JSLL #59 - The Spider's Thread, part 7

 と申しますのは、ある時この男が深い林の中を通りますと、小さな蜘蛛が一匹、路ばたを這って行くのが見えました。

ともうしますのは、あるときこのおとこがふかいはやしのなかをとおりますと、ちいさなくもがいっぴき、みちばたをはっていくのがみえました。

Vocabulary

• 申す is a polite form of 言う, "to say." The construction name + と申します is a polite way of saying, "I'm called/my name is name."
• 深い means "deep" but also "dense, thick"
• 林 means "(small) forest" --we've talked previously about the fact that 木 means "tree" and 森 means "big forest."
• 通る means "to go by, to go past, to go along, to travel along, to pass through"
• I had trouble figuring out what 路ばた means. 路 means "road" but I couldn't figure out the ばた part. Turns out that the word "near, close," which is usually pronounced そば can be written 傍, which is pronounced はた, which become ばた in this context. The whole thing 路傍 means "side of the road, roadside," and is normally not pronounced みちばた but rather ろぼう.
• 這って行く (usually written with only kana) means "to creep, to crawl"

Kanji

Kanji	N-level	Occurs in how many common words?
申	N3	22
深	N3	20
林	N2	13
通	N4	84
路	N3	32
這	None, it’s not even a jouyou kanji but a jinmeyou kanji	6, but in 5 of these, this kanji is not first choice.

Grammar

This is the first time I see a sentence start with a particle (the と at the start). The whole thing before the topic marker は, that is, と申しますの, is a nomalized verb phrase "saying that": the entire thing means is something like "What I mean to say by that is..." or simply "I mean." The と particle takes the entire previous sentence as its "particle object" so to speak.

Translation

と申しますのは、ある時この男が深い林の中を通りますと、小さな蜘蛛が一匹、路ばたを這って行くのが見えました。

What I mean by that is that when this man, at some point in time, passed through the middle of a thick forest, he could see one small spider crawling on the side of the road.