店のまどWait Here

Read a sample in Japanese

What you'll learn

Yuki's mother lets go of her hand outside a row of shuttered shops, tells her to wait, and disappears up the street. A thin white cat leads Yuki into a narrow lane and down a staircase into a second street below, where people in black clothes carry boxes in and out of the shops and nobody she asks will tell her the way back up.

Key vocabulary

Grammar points you'll meet

• ～てください N5A polite request or instruction: the te-form of a verb plus ください. Here it is stacked on ～ている, so 待っていてください asks Yuki to stay in the state of waiting, not just to wait once.
  すぐ来ますから、ここで待っていてください
• ～から N5から after a clause gives the reason for what follows. The reason comes first, the request second: because I am coming right back, wait here.
  すぐ来ますから、ここで待っていてください
• ～く/ ～になる N5なる means to become. An i-adjective drops い and takes く before it, so 見えない becomes 見えなくなる: she stopped being visible. Watch for 白くなる later in the story, built the same way.
  道の先で、見えなくなりました。
• ～があります N5あります says that a thing exists or is there, and the thing is marked with が. It is used for objects and places, not for living things.
  道の先に、かいだんがありました。
• も N5も means also, and repeating it on two nouns means both. 犬もねこも is both the dogs and the cats; the story uses the same pair-marking for 右も左も.
  犬もねこも、ユキを見ました。
• に/へ N5へ marks the direction you move toward. 上へ行く道 is the road that goes up. に can do the same job, and the story uses both.
  上へ行く道も、わかりません

Cultural notes

• Shutter streetsMany Japanese towns have a covered shopping lane lined with small family shops. Each one closes behind a sliding door or a metal shutter, and in lanes where the shops have gone out of business the shutters stay down all day. A street of closed doors in the middle of the afternoon is a real and fairly common sight.
• A vending machine on every cornerDrink machines stand on ordinary streets all over Japan, lit up day and night, and people treat them as part of the scenery. Because a lit machine is the normal state, one with its lights off reads immediately as a street nobody looks after any more.
• Children out on their ownJapanese children run errands, ride trains and wait for a parent in public from a young age, and an adult telling a child to stay put for a few minutes is an everyday instruction rather than an alarming one. Knowing that, you can hear the mother's line the way a Japanese reader hears it: ordinary.

Topics & grammar

Short Storyhorrorfolktalecityfamily〜がありますga arimasu〜がいますga imasu〜からkara〜く/ 〜になるku ni naruもmo〜ているte iru〜てくださいte kudasai