耳をすませば 📚 | Week 2 Discussion

Chapter 1 (second half)

Start Date: 2022-09-16T15:00:00Z
Last Week: Chapter 1 (first half)
Next Week: Chapter 2 (first half)

耳をすませば Home Thread

Pages

This week we’re reading pages 31–54, as per numbering in the physical re-release.

For digital readers, this week is pages 27–50. However, your reader software’s internal page counter may list this week as pages 28–51 (due to counting the cover page).

The final page should be a white page with an image in a corner.

Here is the image from the digital release.

image

Vocabulary List

Please read the editing guidelines in the first sheet before adding any words!

Discussion Guidelines

  • Please blur out major events in the current week’s pages, and any content from later in the book/series, like this: [spoiler]texthere[/spoiler]

  • When asking for help, please mention the page number (or % for eBooks).

  • To you lurkers out there: join the conversation, it’s fun!

Participants

Mark your participation status by voting in this poll:

  • I’m reading along
  • I’m planning to catch up later
  • I’m skipping this book

0 voters

If you’ve read it before but will join in the discussion (or have read ahead), please select “I’m reading along”!

8 Likes

For those who’ve seen the animated adaptation, you’ll notice a big difference regarding a certain character this week.

Comparison (seven pages into this week's reading)

image

11 Likes

Uwaaa… I love this art style, it’s so pretty I wanna just keep reading! And the airship scene really was giving me nostalgia for other Ghibli films :blush:

Questions

On page 41:
This station is described as: 「(ちか)いのに一度(いちど)()りたことのない(えき)
I already got: “It’s a station that is near but (I have never gone a step down???)”. Or can ()りる also mean to get off at a station?

On page 47:
So, Shizuku thinks: 「()いたかった(ひと)()えたような」
Does this mean something like “It’s like I can meet the people that I met”?

5 Likes
Pg. 41

降りる is indeed used when you talk about getting off at a station, or just getting out of vehicles in general (bus, taxi, car, bike, etc).

Pg. 47

I haven’t read the chapter yet (and it’s been ages since I watched the movie), so maybe context would inform more, and I will change my answer later, but I read the sentence without that context as:

“It’s like (ような) I could have met (会えた) the person who I wanted to meet. (会いたかった人)”

7 Likes

Having seen the film a couple of times, I’m enjoying experiencing the source material and discovering the differences between it and the adaptation a lot. Loving Luna as much as Muta so far.

Question about p. 44 (digital) / p. 47 (physical)

I’m wondering about the following:

胸の奥 押しよせてくる

Jisho defines 押し寄せる as “to advance on; to close in; to march on; to descend on (the enemy); to move towards; to surge forward (crowd, wave of nostalgia, wave, etc.); to rush for (the door); to inundate; to overwhelm; to push aside​”.

My guess is this means something along the lines of “[All sorts of feelings] stirred up deep in my heart,” tying it to いろんな 気持ち in the next panel. Does this approach what is being expressed here?

7 Likes

I haven’t watched the film yet but am definitely looking forward to seeing everything come to life when we finished this book!

p. 47

I read it as “deep in my chest all sorts of feelings came rushing in” which means practically the same. But you probably shouldn’t quote me on that :sweat_smile:

7 Likes
Pg. 42

Same, Shizuku, same.

10 Likes

I lost like 5 minutes trying to figure out the sign before I read that part… sigh

7 Likes

Luckily I’m lazy and so read ahead a bit before trying to figure how how to translate things.

7 Likes

@2OC3aOdKgwSGlxfz Me too. I did consider for a second reading it backwards but then went looking up to see if it was possibly a word read the right way too. :sweat_smile:


I must say the onomatopoeia was so on point this chapter. The sound the train along the tracks, really brought me sensory memories. The cicadas really driving home the summer feels. I really loved the sound of cicadas when I’ve visited (and lived) in Japan. We don’t have them in Sweden, there are others but not as omnipresent. The sound of the Luna’s running.

Like onomatopoeia/sound effect often adds something, but it has never so fully immersed me in a scene before. I hope as I get more familiar with it, it can do that more and more. :slight_smile:

Otherwise I’m not sure I have much to say about this week’s reading. I like the nice, relaxed vibe of the whole thing. Shizuki’s love of summer comes through and helps me enjoy it with her. (If I was actually there, I’d be wilting in the heat.) (Not sure that could be seen as a spoiler, but it does give hints to what this week’s reading contains so better safe than sorry.)

8 Likes

I just finished this week’s reading and have three questions I would like to ask:

Page 34

I have a lot of trouble understanding what the father says in this panel (both text balloons).
My guess: “yes, that’s tough, so to say” (I didn’t get the 言われると part)
The last balloon I just didn’t understand.

