JSLL #38 - Yuki Onna, part 2

 Let's do a few more sentences from the story Yuki Onna ("Snow Woman").

ある冬の日のことです。巳之吉と茂作はいつものように二人で森の中へ行って木を切っていました。すると、にわかに黒い雲が出て来て、雪が降り出しました。

あるふゆのひのことです。みのきちともさくはいつものようにふたりでもりのなかへいってきをきっていました。すると、にわかにくろいくもがでてきて、ゆきがふりだしました。

The first sentence is like a similar sentence in Urashima Tarou. The only new thing here is the word 冬, which means "winter." 冬 is an N4 kanji found in just 10 common words. The whole sentence, then, translates to:

It was a winter's day.

In the second sentence, the new grammar point is the phrase のように. In the previous story, we've encounter のような meaning "resembling" or "like" when applied to nouns: 木のような漢字 = "a tree-like kanji, a kanji that resembles a tree." のように means "in the manner of" or "like" when applied other types of words. In this case, it follows  いつも "always" --so いつものように means "like always" or "as usual." Armed with this knowledge, you can translate the entire sentence as:

Minokichi and Mosaku has gone into the wood with the two of them, like always, and were cutting trees.

The third sentence has quite some new words and kanji, so I'll reproduce it:

すると、にわかに黒い雲が出て来て、雪が降り出しました。

• すると has its own dictionary entry: "and then, then, thereupon"
• にわかに also has its own dictionary entry: "suddenly, unexpectedly"
• 黒い is an i-adjective that means "black." (When "black" is used as a noun, it's 黒 without the i.)
• 雲 means "cloud." Note how it resembles 雪, "snow," another weather phenomenon. The top half of both kanji are simplified versions of 雨, the kanji that on its own means "rain."
• 降り is the masu-stem of 降る, "to fall" or "to precipitate": this verb is always used in combination with some kind of precipitation, like rain, snow or hail. So 雪が降る means "it snows" (literally "snow falls").

The kanji that are new in this sentence are:

Kanji	N-level	Occurs in how many common words?
黒	N4	22
雲	N2	5
降	N3	24

The third sentence has this translated:

Then, suddenly a black cloud appeared, and it started snowing.