Page 186 - Basic Japanese

The particle kara after a noun usually means ‘from’ in a

physical sense: Kōbe kara ‘from Kobe.’ From this it is
extended to mean ‘from’ or ‘after’ or ‘since’ in a temporal

sense: kinō kara ‘from yesterday, since yesterday,’ sore kara

‘from that, after that,’ Nihon e kita toki kara ‘from the time I
came to Japan, since I came to Japan.’ After a GERUND also,
it has the meaning of ‘after’:

Go-han o tabete kara, terebi o mimashita.

After eating, we watched TV.

However, after the plain imperfect or perfect, this
particle means ‘since’ in the causal sense of ‘because’:

Ame ga futta kara, ikemasen deshita.
Because it rained, I could not go there.

You will find it convenient to translate this kara as ‘so,’

since the word so fits into English syntax at about the same
point that kara fits into Japanese syntax. The main difference

is that we often pause BEFORE so, but the Japanese pause
AFTER kara. The above Japanese sentence is repeated here

with an English translation with so:

Ame ga futta kara, ikemasen deshita.
It rained, so I could not go there.

In English, we say things like ‘I HAVE BEEN ill since last

night. I’ve BEEN in Japan since last year,’ using a present
perfect even though we are still ill or in Japan at the time we

are talking. In Japanese, the imperfect is used for these