Which university? =)

Being casual. Particles tend to fall by the wayside in very casual speech, often being replaced by commas.

今日、食べる？

今何時？

It’s an indirect quote. =)

Still, the trick is that when in doubt, break the sentence up into chunks at the particles, remembering that the particle goes with the word before rather than the word after. That might not have helped with 気がつく – 気 is a bit of a sneaky one that tends to pop up in a lot of verb-phrases, like 気をつけて or 気に入る – so it’s probably a matter of getting a hang of all its little tricks. If I search my dictionary for 気が together, 気がつく comes in one of the first few results.

My dictionary says the current reading of 傾ける is かたむける and defines it as “(transitive) to incline, to lean, to tip” et cetera.

As for と思うと maybe “in my mind, (such and such)”? Just a guess, though.

Also a very very long walk.

Journeys in Japan (travel show on NHK World) did a four-part special on it, and what they showed looked very pretty, but yeah – it takes a month to do it properly. =)

More specifically, と is the quotation marker – in the same way as “that” in English, it’s a way of putting verbal speech marks around what came before. I realise “words are powerless”.

Remember, particles are always post-positions – they come after the word they modify, never before. It’s not 無力+と気 but 無力と+気

I’m not saying I agree with Koichi’s claim – I’m just trying to make sense of it.

That said, of your list, two… I mean, a couple of them are cases I mentioned in my post anyway, while the rest of them honestly don’t happen to me on a regular basis. =P

Aye, you’re right – the verb in the first clause is 行きたい “want to go”. Koichi goofed – wouldn’t be the first time. You can try submitting a bounty – button at the bottom of the page.