A relative clause is a construction of language that refers to an adjective phrase containing an inflected verb. In English, this often involves usage of the words “that” or “which,” and modifies the tail end of a noun as a multilexical, post-position adjective phrase. For example: the man who ate my chicken is a real jerk; the car I bought last week already needs to be serviced; the lunch you packed me was delicious; the little bit of skin attached to my hangnail is stopping me from removing it. All English relative clauses are subjunctive (dependent upon a main clause).
On to the Japanese
As a native speaker of English, one hardly requires a lesson in the construction and deployment of such utterances; however, in Japanese, relative clauses don’t line up with their English counterparts in terms of their grammatical form. Japanese relative clauses are simple enough to get the hang of, however, providing a student is given adequate instruction.
In Japanese, relative clauses are placed prior to the onset of the nouns they modify; they are grammatically identical to Japanese adjectives in terms of word order. Being that Japanese clauses require only a verb to be considered independent, Japanese relative clauses are distinct from English clauses in that every one of them is an independent clause. For example, taking into consideration the meaning of the relative clauses as independent utterances, observe the following sentences and their respective relative clauses:
昨夜作ってくれた飯は本当に美味しかった。
“The food you cooked for me yesterday was really good.”
「昨夜作ってくれた」 (“[you] cooked [it] for me yesterday.”)
行ったことがあるところだから、今度そこへ連れてもらえない。
“It’s a place you’ve been before, so would you mind taking me along this time?”
「行ったことがある」(“[you] have been [there].”)
一昨日観ていたあのテレビ番組は何と言うか知ってるだろう。
“Do you perhaps know the name of that show we were watching two days back?”
「一昨日観ていた」(“[we] were watching [it] two days ago.”
As you can see by now, using a relative clause in Japanese basically involves using an entire sentence—ending as per usual in an inflected verb—as an adjective. The verb in this “sentence” is able to take any temporal inflection; it can also take a passive inflection or a causative inflection.
One might ask, when is it proper to use past tense and when is it proper to use the Japanese non-past? Much like in a free standing sentence, the past/non-past distinction in Japanese is less concerned with the specifics of relative time, and more concerned with completion or non-completion; that is to say, Japanese past/non-past tenses are really better described as perfective/imperfective aspect markers; this is especially true when they exist in a relative clause:
日本に行く時、贈り物をいっぱい買っておきました。
“When I went to Japan (before I departed on my flight), I purchased many gifts (that I could present to my friends in Japan).
日本に行った時、贈り物をいっぱい買っておきました。
“When I went to Japan (after I had landed in Japan), I purchased many gifts (that I could bring home to my friends in my home country.”
This distinction is very subtle: the only difference being the use of the non-past tense in the relative clause of the first sentence, and the past tense in the relative clause of the latter sentence; however, the meaning between these two sentences is very different indeed. This is possible because of the imperfective/perfective nuance of the respective tenses. In the initial sentence, the non-past tense is used because it suggests that I had not yet (completed) my arrival in Japan, so the sentence as a whole is interpreted as having occurred somewhere in my home country; in the second sentence, the past tense of the verb in the relative clause suggests that the clause itself has been completed—i.e. I have arrived in Japan—thus, the entire sentence is understood as referring to an action that took place somewhere in Japan. This distinction is important to any relative clause in Japanese.
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