Japanese tenses seem very different from English. Please look at this
sentence:

> 考えている最中，電話がかけられました

If translated in English, it should be:

> When I was thinking, the telephone rang

I think the front part of this sentence should be 考えていた最中。

How should I deal with Japanese tense?
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2016-09-22T10:45:11.160
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grammar tense aspect
A question regarding Japanese sentences with present tense clauses but a past tense main verb
Now I'm NOT an expert, but in general Japanese either uses past-tense, or no
tense at all/the tense being implied by the context.

This feels weird at first, but you'll get used to it.

Also don't try getting your sentences to sound right in English, Japanese is
NOT English, and thus you must accept that good Japanese will often make for
weird/bad English sentences.

For example, 食べる would mean 'eat' or 'to eat', in English. However Japanese is
so context-based that this single verb could be an entire sentence, meaning
something like 'i am eating', or 'she is eating', or even asking a question
'are you eating?' simply due to context.

Hope this helped a tidbit lad! :D

PS. It also doesn't mandate a distinction between singular and plural, in fact
it lets you ignore a ton of stuff so long as the context implies it.

PPS. Sorry if my answer is a tad 'messy' in its presentation, lol.
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2016-09-22T23:04:08.473
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考えてい **る** makes sense because 考えている is _modifying_ 最中.

Question: What kind of 最中 were you in?  
Answer: 考えている最中
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2016-09-23T05:05:27.233
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[This answer](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/25378/10859), as shared in
comment, can be applied against this question too, I think.

I was not really aware of how Japanese tense works, but every example in the
answer sounds plausible, at least for me.

So the short answer for this question would be: it's because in Japanese tense
of a clause works relative against the main clause.
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