Mina-san, have you been to a shrine? Where is your favorite one?

bobさん

There are several theories that explain why shrines are painted with that color, but we still don’t have a definite one. One of the reasons is that this color was believed to have the power to keep off evil spirits.

This color is called 朱色(shu-iro) or 丹色(ni-iro). It’s yellowish red and in the old days only people of high rank were allowed to use. This is probably one of the reasons too.

Nori-san

Thank you! Both theories sound like good ones. Very interesting. It makes me wonder if it was a color that was particularly hard to produce like from a rare mineral or something and only wealthy or high ranking individuals could afford it. Something like that, ya know? Also thanks for telling me the name, I never knew what to call it.

Interesting lesson, like people have said before, I think these lessons are definitely suited to culture. Now that every lesson has a picture, maybe the S&S could have several extra ones available to subscribers or something. Like today you could have had pictures of the talismans and garments, and other areas of the shrine. If you pick a historical spot or somewhere with some cultural relevance like today’s choice, the pictures and the lesson content can help to teach us some interesting history or culture.

As Bob said, だろう is used to express conjecture, but it’s not limited to verbs. Some more examples:

学生だっただろう。
He was probably a student.
そのステーキは高いだろう。
That steak is probably expensive.

You can also use it with rising intonation as a tag question similar to ね, but a bit softer.

僕が好きだろう。
You like me, right?

Another use is to soften a question, which is common in very polite speech. It sort of adds a nuance of ‘I wonder’, rather than a direct question like ですか. You often hear Naomi use this construction.

お元気でしょうか。
How are you (I wonder)?

Oh, and the two expressions Bob mentioned are:

そうだろうね。
I guess so / that’s probably true.
どうだろうね。
I wonder.

僕は浅草神社と日枝神社だけ行きました。

I’m getting several broken links for the podcast feed. This time it’s for the video file. Are any of you also encountering the same problem?

btw - video vocab for this lesson will be available in a few days!