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Japaneses Literature Narration

kiyominai

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I have a hard time keeping up with Japanese novels because I often have to go back and remind myself what the subject is/who the subject is. I came across two sentences that I had a hard time understand. I got the gist of the sentence (and it's not a very important sentence) but I wanted to know exactly what it translates to for future reference.


新入生に抱負を言わせれば二枚ぐらいは書くだろう、という、進路指導部の温かい心遣いだ。
ありがたいことだ。

My guess was:
"It'd probably take a freshmen two pages to write their ambitions, a warm consideration of the Guidance Counseling."

And also,

指が引っかかって、シャープペンはものすごい勢いで回転しながら里志の顔をかすめ、教室の隅まで吹っ飛んでいった。
落ち着いて立ち上がり、歩いてペンを拾い、何事もなかったかのように席に戻る。


"Caught between his fingers, while he was giving it forceful spins, I caught his attention, and blew him off in the corner of the classroom. [I'm not sure what 'blew him off' is supposed to mean in this context...does it mean ignore?]
I stood up in a calm manner, walked over and snagged the pen from him. In a silent manner I walked back to my seat.

If anyone could help me dissect it, that'd be great.
 
The subject of the first sentence is "the mechanical pencil", not "I". 指 refers to "my fingers", not Satoshi's.
 
Hmm... I was thinking the person saying this was the person who 落ち着いて立ち上がり、歩いてペンを拾い、何事もなかったかのように席に戻った. Also, 里志の顔をかすめ, I thought meant something like なんとなく里志の顔を思い浮かべながら.

新入生に抱負を言わせれば二枚ぐらいは書くだろう、と いう、進路指導部の温かい心遣いだ。
ありがたいことだ。

A person is speaking, and this person isn't a guidance counselor, but is possibly a freshman.
 
I believe that 顔をかすめる is almost always 'to graze (someone's) face'. In this case, the mechanical pencil is grazing Satoshi's face.

Also I believe that the 'come to mind' usages need to be phrased as a metaphor for a thought grazing 心 or some other 'mind' type word, eg. 顔が心をかすめる
 
For some reason that かすめる (掠める) wasn't the one I was thinking of. I was thinking of 翳める (which I oddly cannot input with Google's IME).
 
That would be the potential of かすむ though. It is odd that google won't produce the kanji you used, which is the only one I've seen かすむ spelled with. (But it will produce 霞む for the same word.) Anyway, I think a potential in that position would be weird, but, I'm only familiar with かすむ being used to say one's vision is blurred (usually with tears, since I seem to see that word only in song lyrics.)
 
I can't remember what it is since I got windows 8 and it screwed my computer up, but my chinese friend who knows like every kanji in existence told me that google IME is bad and there is another one that you can use that has rarer words and it will recognize names too. I will try looking for it.
 
Ohhh. That word isn't in the dictionaries I was looking at, I didn't know it existed. Interesting.

As far as I know, the three free IMEs are Microsoft (comes with windows), Google, and Baidu.

There are much better IMEs if you're willing to spend money. Baidu has better handwriting recognition than Google and is better in some predictions and worse in others compared to Google.
 
Yeah, that's my thought, too (and I believe that's correct). I think the person was doing ペン回し, and then 指が引っかかって、シャープペンはものすごい勢いで回転しながら里志の顔をかすめ、教室の隅まで吹っ飛んでいった。

ペン回し

Exactly.

SomeCallMeChris said:
Also I believe that the 'come to mind' usages need to be phrased as a metaphor for a thought grazing 心 or some other 'mind' type word, eg. 顔が心をかすめる
Click to expand...
The key is the particle. Even if the word such like 心, 脳裏, 頭 or 胸 isn't there, it must be 顔がかすめる for that meaning.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thank you for everything guys. I was able to come up with these translations:

"One titled, "One Month into School and My Ambitions," and the other blank.
"If you make the freshmens talk about their ambitions, then they can at least write two pages about it", a warm welcome from the Guidance Counseling.
How considerate."

I realized the above was sarcasm.

and

"Caught between my fingers, while giving it forceful spins, my mechanical pencil caught his attention, minding my own business in the corner of the classroom.
He stood up in a calm manner, walked over and snagged the pen from me and silently returned to his seat.
Satoshi, once again, made a blank, cold expression."
 
What is the preceding sentence? Wasn't the speaker (Hōtarō?) doing ペン回し, as I wrote in my previous post?
 
Toritoribe said:
What is the preceding sentence? Wasn't the speaker (Hōtarō?) doing ペン回し, as I wrote in my previous post?
Click to expand...

Hotarou is spinning the pencil in his hand.

回し is just the conjugated form of 回す, different from mawashite, the form is usually found in written text, and it is the equivalent to the American commas (where as we use commas to list down different verb actions consecutively)
 
回し is the noun usage of the -masu stem of 回す here. What you wrote is just one usage of it.

ペン回し - Wikipedia
Pen spinning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The narrator's name is not Hotarō/Hotarou but Hōtarō/Houtarou, since his name is ほうたろう, not ほたろう.

I(= Hōtarō) made a mistake when doing pen spinning (= 指が引っかかって), the mechanical pencil grazed Satoshi's face while spinning at very high speed (= シャープペンはものすごい勢いで回転しながら里志の顔をかすめ), and flew away to the corner of the classroom (= 教室の隅まで吹っ飛んでいった。).

I stood up in a calm manner, walked over and picked up the pen, and walked back to my seat as if nothing happened.
 
Last edited:
So, if I were to see the following short past tense sentences in much the same context, I'd translate them like this,

指が引っかかった ： My finger snagged.
回転しながら物をかすめる : It grazed against an object while spinning.
教室の隅まで吹っ飛んだ： It went flying off to to the corner of the room.
落ち着いてペンを拾った: I calmly picked up the pen.
何事もなかったかのように席に戻った: I returned to my seat as though nothing had happened.

吹っ飛ぶ is a slightly strange word that means to be propelled through the air by an outside force, and is used in all sorts of circumstances. It's often used for 'blown up' in translations, it's what happens when shutters or shingles are torn off by the wind, the causative of it is what Luffy of One Piece keeps threatening to do to his enemies. It's not used for controlled or deliberate flight, but for all kinds of cases of 'fly away', 'blow away', 'blow up'.

(Oh, well, ToriToribeさん answered much more directly already, but oh well, I'll leave this for posterity or something. I should mention though that there is a slight flaw in Toritoribeさん's excellent translation, in that it should be 'and flew away to the corner' because 'fly' conjugates irregularly in English.)
 
OOOPS! I'm embarrassed.:emoji_blush: Thanks for pointing it out.: I might watch baseball games too much.:emoji_blush:
 
Ha, that's right. It is right in the baseball sense of "flying out". By the way, (warning -- about to seriously go off topic) I'm sure you're probably aware but I'll ask anyway -- did you see that Ichiro got his 4000th career hit last night?
 
Yeah, of course. The top news of yesterday were about his record in all news programs here in Japan.
 
Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. I actually saw it on a Taiwanese news story.
 
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