4.4. ENRICHMENT 209
This particle is somewhat akin to , except it only applies to events or
circumstances, and is much stronger than. It creates a construction
that can be translated with ”Instead of ..., [something which implies the
total opposite]”:
”Instead of going out with (my) friends, (I) spent the entire night
working on (my) homework.”
This particle hangs somewhere between and when making a list. It
creates a list of items, but also implies that this list is representative of
something. For instance:
”Dogs, cats, we keep all sorts of pets.”
While the list doesn’t actually imply that there may be more than
just dogs and cats, unlike , the list alone is already considered something
representative of, in this case, ”all sorts of”. And unlike , this list doesn’t
have to be inclusive. It could be that whoever says this may also have birds
and rabbits, but then again, they may just as well not.
This is the literary equivalent to the instrumental and location of an event
marking particle (but not the
for ).
This is a reasonably simple combination of the particle and the disam-
biguating particle , but it deserves special mention because a lot of peo-
ple new to Japanese abuse it a lot, using instead of just. A good
