I surrender guys, back to the graded readers for some more time.
Too late, you’re here now.
Ask questions if you’re confused. 
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Besides not being out, throwing it far away probably gives the kids inside time to reset and gives them a break from being thrown at. If they just dodge the ball, another kid on the outside may get the ball and throw it at them again right away.
That is how dodgeball works too, and from the website describing the rules this game sounds the same. I think your interpretation that she wished she had just dodged the ball instead of trying to catch it makes sense.
some comments about the omake panel on p 15. Natsumi uses the kanji for mackerel. But it’s a weird one. All kanji for mackerel are weird to me, but this one especially, since I couldn’t find it and I can’t type it. It looks like 魚青. It looks like this on
http://www.kanjipedia.jp/kanji/0003935400
Everywhere else, the kanji has an 円 in the bottom right corner. Here the vocab list came in handy again… I guess I’ll spoiler the rest
my first time using this expand triangle thingy.
I wasn’t looking for this but I noticed that カギ 鉤 is a pun. This probably isn’t news. I’m just checking if I got the joke right. I think しめる is also a pun. The 6th definition of 締める on jisho is “to salt; to marinate…”. Hotaru is saying something like “instead of with a key, what can I use to lock the door with?”, but Natsumi is hearing something like “if not the fishing hook, then what should I marinate?”
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Huh. I didn’t even notice that. I wonder if maybe it’s some kind of handwritten variant (except that the stroke order on Jisho is the same, with 円). Googling turns up this page - if I’m not misreading (which is quite possible considering it’s almost midnight here and I should be in bed) it says 青 used to be written with 円, but is now written with 月, but 鯖 somehow failed to follow suit. Or something.
Seven Seas elected to go with the following for the English translation:
Hotaru: So why do you guys even have locks?
Natsumi: To put on our bagels?
Took me forever to get the pun, until I remembered that America calls thinly-sliced preseved salmon “lox”…
The issue is that she touched the ball but fumbled it. If she doesn’t catch it, it counts as a touch, so she’s out. (Weirdly, Seven Seas switched the text in the two speech bubbles in this panel. Wonder how many people that one managed to slip past.)
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I think it’s a font difference or variant. On kanjipedia on my phone I see the bottom as 月, but on my computer I see the bottom as 円. But even on my phone, if I copy that kanji from kanjipedia and paste it anywhere else, it shows up as with 円. Also, on jisho where it displays with the 円 on both my phone and computer, you can find it by using the 月 or 青 parts.
By “missing” I did mean “fumbling”… (just in case that wasn’t obvious)
Also, thank you for the lox pun! 
People must have a lot of fun coming up with these things.
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These puns almost always go over my head. Again, I kind of just assumed Natsumi was being silly.
Thanks for the link. That article pretty much settles it. It was a bit too difficult for me and I don’t care enough to work through it properly (sorry). But just by browsing through it quickly, I got the same impression as you (which I am now going to reiterate 
) .
Edit: I regretted reiterating this. It added nothing. So I deleted it. But I encourage everybody to go read the article if you are interested.
I did the same trick on my computer (safari 11.1.1) with the same result. For a while I was concerned that I had the wrong font installed.
のんのんびょり Page 11, Panel 5
Amateur Interpretation, I’m sure some of this is wrong.
Bubble 1
• いやいや冗談(じょうだん)冗談(じょうだん)
• No, no, it’s a joke
• 今まで床(ゆか)にはまった
• Until now, I got stuck in the floor.
• お間抜(まぬ)けさんなんて
• How stupid
• いないって
• I do not have it
• まあ一応気(おうき)をつけてって
• Well careful please
• 話(はなし)だけ
• Only the story
Bubble 2
• え
• What?
• あ…
• ah; oh expression of surprise, recollection, etc.
• そうですか
• Is that right?
You generally have to look at the text across lines (and sometimes bubbles) as continuous dialog.
今まで床にはまったお間抜けさんなんていないって
Literally: “Up to now, (things like) an idiot who got stuck in the floor doesn’t exist”.
So more naturally: “Up to now, nobody’s been stupid enough to get stuck in the floor”.
まあ一応気をつけてって話だけ
Basically this is saying “I’m just saying to be careful just in case”.
I think in this context 一応 means “just in case” and here 話 doesn’t really mean “story” so much as “conversation” or “the thing we were just talking about”. Honestly, I find this usage of 話 to be really hard to translate.
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Is this a Google Translate production? 
You’ve split one sentence into thirds, and in doing so you’ve lost the effect of the verb. Or more to the point, the negative verb.
It’s something like “So far, there’s been noone’s who’s stupid enough to get stuck in the floor”
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Thank you, I’m still struggling to recognize sentence boundaries in some cases with native writing. For example,
今まで床にはまったお間抜けさんなんていないって
I guess i haven’t learned yet what it means if a sentence/verb ends or is followed by って。
Yes, that’s right, I can’t always recognize the ends of sentences yet.
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I didn’t actually include the って part in my translation. In this case, って is just a casual quotation particle. The interesting thing is that if you were to use と you’d also generally specify what verb was acting on the quotation, such as 言う, 聞く, etc. In this case, I think って is probably replacing ということ, though I’m not 100% sure on that. I’m also not really sure how I’d translate it into English. My best attempt is “It’s the case that…[thing in quotation]”.
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Or maybe って思う
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Yeah, that would work too.
Well, this was a pleasant surprise.
After reading some comments, I thought that maybe it’d be too hard for me, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
I wouldn’t have liked to be overwhelmed by grammar, it seems it’s only vocabulary for the time being.
Also, bucket magic trick.
The second bucket changes from a small bucket here
and here
to a big bucket next to 床にはまったお間抜けさん 
I really like the art, but it feels too clean compared to other manga.
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Too… too clean?
You should give ゆるキャン a go, then - the manga-ka goes absolutely overboard with screentone. It’s heaps of fun otherwise, though.
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Perhaps I will, it seems good. 
I’m not sure I’m gonna have time to ask any questions I had about the text before we start Chapter 2, but I’m interested to know:
- it’s early days, but what are your first impressions of the manga?
- particularly if this is the first thing you’ve read with the book club, how are you finding it so far?
I’m not yet sure whether I enjoy the format, but I’m at least finding it interesting reading something with much shorter ‘scenes’ per chapter as a change. It’s kind of weird reading something I’ve seen as an anime! Especially as the character art style feels a little different.
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