That’s interesting. Thanks!
yeah, speed is probably part of the problem. Like on pg 54, I figured that the first speaker was probably her friend - Hanae had told a cat story and then her friend was like, oh, I have a cat story too. Right? But then by the time I’d struggled through the back-and-forth to p55 I’d lost track of who was speaking.
And the idea of having to go back and figure it out again made me want to cry. I read VERY fast in English so I think that makes it extra hard for me to have patience.
.
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Yea, if you read fast in English then the pace of reading Japanese is going to be very frustrating. But the only way to build up speed in Japanese is to get through the tedious slow process of translation. We’ll all get there eventually but there’s a lot of stuff to get through on the way.
Personally speaking, I find reading light novels and short stories more satisfying than reading manga. Just my personal choice so the pain is worth it to me.
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Yes, it’s very slow. I go a few pages at a time and each page seems to take forever.
I also read English quite fast so it is definitely frustrating.
Remember though it’s not just about reading the story, it’s about getting to grips with a language that has a grammar almost completely alien to the English speaker’s mind. Try to think a bit about how sentences are composed and how the different parts interact rather than just guessing how the words can be put together.
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If I understand correctly want you want to do, here’s a recommendation: I use the Kanji search of the Android App “Aedict” if I want to identify a Kanji i don’t know. It has several search modes for Kanji, and one of them works like this: You select a radical which is part of the Kanji. Then the App will show you all Kanji that include this radical, sorted by stroke number. It also lets you select further radicals included in the Kanji to narrow the search. Especially when I’m not sure about stroke number/order this approach works really well for me.
Hope that helps a little and I didn’t miss the point 
Soooo I finally caught up with you guys after two pretty slacky weeks (lots to do at work, lazyness, hitting WK lvl 5 and getting overwhelmed by the number of new lessons - but that’s no excuse, so sorry about that ).
To redeem myself a little (guilty as charged) I just finished getting the vocab sheet up to speed - added a second table for story 2 aswell, hope that makes sense and I didn’t make too many mistakes picking the right translations (as usual please feel free to correct them if you find them).
Will try not to slack too much this time
Thanks everyone - this group is awesome, learning a LOT here and loved the first story too 
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And place names. 
Page 56, Just to get ourselves on-topic again 
I was going to post this as a question but I could answer myself. I share my findings with everybody.
一本松さんは お茶をいれながら、カポネをみて わらった。
一本松さんは = Concerning Mrs 一本松
お茶を = tea
いれ = …
ながら = while
Here was my question. I’ve read that ながら is used as “verb stem+ながら” to mean “while verb-ing”. So I was looking for the stem of what was いれ, which was strange because all examples in tae kim’s guide about ながら used verbs whose stems ended with an “i” sound:
- 走る => 走りながら
- 歩く => 歩きながら
- 聞く => 聞きながら
But then I saw that る verbs stem is just the verb without る. So いれ should be いれる’s stem!
A further dictionary search showed that besides the typical “insert/input” meaning, いれる can be used for “to make tea/coffee”. 
This leaves us in…
Mrs 一本松, while preparing tea…
カポネをみて = looked at カポネ
わらった = and smiled
Mrs 一本松, while preparing tea, looked at カポネ and smiled.
Hope the stem thingy is useful for somebody ^^.
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Wow! That is amazing! Thank you so much!
Thank you so much for that! What a brilliant breakdown of the sentence and the grammar! Thank you!
Pag 54
ねこって言えば、うちの近所の一本松さんのいえで きのう、へんなじけんが あったのや。
The bit I have problem translating is this うちの近所の一本松さんのいえで
Why would they put both うち and いえ？
Would it be something like “at mrs ipponmatsu house, in the neighbors houses”?
Thank you, that is really helpful!
Page 54
I think you are right. I read the first うち as 内. So that 内の近所 is “in the neighbourhood”, and the whole phrase is “in the neighborhood, at Mrs Iponmatsu’s house”.
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I’m not part of the reading group but stopped by out of curiosity an noticed your message.
I don’t understand the entire context, but am confident that うち can be translated as I/me/us/ours. In other words, the translation might be closer to “my neighbor’s house”.
https://www.quora.com/What-does-“uchi”-mean-in-Japanese-What-are-some-pronunciation-tips
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Page 56
あたしは マッチといっしょに その家に おじゃますることにした。
あたしは - I (+ topic marker)
マッチといっしょに - together with Machi
その家に - to that house (the one they were talking about)
おじゃまする - Jisho says お邪魔 means hindrance; intrusion, but there is clearly more going on as it also says the phrase お邪魔します is used when entering someone’s house, “excuse me for disturbing you”.
(I’m so terrible at Japanese, I’ve been here all these years, visit my in-laws often, but I’ve never used this phrase! I must make an effort to next time! They will be shocked!)
Jisho also has an example sentence that translates it as “popping over”. I love that. So Hanae is saying that she and Machi popped over there.
ことにした - but here is my problem!
I guess ことに is nominalisation and した is did.
ie, “we did this thing of popping over to the house” - but why!
Why not just say “we popped over to the house”?
Any ideas?
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Page 54
Oh yes, that makes much more sense! Thank you so much for stopping by and helping out!
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Page 56
I think you’re missing the に there… I think 何々にする could mean “to decide to do something”. Or at least I did read it like that and since it had a lot of sense I did not bother asking a question ^^.
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So the こと is used to nominalise the verb, then you add にする to say you decide to do?
So, おじゃますることにした = [we] decided to pop round!
I see! Perfect! I’ve never come across this before! Very useful! Thank you!
Edit: found the grammar here at Tae Kim.
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Oh yes, it makes completely sense!
Thank you!