Oops! 忘れちゃった! 
This last week felt eternal to me. 
Discussion of Chapter 57 starts here.
Let’s go! 
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I’ma just leave this here:
Heh. Pink elephants.
Yotsuba reaction shot of the week:
Or this?
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I’m glad you did! Not only was it interesting, it also led me through the Reddit Yotsuba page to a Youtube channel of Yotsuba study videos! Most seem to be from volume 2, as far as I can tell after a quick look, but they look really good. (I’ll add the vol.2 play-list to our vol.2 thread).
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I don’t get it. Are the hands just random hands, or from someone famous or something?
Hahah! Sorry, it’s a meme. 
Basically, when you see someone in that pose, you say, “You know I had to do it to em.” 
Also, those videos look cool, and I saw your comment.
But, sometimes they seem to read things incorrectly. Just a heads up. 
(But it’s not like you don’t know how to read it, so I guess it doesn’t matter. )
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Ah, that explains it. I’m a 50-something, who feels like a 60-something, who has been living in Asia for 20 years - no chance of me keeping up with memes! lol!
Oh no! That’s a pain!
(But yes, you’re right, I might not have very much Japanese, but at least reading and writing hiragana is pretty much second nature now… once again, thanks to Yotsuba and this bookclub!)
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Oof, yeah. I just started watching the first volume two video. She needs to read out the whole sentence before she starts breaking it down even if only to give people the sense of how it sounds - but the very first sentence in particular, she breaks のに in half because she didn’t get as far as the に before she started analysing the の. Also, she’s pronouncing ね as “nei”.
Kids these days…
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I didn’t want to mention her pronunciation, but yeah.
's a bit weird.
Like saying ホント as “hanto”.
Also too cheerful for my taste.
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It’s been a number of years since I read through Yotsuba&! in English (and I’m only up to starting volume 2 in Japanese aside from reading volume 9 here), so I hadn’t realized Yotsuba didn’t have Jurarumin yet. I was confused at first by Ena’s reaction until I reached 「そんな子はうちにはいません」 at which point it all fell into place. I of course had to start over to read the scene “correctly”.
なんべん = new word for me.
All the 「ここはなにやさん」 followed by the store name was nice.
Volume 9 continues to be a much easier read for me than volume 1 (which I had read just the other week).
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Hah, I’ve been reading along with the book club since volume two, and even I’m surprised by how late the bear is being introduced.
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よし! I’ve been going over vol.2 again with some of these videos and her grammar is amazing and very well explained. Nice work. But now back to volume 9, and a brand new chapter! Great stuff!
Thank you for any help you can offer with the following questions!
Page 33 - frame 2: Ena says: “this child (bear) is Julietta. I’ve said that many times. それで this bear is Ann で, and the bear next to her is Zeppet”. I’m a bit confused about それで. Jisho says “and; thereupon; because of that”, but that doesn’t seem to fit. Also, what is that で doing there?
Page 35 - frame 4: むかえに行く is 迎えに行く, right? “To pick someone up”. But, unless he is talking about the bear (and judging from pages 42 onwards it looks like the shop was as much a surprise to dad as it was to Yotsuba) we don’t see that happen. Unusual for things to be introduced like this and then not shown.
Page 38 - frame 2: why does Yotsuba say だった, rather than just だ?
Page 39 - frame 7:
奥にもっといいのが あるかもしんないだろ
奥に - inside
もっと - even more
いい - good
の - “one/s” - standing in for a noun? I forget the grammar terminology!
が - but - ??? I’m really not sure about this.
ある - there is
かもしんない - perhaps/might
だろ - I guess
“I guess there might be even better ones (shops) inside”.
Page 42 - frame 3: Yotsuba is saying one of the top three phrases I most often use! Lol!
Page 42 - frame 5: “because we have bought the thing we came out for, let’s also look in the bookshop”. What I don’t understand is the とりあえず . Which meaning does it have, and how would it fit into the sentence here?
