JSLL #20 - Urashima Tarou - Twentieth sentence

 Here's sentence 20.

ところが、しばらくすると、浦島太郎は村にいるお父さんとお母さんのことが心配になりました。

ところが、しばらくすると、うらしまたろうはむらにいるおとうさんとおかあさんのことがしんぱいになりました。

Tokoro ga, shibaraku suru to, Urashima Tarou ha mura ni iru otousan to okaasan no koto ga shinpai ni narimashita.

ところが means "even so, however, still" etc.

しばらくすると is listed in its entirety in the dictionary, with the meaning "after a short time, in a short while, a short time later."

Next is the topic of the sentence, Urashima Tarou. In this case, the topic is not the subject, so it's best to translate this with "As for Urashima Tarou, ..." 

The actual subject is next (marked with が) is the compound noun phrase お父さんとお母さん, "father and mother" (note how both get the respectful お-prefix and thee "Mr/Ms" -さん suffix). 

To the left of this subject is a relative clause, 村にいる, "who were in the village." Note how the verb is in the present tense in Japanese, but in the past tense in English.

The verb that goes with this subject is なりました, the polite past form of なる, "to become." The object of "become," marked by the に particle, is 心配, "worry, concern." We know the first of these kanji ("heart"), but we don't know the second one. 配 is an N3 kanji that occurs in 38 common words, with a variety of meanings.

So the whole sentence, translated very literally, reads: "Even so, after a short while, as for Urashima Tarou, his father and mother, who were in the village, became a concern."

A less literal translation would be, "Even so, after a short while, Urashima Tarou began to worry about his father and mother, who were in the village."