Yamada wrote:

I thought the word with the second kanji being 要 was 概要 (がいよう) and it would make sense with the sentence but maybe its wrong?

Nah, that looks good to me. It’s got the bits I can make out in the right places…

Good luck! And good luck with your trip to Japan. =) I went before I started learning Japanese and managed to muddle through with a phrasebook and charades, but I’m sure things would have been much smoother if I could have understood answers to questions that I asked people. Enjoyed it so much anyway.

And I just realised that on Thursday, it will have been four years since I went. Ouch.

In other threads. =P

I learnt it in a week too. Just sat down and spent an afternoon learning them with mnemonics, then spent the rest of the week getting them seated good and proper with flash cards.

The Doctor, or would any old doctor do?

Grammar dictionary says “と is used to mark the content of such actions as 思う, 考える, 書く, 聞く and 説明する”, which is basically exactly what you were theorising, but I don’t know if that’s an exhaustive list. Anyway, an example sentence given here is これは十六世紀に建てられたと書いてあります (‘It is written that this was built in the sixteenth century’)

こと turns the sentence preceeding it into a noun phrase, which means you can do whatever to it that you would a regular noun. What makes things a hair more complex is that の can also function as a nominaliser, with the same meaning and effect, but it carries slightly different subtleties. Grammar dictionary says “In contrast to another nominaliser の, こと tends to indicate something the speaker does not feel close to. Thus, in the example sentence 小説を書くことは難しい (‘Writing a novel is hard’) the nominaliser こと indicates that the speaker of the sentence is not particularly involved in writing a novel; in other words, he is stating the sentence in general or objective terms. The nominaliser の, however, indicates something which the speaker can directly perceive or empathise with. Therefore if こと in the example sentence is replaced with の, the nominaliser now indicates that the speaker of the sentence is somehow personally involved with writing a novel; in short, he is empathetic with the act of writing a novel.”

It then gives a few examples where it doesn’t make sense to use one or the other of の or こと, then finishes up with a note about how the K-sound of the word itself makes こと sound more impersonal than the N-sound of の.

Hope that helps. =)

Ben wrote:

(I honestly would very much like to do the 88 Shikoku temple pilgrimage!)

Ooo, ooo, this. I’ve been wanting to do this as well. Trouble is, it supposedly takes one to two months to do the whole thing properly (though to be fair, it is 1200km long).