[quote="terra"]
http://www.alc.co.jp[/quote]
Great site. Thanks, I hadn't seen it.
[quote="terra"]
i can't explain it off the top of my head but it also means 'even though', or something like that. i should double-check. i'm not 100% happy with it since i couldn't figure out what to do with the 'tte' either.
[/quote]
This doesn't really help once you convert it back to the more literal
"Say I were to" which it comes from.
It can also be one of the superluity of Japanese indefiniteness markers, and though this makes little sense, it makes more sense than anything else we've come up with, so I'll write it off as one of those, I suppose.
[quote="terra"]
i guess was going for a kind of 'just like the way it's going' feel as opposed to a 'SNAP! just like that!' if that makes any sense, but i suppose it might not come off that way at first read. 'kono mama' is just strange to translate. ._.
[/quote]
It feels more like the burning, is occuring both before and after the sparation. Then you've got a reason to use this construction instead of something meaning "slow" or "for a long time".
[quote="terra"]
the feeling i get is it's like he's dreaming about the future, and all of a sudden- bam! the future is here and now, and that is the recognition of which he speaks.
[/quote]
Yeah, that's what I was seeing as most probable, at least by my second post in this thread, and had written "recognized" to mean.
The weirdness is in English here and not Japanese. It makes no sense that when you see a person and say you know them, that makes perfect sense in English, but when you see your dream and say you know it it doesn't, even though it's the exact same usage and construction.