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Context: A, B and C are all students. A and C are friends who study in the same school. B wears a different uniform than them, though I don't know if this means she is from a different school or a higher grade since B is slightly older than them. B is very well known among students since there are many rumors about her. After seeing B walking somewhere, A says to C:

A: Bさんだ。

C: え?

A: Bさんだよ。うちの上の学校の.

I realize that うち can mean someone's "group" as in their family, school, etc. But I can't figure out what it means in this specific phrase.

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  • That's not a common expression and I somewhat smell of a complicated context. Do you perhaps have the actual material (video, book page etc.)? Aug 20, 2020 at 13:58
  • I think it might just make things more confusing since this exchange happens a couple of hours into a rather dense visual novel but here it is: youtu.be/fQmTs0Bkc-E?t=1442 (around the 24:04 mark)
    – ssuga
    Aug 20, 2020 at 14:10
  • Hmm... perhaps a school one stage higher? (I don't know how exactly the education system goes on in this world) Aug 20, 2020 at 14:50
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    これは確かに "complicated context" だ…w
    – naruto
    Aug 20, 2020 at 18:08

1 Answer 1

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Yes, うち means "our home/house/office/etc". If there is no context, this うちの上の学校 should just mean うちの上にある学校, or the school that is located somewhere above their house. Is there a hill around their house?

Another less likely possibility is うちの上の子の学校, or the school which their older child attends. 上の子 means "the older child", but when there is no chance of confusion, 上 by itself sometimes can represent 上の子 (e.g., うちは上が8歳になりました). But this interpretation depends on the context. Unless they have been talking about their kids, this interpretation is not very likely.

EDIT: Checked the actual game clip and the basic setting of the game described in Wikipedia. It's probably "the school one stage higher than ours" as broccoli suggested. But this is indeed a roundabout and puzzling expression — why didn't he simply say 高校 or something? Well, although she might look like a 女子生, the author probably did not want to explicitly mention what type of school she attends, as this was an eroge and her age must not be specified. If you happen to know why the term 女子 is often used in eroge, this seemingly weird expression is in the same vein.

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  • Not sure if it brings any insight but I edited the original post to provide some additional context. All of the characters involved are teens and none of them live together.
    – ssuga
    Aug 20, 2020 at 13:57
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    @ssuga The context is always important! Actually "the school one stage higher than ours" is what I had considered for a moment before posting the first version of my answer, but I just could not imagine a context where one ever needs to say something indirect like this. The most important context was the genre of this game :)
    – naruto
    Aug 20, 2020 at 19:48

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