone good at giving explanations