Shouldn't this phrase using だけのこと mean "just for that"?

Question

In a grammar textbook I have, there is this phrase: > 幸{さいわ}い日本{にほん}で日本語{にほんご}を勉強{べんきょう}して、かなり話{はな}せるようになりました。日本{にほん}に行{い}っただけのことはありました。 The translation given is: > Fortunately, I studied Japanese in Japan and now I can speak it fairly > well. I didn't go to Japan for nothing. The thing that confuses me is in that last part, where the translation is "I didn't go to Japan for nothing". It seems to me that `だけのことがありました` literally translates to something like "there was just that thing". `だけ`, to me, implies exclusion of other things. So to me, the sentence should be something like "That's all I went to Japan for", or perhaps "That's all I got from being in Japan". The way I read it has more of a negative implication than the given translation. What am I not understanding about this phrase in order to see how the given translation makes sense? Or perhaps is the given translation not as good as it could be?

Answer 1

First of all, good catch! The textbook is giving an odd translation - or at least, a very non-literal translation.

A more literal translation would be:

"Fortunately, I studied Japanese in Japan and now I can speak it fairly well. I only went to Japan."

When we translate it literally, it seems at first glance to have a negative connotation - "I only went to Japan" sounds a bit negative. But when we look at the larger context of the phrase, the speaker is implying "I only went to Japan; I didn't do anything else to study Japanese." In other words, I didn't have to do anything else to study Japanese.

The 'fortunate' thing is that the speaker was able to pick up Japanese 'just' by being in Japan.

Again, the textbook is giving a weird translation that obscures the meaning of 「だけのことはありました」, so you were right to doubt the translation.