Was just making a cup of coffee after spending an hour or so working on the book club and thought to myself how much fun I’m having doing it. Thought that I’d express my appreciation for the sensei’s efforts and the patience and consideration for us novices. Thank you!
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Page 53, Panel 2, Yui
ちゃんと決めとくんだったな
Got a reasonable attempt but feel uneasy because deep learning disagrees
ちゃんと - lots of options here: properly, satisfactorily, exactly
決め - 決める - to decide
とく - contraction of ておく to do in advance
ん - is this the informal speech negative verb ending: not
だった - was
な - you know
you know [it] was not decided in advance properly
it wasn’t exactly decided in advanced you know
DL: I should’ve made a better decision.
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Pg. 53
I’m not 100% positive myself, but I read it very similar to you.
When using DeepL, you need to keep in mind that it will do leaps and bounds to make a translation sound more natural in the target language, no matter how far it strays from the original language’s grammar to do so.
When you think about it, “This wasn’t properly decided, you know…”
Isn’t a far leap to: “I should have made a better decision.”
The latter is just more natural English, and is fairly close to how I would have interpreted the phrase into sounding natural. (My interpretation would be more like: “I should have made the right decision.” Or even more liberally, “I should have thought this through more.”)
But either way, I think you broke it down correctly! Just gotta remember that DeepL isn’t perfect; for me, it’s a tool of last resort if I don’t understand something. I’ll go to every other tool on the list I made in the home thread before turning to a translator tool, personally.
Edit: Though, actually, taking a second look at the panels as I’m checking myself, it may actually be more along the lines of the actual breakdown. In the previous panel, she is talking about the range of the hide-and-seek game, then follows up with that statement, so I’m going to lean more towards her saying that the range hadn’t been decided on properly before beginning the game!
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Thanks for the quick reply. Yes, I use it as a check on what I’ve been thinking, very often it helps, occasionally it’s really different.
Happy about breaking it down properly, especially the ん
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I made an edit to add some info. It changes the interpretation a bit, but leaves the breakdown intact.
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page 53
This is the explanatory の. If it were ない I’m pretty sure it would have been ておかん, not ておくん.
So the break down goes,:
ちゃんと決めとく = properly decide beforehand
んだった= のだった explanatory の, literally “it was that”. This pattern is often used to express regret (see page 502 of Handbook of Japanese Grammar Patterns, or this link for example).
な - thinking aloud to oneself
So all in all, it would be something like “We should have decided properly in advance, huh” .
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I’ve gotten horribly behind due to the holidays and some health issues. I hope to be able to catch up to you all next week. Definitely been missing the book club. 
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perfect, thank you
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The game may not necessarily be violent, but it “properly shows blood (coming out)”. For all we know, Kotoha can be playing a hospital surgery game, but it could also be something like one of the Street Fighter games.
For those unaware, 「血が出る」 is the Japanese counterpart to saying “bleeding” in English. For example, if you fall and scrape your knee and it’s bleeding, a Japanese person would say it is 「血が出る」 (“blood is coming out”).
At its core, you can think of より as meaning “from” (in regards to distance). Thus, 「公園より外に」 would be “from the park to outside” or “to outside from the park”. Here, Yui figures the other two wouldn’t leave the park, which implies she will only look for them within the park.
I had no idea this scene was indoors!
(Looking back at that scene now, it’s kind of obvious. But when I originally read this series, I was probably a bit more focused on the words than the art.)
I’d say this is definitely it. Yui doesn’t know how far the others can go to hide, and thinks it should have been determined in advance.
I know how this can be. Worst case scenario, when we start week nine (new chapter) you can skip ahead to that to follow along at club pace, and return to any missed chapters later. Good luck!
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I’m also behind due to holidays and being a slow reader. I mostly just read through the weekly threads to answer my questions though, so I should be able to catch up eventually…though unlikely this week.
I’ve managed to keep up with the rest of my Japanese studies though!
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One option would be to skip forward to the current chapter and go back to chapters you’ve missed later on. I can’t see any major story arc developing.
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Get ready for a lot of questions next week, page 55 has kicked my bum…
You could say the meaning has passed me by. wah wah wahhh
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I also think the full expression would be written as 立ち入り禁止 but often gets printed on signs with just the kanji 立入禁止 probably just so it can be printed larger. It similar to 入り口 just written as 入口. It still gets read the same, but conserves space when trying to print it large on a sign. They are sort of abbreviations for convenience and are accepted ways to write the expressions even though the readings don’t really match the kanji.
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Not that anyone cares, but the first time I went to Japan I remember buying train tickets at the JR office behind them. I didn’t realize that until you posted the link to that Google Street. So cool to see it in the book. I love the real world locations.
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Week 8’s thread, concluding this chapter, is now up:
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Hmm. I caught the shinkansen from Ueno during my second trip to Japan, but since I entered the network at Uguisudani Station, I probably didn’t visit that ticket office. Maybe it was this one.
