Daily Thread: simple questions, comments that don’t need their own posts, and first time posters go here (September 01, 2023)

5 comments

1. >昨日友達に会って、友達のママが占い行ったて話しを聞いたの笑 彼女のママ今年離婚したんだけど、決して良い別れ方じゃなくて色々問題があったの、そしたら彼女が占い師の人にその元旦那の顔が背中に張り付いてるって言われたらしい

   I think I understand this, but i’m kinda getting stuck up on the “元旦那の顔が背中に張り付いてる” “His face is stuck on her back”

   I can’t really parse it very well, is it a common expression? Like he’s hung up on her, or he’s haunting her?

2. Today I’m gonna use the “comments” feature of this thread instead of my usual “questions”

   For whatever reason, I was talking about frogs with my italki tutor and I mentioned to him a story my (Japanese) math professor told me about 25 years ago.

   I was able to describe (in Japanese) the story my teacher told me.

   That is, in Japan there were special merchants that sold frog oil. They would put the frogs in boxes and the walls of the boxes are mirrors.

   This way, the frog thinks he is surrounded by the enemy. So he sweats a lot.

   Then they collect the sweat and it makes a special oil you can treat wounds with.

   After I told this to my teacher he actually knew about this medicine and even told me the name of it (which I now forgot) and he said this was a thing in the 江戸時代.

3. > 蹲ったまま、呆けた表情だけを返す少年を見下ろす影のような黒い少女。

   Grammatically, what is the 蹲ったまま connected to (e.g. is it describing 少年 or 表情)?

4. What would be the best way to say “find” in a phrase like “I find this (concept, problem, et c.) difficult?”

5. 事はない vs 事がない ?