Page 35

Also not sure about this one, does it mean “I want to go meet (him/her)”
Is this a standard grammatical construction (te form + verb stem + tai)?

Page 44

Could you translate this as: “At this place, such a shop exists!!” ?

Regarding the story itself, I’m very curious to find out more about the relation between the boy and the cat. I wonder what will happen next chapter!

6 Likes

I can’t answer all your questions right now (don’t have the book close to make sure of context around).

Page 34

I didn’t attribute the speech bubbles as you did. I did: father, Shizuki, father.

So to me the exchange went something like this (loosely paraphrased because I never really translate Japanese to English):
Father: Leaving that aside/other than that, have you finished your summer vacation homework?
Shizuki: No. And since you mentioned it, it is hard/painful.
Father: Moderately get it done. (In looking up ほどほどに I got a sense for what it means, but I can’t figure out a translation I would be even close to happy with, so I just went with the jisho definition that barely makes sense.)

But if I got the text bubbles assigned wrong, then I have no idea what they’d mean. I am finding this manga rather bad at attributing bubbles well. So if I can’t make sense of what is being said, I assume I’ve guessed wrong who said what and try to shift them around to see if I can make sense of it better.

Page 44: I think I basically got the same meaning as you. So hopefully the answer is yes. xD

8 Likes

(If you’d prefer not to have random drive-by contributions from a not-currently-reading-the-book poster, please ignore this post…)

Page 34

I agree with you about who’s saying what. For bubble 2, 言われる is passive, so it’s more like “when you say it like that it’s kinda hard/tough”, ie it’s not the homework that’s hard so much as the parent putting them on the spot about whether they’ve done it all yet.

The sense of bubble 3 is I think “well, get it done at a reasonable pace” (i.e. it’s not a big deal if you’re not done yet, but don’t leave it all to the last minute).

Page 44

I would translate that like as “Who’d have thought that a shop like this was in a place like this!”, given the なんて

9 Likes

Appreciate you adding onto my answers. Details make such a huge difference. And thanks for the clarification on the second speech bubble on page 34, I really wasn’t entirely sure myself what it meant except in the vaguest sense.

Please feel free to stop by again! :+1:

5 Likes

It is ~te miru pattern:

So I went with “I want to try to meet him.” Which indicates to me that she is willing to take action from her site rather than just hoping for it to happen.

Hope this helps :blush:

7 Likes

Page 36 usage of the kanji 越, which is in wanikani.

The whole phrase (since it is apparently not in the digital) is "ガラス越しに風が呼ぶ” I think the translation for this would be “the wind calls through the glass”.

I think the mistake I made was using 越える and not 越す. The comment made was that “ガラス越し seems to be a set verb”. I’m not sure what a set verb is, so happy to be enlightened.

I do think this is in Genki I, page 174 at the top. I guess with 呼ぶ being treated as movement? Hence you can use what Genki I does not clearly title as "verb stem + に行く”。And so ガラス越し in my mind, and with this terminology, a verb stem (with a particle missing between glass and 越す).

also: https://jlptsensei.com/learn-japanese-grammar/しにいく-ni-iku-meaning/

4 Likes

Maybe the term “set phrase” would be better - I don’t think it’s a verb (possibly an adverb?).

I found it in Jisho:

Edit: I note jisho says it’s a noun, but I’m not certain that’s correct either.

6 Likes

Thank you!!

2 Likes

Unfortunately not. Verb stem + にいく/ にくる/ にかえる is used to express a target or purpose of a movement and works only with to go / to come / to return. E.g. “I went to the library to read: 図書館に読みに行った。”

What happened here is that two words were put together to form a new noun: ガラス + 越し became ガラス越し.

Summary

Since I don’t know about Genki textbooks, I can’t say when or if they teach about the so called ren’youkei form of a verb can sometimes transform it into a noun. Here is a very extensive blog post on that form, but only the first two paragraphs (until the first table) will do as a start. (I find the post quite overwhelming to be honest :blush: )

Maybe the following two discussions on reddit and stack overflow are interesting as well:

Last week we had 貸出 as an example. The related verb would be 貸し出す. (Or, to share one of my current leeches… 手洗い.)

So, we were kind of reading together then :slight_smile: I made the comment since I was genuinely confused since I couldn’t find the 越える. I hope, I didn’t came down rude or anything and if I did I’m very sorry for that :pray:

I meant to write “set noun” which probably doesn’t exist in English language if I interpret the confusion the “set verb” did correctly. A little bit off topic… but how do you call terms made of two (or multiple) other words? Maybe “combined noun” or you simply say noun? Thanks already and sorry again for the confusion.

5 Likes

how do you call terms made of two (or multiple) other words? Maybe “combined noun” or you simply say noun?

I would say “compound noun”. This is also how I would interpet ガラス越し.

6 Likes