ゆとりがある、ない


JAPANESE NATURALLY/ Mizue Sasaki

   ゆとりがある、ない

 木村:今度、カナダにスキーにでも行きませんか。
佐々木:ぜひご一緒したいところですが、経済的にゆとりがなくて...

Yutori ga aru/nai
Kimura: Kondo, Kanada ni sukii ni de mo ikimasen ka.
Sasaki: Zehi go-issho shitai tokoro desu ga, keizai-teki ni yutori ga nakute...

Kimura: Would you like to go skiing in Canada with me?
Sasaki: I'd really love to go with you, but I haven't got that much money to spare.

Yutori suggests the idea of plenty, more than just the bare minimum. When referring to time or money, for instance, it means having some to spare.
It will soon be time to start thinking about the winter vacation. The best thing about being a university teacher is that Jikan-teki ni yutori ga aru (You have plenty of free time), or at least so you might think. Being a government official though, it doesn't follow just because there are no lessons to teach that I get that time off. Nevertheless, if I use my annual leave, I can work it so that I get about two weeks' continuous leave. The trip to Canada is not completely out of the question. Ni-shukan areba, yutori no aru ryokoo ga tanoshimeru (Two weeks is plenty of time for a relaxing vacation).
I've been to Canada in the summer before, but I'm sure it must be even more fun to be able to enjoy skiing there when everywhere is covered with snow - even more so if you have good company to go with. The only problem is how much it costs to go there for two weeks. A package tour would be cheap, of course, but I don't enjoy traveling in a large bustling group. And then the price of plane tickets shoots up around the end of the year. Also, it's difficult finding someone to go with because Jikan-teki ni yutori no aru yuujin wa amari inai (I don't have many friends who can spare the time). I wonder what to do.
Incidentally, looking back at the conversation, notice how, when you turn somebody down in Japanese, it's common rather than stating directly Iki-masen (I'm not going) or Ikemasen (I can't go), to cut this part of what you want to say and leave the sentence hanging with a -te... ending. Native Japanese speakers can easily tell when someone is turning down an offer in this way, and they let the conversation end there; foreign students of the language, however, sometimes miss these tell-tale signs and try to continue the conversation by saying, "Well, so, what do you want to do?" Remember that Chotto jikan ni yutori ga nakute... (Sorry, I can't spare the time) is a definite "No."

The writer is a professor at Yokohama National University.

Asahi Evening News
October 30, 1994