JSLL #26 - Urashima Tarou - Twenty-seventh sentence

 Here's sentence number 27.

浦島太郎は玉手箱を持って、亀の背中にのって、村へと向かいました。

We've seen all of these words before, so just as a reminder:

• 浦島太郎 Urashima Tarou
• 玉手箱 the tamatebako, a special box
• 持って the te-form of 持つ, to take, to carry, to hold
• 亀 turtle
• 背中 back (of the body)
• のって (spelled 乗って with a kanji), the te-from of のる, to board, to get on,
• 村 village

The only new word is 向かいました the polite past tense of 向かう, "to face" or "to go towards, to head towards." We've seen the kanji before in the word 向こう ("the other side, the opposite side"), so we won't discuss it again here.

Also new is the particle へと, which is an emphatic form of へ (toward, in the direction of).

It's fairly easy to see now that the sentence means:

Urashima Tarou took the tamatebako, sat on the turtle's back, and headed towards the village.

(This sentence is a bit clunky, because the turtle is the one deciding where to go, and the subject is still Tarou. It also doesn't say that Tarou asks the turtle to take him to the village. But let's not dwell on this too long.)