I would do more, but what I thought was going to be a day in with Yotsuba has just changed completely! Got to dash out to meet a friend. Hopefully I’ll do more later. But yes, peeking ahead, this does look like a quite easy (and very lovely) chapter!
Thank you!
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From “How to Tell the Difference Between Japanese Particles” (Naoko Chino) page 61: “で) Following nouns, indicates that the noun is the reason for the situation given in the following verb.” In this case, the noun is それ, which is standing in for the prior sentence of “How many times do I have to say it!” Because she has to keep reminding Yotsuba is the reason why she then procedes to repeat the names of An and Zeppet.
I don’t know if the following で is the same or different. If it’s the same, it would be “Because this one is An, the next one over is Zeppet!” But maybe there’s another meaning I’m not familiar with for で.
I believe he was about to go get Yotsuba from Ena’s house. That’s why it’s good timing that she just came back.
I take it to read as, “It was a car dealership (that we were going to).” Remember, Yotsuba had asked her father where they were going, he asked her to guess, and when she guessed, he said she was wrong, and didn’t reveal their destination. If Yotsuba is referring to the earlier conversation, then it’s past tense because it “was” the answer to the question of “where are we going?”
I’d probably translate this だろ as seeking agreement. “There may be better ones inside, you know?”
I think the の makes もっといい into a noun, at which point we have “nounがある” (noun exists; “‘something more good’ exists”). This が marks the noun that (possibly) exists.
I was carefully piecing together her father’s sentence without a dictionary (豆 is bean, and 粉 is powder…) and then Yotsuba says ぜんぜんわからんなー, and I’m thinking, “I just figured out his whole line, and that’s what I get in return?”
For some reason, the かった in frame 4 confused me for more than a few seconds before I realized it was 買った. (Beginner Japanese learner: Why does Japanese have to have kanji? Early Japanese reader: Why aren’t they using kanji here?)
This is one of those words that I understand when it’s used based on having heard it in anime so much, but I can’t quite pin the given translation. Here I read it as “for now”, as in, “There are various places we can go and things can do while we’re here, but for now, let’s head to the book shop.”
It looks like there’s an agreement in this blog post, The Undecided Decision:
I may be wrong, but this matches the feel I got from the scene.
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Geppetto. Same as Pinocchio’s creator. (Before you protest “no, it’s definitely ゼ”, compare ゼリー 
)
I think it’s just the plain old clause-connecting て-form. “This is Ann, and…”
Yeah, “for now” or “for the time being” seems to be the definition I most often see for とりあえず, though that’s completely anecdotal.
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Thank you both so much @ChristopherFritz and @Belthazar! All your hard work there is much appreciated! Thank you!
Oh yes! My first few years here I wondered why they didn’t just ditch the kanji altogether, easier for everyone I thought! Now, when picking my way through a book, the kanjis are the solid rocks I rely upon to stop myself from drowning!
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Because I like to look things up:
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ピノッキオの冒険
「そして、そこに ジェッペット（ゼペット） じいさんが現れ、丸太を木の人形にし、ピノッキオと名付ける。」
Looks like a good match =D So, Geppetto it is.
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According to the English wiki:
So:
ゼペット = Geppetto (not Zepetto)
and
ジェッペット = Japheth
Is that right?
No, they’re both Geppetto, it’s just that the ジェ combination is a relatively recent addition to katakana (though my search fu is not strong enough to tell me exactly when it was added).
Edit: Aha. Found someone’s PhD dissertation which covers it - the Japanese government basically made it canon with the release of 外来語の表記 in 1991 (though they were essentially just writing down forms that people had already been using colloquially, even back in 1954 when the predecessor was released)
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I hate that it’s probably half because of that, and half because of it being known through the US, that Los Angeles is ロサンゼルス (commonly).
ロサンへレス would be perfect. 
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