JSLL #24 - Urashima Tarou - Twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth sentences

 Because they're short and simple, we'll do two sentences spoken by Princess Oto in one go:

これは玉手箱です。これを持って気を付けてお帰りになってください。

これはたまてばこです。これをもってきをつけておかえりになってください。

Kore ha tamatebako desu. Dore wo motte ki wo tukete okaeri ni natte kudasai.

The first sentence is easy: The subject, marked by は, is これ, which means "this" (without a noun after it). The verb です is "to be." The predicate is 玉手箱. This is a word that only exists in the context of this particular story, so it's just called a "tamatebako." That said, we can say something about the various kanji in this word. The last one, 箱, appeared earlier with the meaning "box." Note how the pronunciation "hako" turned into "bako." (はこ became ばこ). Japanese has a lot of consonant changes like this one. The kanji before it is 手 (て, te), which we came across before in this story. (It's also the last kanji in 空手, からて, karate, which literally means "empty hand.") The first kanji 玉 (たま, tama) which means "ball" (among many other things). This kanji is N2 and occurs in only 12 common words. 

It would be incorrect to conclude from this that a tamatebako should be called a "ball-hand-box" or something--that's not how kanji work when combined. 

It's worth mentioning that a tamatebako is a specific origami shape, inspired the Urashima Tarou story. You can find videos online showing you how to make a tamatebako. 

Anyway, the first sentence is "This is a tamatebako."

Second sentence: a sequence of te-forms ending the word ください ("please"). What does Princess Oto ask Tarou to please do?

• これを持って = Take this (the verb is 持つ ("to hold, to take, to carry"), which we encountered previously in the complex verb 持って来る, "to bring, to fetch." 
• 気を付けて = Be careful. The entire construction 気を付ける means "be careful, take care, pay attention." It's usually written 気をつける. This expression, and the kanji contained in it, are discussed below.
• お帰りになって = Go back home (respectful construction) --see earlier posts for the お- + ます-stem + になる construction.

So the entire second sentence reads, "Please take this, be careful, and go back home." A less literal translation might also be, "Please take this, and be careful getting home."

気を付ける combines the transitive verb 付ける, which has no less than 16 distinct meanings in the dictionary (all of them usually written without the kanji), with the direct object 気, which has 11 meanings. Looking at the various meanings of both words, something like "keep your spirits up" or "pay attention" is the most literal translation. But in practice, you'd translate this as "be careful." (This is no different from, say, the English "take care," which doesn't have anything to do with literally taking something.

As for the kanji:

• 気 is an N5 kanji that exists in an impressive 134 common words. Among them are 病気 (びょうき, byouki, "sick, ill"); 元気 (げんき, genki, "lively, in good spirits, doing good": 元気ですか is a very common greeting in Japanese); and 天気 (てんき, tenki, "weather").
• 付 is an N3 kanji that occurs in 101 common words. To me, this kanji is one of the hardest ones, because its meaning, on its own or as part of a multi-kanji word, is almost impossible to predict. It's like the English verb "set" or "put," which has almost no meaning on its own, and changes its meaning if you add things to it ("set up," "put off," "set in," "put out" etc).

In conclusion, these two sentences translate to:

This is a tamatebako. Please take this, and be careful getting home.