18. Zuibun nagaku ikasarete itadaite orimasu ne—“I have been alive for a very long time, haven’t I?” Totally impossible to translate, but the nuance is something like: I have been caused to live by the deep conditions of the universe to which I am humbly and deeply grateful. P. Arai calls it the “gratitude tense,” and says the beauty of this grammatical construction is that “there is no finger pointing to a source.” She also says, “It is impossible to feel angry when using this tense.”
first time i annotate explanations and definitions
