What does it mean > 400 (I'm not sue if that's correct spelling) . It's from the book TOBIRA. Can anyone help me break this sentence down to smaller, more comprehensible bits? Ok, so as far as my understanding goes it means that: > There is a white wall that is more than 400 years old and a white building that looks as heron that spreads its wings and rest and that's why it is called "shirasagishyou" It's about Himeji Castle. BUT This sentence is sooo long I'm not sure what kind of grammar is there anymore. So many ga particles. > Why "ga" after "kata" then "toiu" and then another "ga" after this second "ga"? It's pretty straightforward. Can anyone help?

You can break this sentence in two:

> Sentence 1: 400
>
> Sentence 2:

You got the first sentence, so I'll skip the explanation for sentence 1.

So, let's look at the very base part of the sentence 2.

The base sentence is

>

ok, now, you want to add the reason why it's called "Shirasagi-jou". That would be...

> _____
>
> It's called "Shirasagi-jou" because the shape of the building looks like _____.

now, how does the shape of the building look like? If it looks like a swan, you could say `...`, but that's not exactly what you want to say. The shape doesn't look like ANY SHAPE of swan, it has to be like a swan that is spreading its wings and resting, which is ``

So, you now have

>

Now this is still not exactly what you want to say because the shape is not ANY swan spreading wings and resting. It has to be a certain kind of swan that is called Shirasagi, which is ``

You'll add this information right before the `` and you get:

>