Yeah, the fact that Koiwai and Jumbo get so mad at him makes it sound to me like there’s an extremely obvious pun that they just failed to spot when they set the date, like if they’d coincidentally decided to visit the local botanic gardens on Greenery Day. I tried Googling it too, and got a bunch of people amused by it, some people running with it (“It’s cow day! Let’s eat yakiniku!”), but noone explaining it.
Maybe we should flag whichever Tofuguite whose job it was to come up with those weird goroawase day celebrations and see if they can make heads or tails of it.
Aye, in some ways, that almost confused me even more…
I went down the rabbit hole and came back with some crackpot theories on this pun
So…「う・し」
That dot in the middle also really bothered me. So I started searching up words that read う and し, like he’s making the one word, うし, into two words. し, as many of us probably know, can be written with the kanji 死, meaning “death.” That seemed like it had some comedy potential xD う didn’t turn up as much, but I did find that 卯 has this reading. This is the fourth Chinese zodiac sign, for the hare. I thought this was interesting because 丑, read as うし, is another Chinese zodiac sign (the ox), and also the kanji used to write 丑の日, which links us back to 牛の日. (This is like that six degrees of separation game).
…So then my theory was that Jumbo and Koiwai were born in the year of the hare, and Yanda is telling them that this is the day they’ll die xD Although I don’t know how on Earth we would know that, as the readers.
In the end, I think I like the archaic(?) version better: 得死の日 xD
How does this connect to “it’s 9/25” you may ask? I actually don’t know. But since we know that 丑の日 is not on 9/25, we know that because it’s 9/25, today must be a different うしのひ.
But why would he be emphasizing it like that, if it’s not supposed to be some sort of pun? And usually the dots are used to separate out katakana words - I think that’s why my mind went there. I don’t really think anything up there is right because it all felt pretty obscure, but I still feel like there’s something we’re missing.
Idk I’m also sick and not all there right now tbh. I’m probably spouting nonsense worse than Yanda
I think this may be one of those situations where if he said something random in English, we would all be like, “Yeah, that just makes no sense.” but since it’s in Japanese, we’re like, “What does it mean?”
Yeah…that’s probably it tbh. I do seem to have a lot of problems with things like that xD Japanese non-sequiturs really bring out my inner conspiracy theorist.
When does that phase of learning stop
Indeed! As you can tell from the response he gets in the next frame!
Ah, but that’s a good point too!
Edit: Someone asked about this very page on Hi-native a few years ago, and the replies are good….
Edit 2: Just asked my very own native-expert before she goes to bed, and she mentioned 土用の丑の日 but said that yes, it has nothing to do with September 25th and that Yanda has just put everything together wrong and is talking nonsense.
I was going to say, this chapter’s really long if it starts here, but apparently I just missed the chapter start and was going to start reading next week’s chapter! Oops.
じゃあ - well then
とくべつに - 特別, special, + に
つれていって - 連れる, to take someone along, in て form, plus 行く in て form
やる - to do…
…@Kazzeon taught me about this やる, as definition 15, only yesterday! Thank you! So here is Yotsuba telling Yanda that she’ll bring him along as a very special favour, and she addresses him as equal or lower status! Fabulous! I’m having a proper giggle over this!
I’ve been really busy lately, but this club always helps me relax.
It’s pretty cozy here compared to the other book club threads, I get overwhelmed by the amount of people, and can’t usually keep up.
I guess that’s why I can relate.
