学生：ガイドさん、あの建物は何ですか。あっ、あっちの建物は？
ガイド：そんなに矢継ぎ早に質問されても、答えられませんよ。
Yatsugibaya
Gakusei: Gaido-san, ano tatemono wa nan desu ka. Aa, acchi no tatemono wa?
Gaido: Sonna ni, yatsugibaya ni shitsumon saretemo, kotaeraremasen yo.
Student: What's that building? And what about the one over there?
Guide: How do you expect me to answer if you fire questions at me like that?
* * *
Yatsugibaya means to do something or say something in rapid succession, one after another, in a row. The word derives from an expression used to describe a samurai shooting arrows (ya) in rapid succession (yumi ni ya wo tsugitsugi ni tsugu).
I recently visited Malaysia with some students from my Nihongo Seminar. Rather than go to America or Europe, I thought it would be meaningful for them to visit one of Japan's "neighbors" in Asia. Fortunately, the students fell in love with Kuala Lumpur. The modern skyscrapers, Islamic architecture, tropical bougainvillea and beatutiful red hibiscus were all so different from what they'd seen in Japan.
As we toured the city by bus we passed by so many unusual sights one after another that the students were forced to ask our guide questions in rapid succes- sion (gakusei-tachi wa, yatsugibaya ni tazuneru). Though our Chinese guide had studied Japanese, he couldn't keep up with their pace.
When yatsugibaya is followed by a verb, one must use the particle ni before the verb. If followed by a noun, na is used. Yatsugibaya ni tazunenaide kudasai (Please don't fire so many questions at me); Yatsugibaya na shitsumon (questions fired one after the other).
Our bus stopped at the top of a small hill. ("It must be some kind of well-known place," I remember think- ing to myself.) A talented salesman was trying to get the tourists to have their picture taken dressed up in traditional costumes. Yatsugibaya ni shashin wo totte ita (He was taking pictures in rapid-fire succession). He must have taken 10 in less than two or three minutes.
"How much do they cost?" I asked our guide.
"$10 a person." For a country where prices are generally low, it sounded like a lot. It was so interesting, though, the way the man would go up to each tourist in succession. It seemed one or two always ended up posing.
The temperature was a cool 35 C and everyone was dripping with sweat. What did the future hold for the industrious man with the camera? Would he end up doing this his whole life? I doubted it. The way customers turned up one bus load after another (yatsugibaya ni kyaku ga otozureta) in five years time he'll probably have quit this job and built a house of his own.