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I’m currently catching up and all the questions posted helped me out tremendously! I have one question left though, so if anyone still wants to chime in, I would really appreciate it:
I was wondering what the second part of this panel acutally means: 駅の方とかはさすがに.
The vocab-sheet lists さすがに as “as one would expect”. I found that とか means “such as” or “something like”. This leaves me with: Something like the station’s direction, as one would expect. But how does this fit here? Is it connected to the previous panel, where she is staring at a branch? Is she concluding from the branch that they went into the direction of the station? Or is this sentence connected to Yui thinking that the others probably didn’t leave the park?
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さすがに carries the meaning of reconfirming one’s evaluation or judgment of a matter. You can see this in the translation of “as one would expect” in that you are reconfirming that it (whatever it is) matches what you had previously evaluated or judged it to be (what you expected).
Here on page 53, Yui in the first two panels realizes that she doesn’t know how far the others are allowed to hide, and considers they should have decided that in advance. In the third panel, she first says they wouldn’t go outside of the park.
Next, she says 「駅の方とかは」 on the topic of something like the direction of the station, and her comment about this topic is 「さすがに」, she’s reconfirming her belief that they won’t go somewhere outside of the park, such as toward the station.
If I were translating this into English, rather than “as expected” (which in English suggests an actual confirmation), I’d probably go with “sure enough” (which is more reconfirming without an actual confirmation). “But, they wouldn’t go outside of the park. Sure enough, (they wouldn’t go) somewhere like toward the station.”
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さすがに is still very hard for me to wrap my head around. I was convinced that it was the exact opposite of what you said, so something like “surely they’ll be towards the station”. Here is an interesting (although not entirely enlightening) analysis on Tofugu: さすが (Sasuga) Is Not Always a Compliment.
The Handbook of Japanese Grammar Patterns says this on さすがに: “Used when someone (or something) that is usually evaluated in a certain way is put into an extraordinary situation and shows a result or behaviour that diverges from this evaluation.”
And Deepl offers this translation for our sentence: “I’m not sure if it’s the station or not.”
Colour me confused.
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I think this is a good rabbit hole to go down.
さすが (the noun) has a couple of uses, according to this Japanese dictionary page:
Essentially, “To confirm something rumored or expected is true, and to be impressed again.”
More or less, “Acknowledging something is true while having conflicting feelings about it.”
We can change this noun into an adverb by adding に to it, giving us さすがに. Now, it’s modifying the verb. The same dictionary includes adverbial definitions:
Meaning, “Understanding that a thing that was expected (predicted, anticipated, hoped) is true, and further being impressed again by that truth.” Synonyms given are なるほど and やはり.
An example sentence is given: 「一人暮らしはさすがに寂しい」 “さすがに, living by oneself is lonely.” You can fill in “as expected” or “sure enough” as an English translation for さすがに here.
Which we can read as, “Acknowledging something, but having conflicting feelings under certain circumstances.”
As an example sentence, 「味はよいが、これだけ多いとさすがに飽きる」 “The flavor is good, but if I have a lot of only this, さすがに I’ll get tired of it.”
(The third adverb definition is for 「さすがの…も」, so I’ve excluded it here.)
There’s a footnote on another usage of さすが as an interjection, such as in saying, 「さすが(に)、センスがいいね」 “さすが(に), she has good (fashion) sense.” That’s not applicable to Yui’s usage here, but it’s one that comes up a lot, so worth mentioning.
From here, I'm going off-topic of the panel, and am reading up more on さすがに.
なるほど and やはり were listed as synonyms, so it’s worth also looking at さすが(に) compared with those.
Here’s a page on さすがに and なるほど:
My translation:
In these examples, you can see both さすがに and なるほど have a sense of “sure enough”, although I feel “as expected” is better suited to さすがに and not so much to なるほど.
The page further goes on to say that さすがに is used when acknowledging the current situation is what was expected. なるほど is used when positively reconfirming what you heard or knew previously, or when you are convinced that the other person or thing makes sense.
It gives examples of when each can and cannot be used:
Comparison 1:
- 高いだけのことはあってさすがにうまい
- 高いだけのことはあってなるほどうまい
- It’s really expensive, and sure enough it’s really good.
Comparison 2:
- プロはさすがに上手だ
プロはなるほど上手だ- A pro is really good, as expected.
(I have to admit, the incorrect なるほど usage does sound “off” to me.)
Comparison 3:
- ひどい言葉に温和な彼もさすがに怒った
ひどい言葉に温和な彼もなるほど怒った- Sure enough, even a mild-mannered man got angry at the cruel words.
(Likewise here. I think it’s just a matter of reading/watching a lot of material, the brain’s pattern recognition eventually starts finding these situations where one word “sounds right” and the other would “sound wrong” if used.)
Comparison 4:
さすがに彼女は背が高い- なるほど彼女は背が高い
- Indeed, she is tall.
(This one, I don’t have a feel for.)
I’ve hit my time limit, but here’s a Japanese page that covers やはり and さすが(に) for the interested.
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