Trying to figure this out, is it that the first kirei doesn’t count as an ajective because it’s attached to other stuff?
Verb + ように + Verb/Adjective
Verb + ような + Noun
あの人はまるで筆で書くような綺麗な字を書けます。
That person is able to write beautiful letters as if (they were) written with a brush.
君が言うように綺麗ですね。
It is beautiful, just like you say.
Believe it or not, it was more confusing two weeks ago.
P.S. It’s really difficult to read your sentences when the readings are in parentheses like that. I’d recommend doing this instead if you really want to show the readings.
あの人はまるで筆で書くような綺麗な字を書けます。
あのひとは まるでふでで かくようなきれいなじを かけます。
Or, if you want you can use ruby tags to add actual furigana, though it takes some extra time to write up.
あの人はまるで筆で書くような綺麗な字を書けます。
Generated from the following:
あの<ruby>人<rt>ひと</rt></ruby>はまるで<ruby>筆<rt>ふで</rt></ruby>で<ruby>書<rt>か</rt></ruby>くような<ruby>綺麗<rt>きれい</rt></ruby>な<ruby>字<rt>じ</rt></ruby>を<ruby>書<rt>か</rt></ruby>けます。
I just copied and pasted, and that’s how it came out. So did you get to the bottom of it? I’m still a bit unclear. Is it only に if the adjective has nothing attached to it? If the adjective is attached to a noun is it treated as part of a noun? Is this how it works in Japanese in general?
You can think of it being:
あの人はまるで筆で書くような 、 綺麗な字を書けます。
It means that the 字 is modified, not the 綺麗. If you use に which is also correct, you will modify the verb since it will be an adverb.
It is called relative clause. 
The adjective describes
「ゲームするのが上手」なさかもとは東京に住んでいます。
Sakamoto [that is great in playing games] lives in Tokyo.
「ゲームしている」さかもとは東京に住んでいます。
Sakamoto [that plays games as a hobby] is living in Tokyo.
The sentences in brackets modify/qualify the noun.
Cheers, think I get the gist of it, something I need to work on a bit. In the past sometimes I’ve not translated the whole sentence, just chucked the grammar point in, but I’m gonna start doing it properly every time so this should start to sink in. I was always a bit shakey on the にs and なs.
No worries, with time and experience it will get easier. My advice is: if you have a problem with long sentence, try to understand the gist of it, ignoring the adjectives, relative clauses, subordinate clauses etc. Then one by one start to consider them. Kind of like babooshka toy
Just encountered this one…
彼は食べすぎたような顔をしている。
He looks like he ate too much.
I put ように because I assumed it would refer to the verb, but the answer was な。The section after the な translates as looks. So is it that noun phrases are treated as a noun but verb phrases are not, or what?
In this case, only ような will work.
The noun 顔 is clearly modified here.
He is doing a face [as if he ate too much].
Is it accurate to say that if you use に, you’re modifying the entire phrase, not just the verb? The difference can be significant in some cases.
I.e. consider this dialog, written in English for simplicity:
Alice: This thing is big, beautiful, and cheap.
Bob: It is indeed big just like you say.
Bob does not agree that it is beautiful or cheap. The “just like” modifier isn’t merely modifying the verb (the copula). If it was, he’d be agreeing with all of your assertions about the thing’s existence (which completely changes the meaning of his response).
I made a more detailed response (with an actual Japanese example) in the official thread for this grammar point: ように・ような - Grammar Discussion - #31 by The111
I note there that the grammar point’s structure does not even include “modifier + phrase” as an option. I raised a similar issue on a separate grammar point here recently. It seems to be a general problem that some grammar points are missing the “modifier + phrase” option, even though that case is clearly happening in many of the example sentences.
This is particularly problematic since many grammar points DO include a “modifier + phrase” option, which seems to imply that when such an option isn’t listed, it shouldn’t be considered.
As far as I’m aware, it’s unfortunately contextual.
If you have a sentence like
彼は何もわからないように黒板をぼんやり見ていた。
“He was absentmindedly looking at the blackboard as though he didn’t understand anything.”
then it’s probably obvious that ような wouldn’t make sense, because then 彼は何もわからない would be modifying blackboard and that would be quite strange.
But there are cases where both ように and ような can work because the sentence could either be describing the way in which the entire following clause is performed, or it could be modifying just the noun, but that modified noun still makes sense in the clause in which it is contained.
Perhaps something like
彼は嬉しそうに笑顔をしていた。
“He was smiling as though he was happy.”
彼は嬉しそうな笑顔をしていた。
“He was making a happy-seeming smile.”
Pardon the clunky translations. The point is that ように (or in this case, そうに) is an adverb that thus modifies the following verb-containing phrase 笑顔をしていた, describing the manner in which the boy smiles. ような (or そうな here), on the other hand, is an adjective that modifies the following noun 笑顔. The meaning is effectively the same, but grammatically the choice of な vs に indicates what exactly the 嬉しそう is modifying.
Sometimes one or the other will sound better to native speakers, so I’d just recommend taking note of how you see them being used in native material to try and build up native-like intuition over time.