(no subject)

It would be nice to have a good, purely Japanese, dictionary. Not only would that be expensive though, but I also don't think I have the skill necessary to use one at this point.

I find the occasional word that isn't in either my English-Japanese dictionary or in my romanized kanji dictionary. I'm reading a children's fairy-tale book, and I suspect there are words in there that are well-known to Japanese, but don't come up often enough to merit inclusion in the resources I have. Here are the first couple sentences of the book I'm trying to translate, おおきなかぶ (big radish).

むかし　あるところに　はたらきものの　おじいさん　がいました。はれのひもあめのひも、あさからばんまで、やっこらやっこらはたけをたがやしてくらしていました。

Working through and converting to kanji, I have this:

昔ある所に働き者のお祖父さんが居ました。晴れの日も雨の日も、朝から晩まで、やっこらやっこら畑を耕して暮らして居ました。

The first sentence is fine. Long ago, in a certain place, there was a hard-working old man.
The second sentence I mostly have. Fair days and rainy days, morning to night, he tilled the field, making his living. But there's a word in there I can't find: やっこら. It's in a series of things in a sort of 'from a to b' format (morning to night, nice weather and rainy weather), so my thought is that it's something along that same sort of abstract line. Google searches gave me an indirect reference that makes me think it might be a rock wall dividing fields. So maybe it's 'from one wall of his field to the other', but I'm not sure. It would be in a Japanese dictionary, I'm sure, but it's not in mine!

But that's ok. I'm still pleased with myself at being able to figure out as much as I can. My thought is if I try to keep doing a page a day, or at least a sentence or two if I get really busy, I'll keep my skills fresh and even learn some vocabulary and kanji as I go.

I have a sleeping danaeris over in the other room. That's a very nice thing to have indeed.