I wandered through a Japanese bookstore and found that I can buy books for extremely cheaply. About $4 or so. So, I got one. I thought maybe it would work since I'm pretty good at looking up kanji now. But one and a half hours later and I have failed to translate the title and I have managed an extremely rough translation of the first two sentences. Sigh.
The not understood title of the book is: 村田エフェンデイ滞土録. My best translation of that (which is wrong...I can't figure out how the kanji are going together into words) is: Efendi Village Field Stagnant Ground Record. Which doesn't sound nearly as interesting as the cover of the book looks.
My best guess for the first two sentences is: "As Muhammad passed by, he picked up a parrot. On the hilly road on the way to the marketplace, because he was bad at climbing hills (the parrot thought so too), he thought he would wait and, covering his hemp bag, he returned to wait at the mansion."
...is it just me, or does that sound really not right? ;-)
I thought Latin was hard. This should be amusing, at least. At this rate, I will have been able to read about one tenth of the book by the time I leave Japan. *grin*
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