In search of NI TSUITE

Today's grammar point let's me talk about Banana Yoshimoto, so I'm pretty excited. The book, which has the grammar point I'd like to discuss, is sadly not translated yet. There seems to be a good five to ten year gap between when Yoshimoto-sensei writes things, and when they are translated. This means, that I have not read the book, but I'm going to talk about it anyway because it is definitely going on my if-you-live-in-Japan-and-you-love-me-you'll-buy-me-this-book category.

So, the grammar point today is NI TSUITE, and I will be using the novel Kanojo ni Tsuite.

When I started researching this post, I thought for sure I'd get to sort of talk about About a Boy, the 2002 Hugh Grant movie. No, it's not Japanese pop culture, but I like it. And really, that's all that really matters on this blog sometimes. Turns out that the movie is just called アバウト・ア・ボーイin Japanese, and that sort of annoys me because I feel more than a little robbed.

 

But, really, in the end, I got to talk about it anyway. Alriiiiight.

By now, you've probably figured out what NI TSUITE means. If not, don't worry about it. I wasn't that that explicit. NI TSUITE means "about". Simple as that. 

Just:

• Noun + について + the thing that is about the noun

Easy enough, right? 

I'd like to be all pedantic here, and ask what you think the title of the novel means, but I think that would be sort of dickish since it's a pretty easy grammar point, so here it is:

彼女について

Kanojo ni tsuite

About Her

I don't know why, but I almost translated that as "About a Girl". I guess I really have Hugh on my mind, don't I? Break out the chocolate ice cream! It's time to watch Notting Hill, followed by Music and Lyrics, and if I haven't fallen into a depressed sleep by that time, I'll add in a little bit of Two Weeks Notice. I'm that hard core.

Okay, but this is not enough. It's just one clause, right? How do you make a whole sentence?

Well, it's easy enough:

• グラントさんとブームの愛について映画を見たいです。
• GURANTOsan to BUUMU no ai ni tsuite eiga wo mitai desu.
• I want to see a movie about Hugh Grant and Boom's love.

How's that for an awkward sentence! I literally talk that stupidly in Japanese. As you can see, it's what the subject is about followed by NI TSUITE followed by the described subject.

{EDIT}

A whole half of this post is gone... I quite literally have no idea where it went, and I don't think you can retrieve old drafts, so it looks like I'm going to have to summarize a few things:

• Banana Yoshimoto is a penname chosen because it sounds androgynous.
• Her most famous novel is Kitchen, but I prefer Goodbye Tsugumi.
• She primarily write novellas, which I like, because it seems to lend more gravity to each word. 
• Kanojo ni tsuite seems to be about a happy witch going on a journey of revenge, and amazon.co.jp has it rated at 4.5 stars.

I'm really bummed I lost everything. I may go back and re-edit, since I went to all the trouble of translating the book description, and talking about several of Yoshimoto's books. But really, I have studying to do!

But really... I'm seriously bummed about this suddenly going missing from my blog post.