シメジシミュレーション | Week 2 Discussion 🍄

Japanese Language Reading
#1

Chapter 2: よしか

Pages 17 - 26

Start Date: 3rd October
Last Week: Chapter 1
Next Week: Chapter 3

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Vocabulary List

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シメジシミュレーション・Shimeji Simulation :mushroom: (Beginner Book Club)
シメジシミュレーション | Week 1 Discussion :mushroom:
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シメジシミュレーション・Shimeji Simulation :mushroom: (Beginner Book Club)
#2

Well, there’s the main character’s names. Heh.

And that was thoroughly weird.

5 Likes
#3

I’m gonna have to reread this chapter for some details once the vocab list is up (huge thanks to everyone contributing to it!), but this manga seems like just my thing, I love somewhat weird slice of life stories! Really glad I decided to join this book club :mushroom:

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#4

The vocab list for this week was empty when I got there so I filled it in as I read the chapter. Hopefully no major errors… :sweat_smile:

As expected, another weird chapter. I wondered last week what was going on with the fish on page 6, this week we learn a bit more about what big sister is up to although still very mysterious!

I wasn’t sure what to make of the bottom right panel on page 20: わっすごい食いついた. Deepl suggested, “Wow, I got a bite!” Perhaps Majime feels that she finally caught Shijima’s attention?

Page 24: 昔むらでですか？ Is she saying - “In the old village?” It feels like the obvious comment would be you’re fishing with a light bulb in the long grass.

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#5

I haven’t read that far but Jisho suggests: https://jisho.org/search/食いつく
Maybe #2 “to get one’s teeth into (metaphorically); to get to grips with; to really get into” might fit best if it’s a metaphorical situation?

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#6

Nah I think @Micki has the right meaning. It’s the first time she says something that gets a positive reaction out of Shijima

You’ve misread this, it’s 草むら meaning grass (long grass like in pokemon?)

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#7

Different kanji, it’s 草むら (くさむら, ‘the grass’).

That was my first guess, but I noticed that a scanlation interpreted it more along the lines of her being really into that pen case. But I like ‘I got a bite’ better, because a fishing metaphor ties in well with the fish-shaped pencil case and her older sister fishing as well.

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#8

Argh! So frustrating when that happens! I kept looking at the むら thinking I’m sure this has something to do with grass. I didn’t spot I’d misread the 草. We had this word not long ago in the last chapter of kitty detectives.

@yukinet - this word will now be going in my anki deck!

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#9
Quick Page 19 question

What is the hand-written kanji in the first panel here?
好きに〇ん…て
I’m learning a lot about how hiragana looks as handwriting vs. as a typed font, haha.

#10

It says 好きに呼よんで

Edit: sorry, I meant to reply you @chemifox

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#11

Thank you! I just could not see it for some reason. That makes the rest of the page make more sense, too. :smiley:

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#13

Finally started reading this (a week late), and I’m definitely enjoying the weirdness :smile: The surreal feeling of it is totally my thing. I think this might be the first 4-koma I’ve actually enjoyed reading xD よしか is weirdly cute <3 The whole sequence with egg girl and her “yoshi” names was hilarious to me xD

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#14

Can I ask why you found 4-koma less enjoyable in the past? What was the difference compared to a usual manga? This is my first time reading one.

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#15

They can be a fairly solid read. I enjoy reading 4-koma a lot in English, but for some reason, in Japanese they can occasionally feel like a chore instead.

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#16
A miniature essay dissecting my feelings on 4-koma (I'm very wordy, sorry)

Mainly basing my opinion off my experience with One Week Friends, but that one kind of put me off from wanting to try other 4-koma manga xD A big reason is that they tend to be more text-dense than non-4-koma, and I generally don’t enjoy text-dense manga as much, whether they’re 4-koma or not.

There’s also an element of personal preference: there’s something about the 4-koma format that feels…off to me for some reason, if there’s supposed to be any kind of overarching story line. Like the pacing just doesn’t work well for me. Because each 4-panel vignette tries to be a fairly self-contained “episode,” the overarching story gets broken up weirdly and doesn’t flow as well (in my opinion) as in non-4-koma manga. And even though there’s a lot of text, they somehow don’t accomplish much of anything story-wise within a 4-panel vignette, so getting through a single 4-panel vignette doesn’t feel that rewarding (maybe I don’t get the jokes and/or don’t find them that funny most of the time? At least, not funny enough that it felt like they were worth all the work? idk). I feel kind of the same way about some newspaper comics in English too - the pacing of the overarching story (if there is one) is sooo slow, and the individual vignettes are often not that rewarding/entertaining for me (there are definite exceptions, but in general). But in English, it doesn’t matter to me as much if the comic is only mildly amusing, because it takes like 15 seconds to read a strip. Reward is approximately equal to effort. This is not the case with 4-koma in Japanese xD

But I don’t have any of those complaints with this one so far. :woman_shrugging: Maybe it was more of a “One Week Friends” problem than a general 4-koma problem. It probably helps that this one’s pretty slice-of-life-ish, so plot/pacing isn’t really an issue. Maybe the humor is more my speed, too xD

tl;dr it’s that good old “effort >>> reward” problem xD

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#17

Yeah, I remember doing a count of speech bubbles for One Week Friends, and I think I found that 4-koma pages had about twice as many lines as free-form pages.

Well, one thing about 4-koma is that it’s got a fairly well-defined structure - 起承転結きしょうてんけつ.

First panel = 起 = setting the scene
Second panel = 承 = developing the scene
Third panel = 転 = the climax, an unexpected twist!
Fourth panel = 結 = the payoff, the punchline

But yeah, I agree that when it comes to reading 4-koma in Japanese, it sometimes feels like I put a bunch of effort into reading it, and still miss the joke. Probably why I enjoy it more in English - all the joke with none of the effort.

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#18

I’ve liked fishing bits in this chapter.

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#19

Just finished the chapter, kind of late :sweat_smile: Two questions:

Page 18
「目玉焼きはのってたらしいけど」「うそつけ」
I kind of understand what they’re saying, but I’m confused as to who is saying what. By the characters’ positions on the panel above, I guess Shijima is the one saying “it seems?? like you [were born] with the fried egg on your head” and Majime responds “liar/not true”. But I’m not sure I’m understanding it correctly or if it’s the other way around.

Page 19
「まあ名前なんてなんでもいいけど」
「もーすぐなげやりになるー」
Is it: “Call me whatever” “You’re becoming?? careless”/“That’s careless”? It’s the second sentence I’m least sure about, with the use of になる and すぐ。

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#20

It’s the other way around - Majime says the first line. That it ends with けど implies it’s following on from the previous bubble, which was spoken by Majime.

More like “You’re quick to stop caring” I’d say.

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#21

Page 18: I think it’s the other way around actually :sweat_smile:
In the panels before that, Shijima is speculating that Majime got her name because her parents saw that she was wearing glasses when she was born. Majime objects but then continues “but the fried egg seems to have been in place”. Which was countered by Shijima with 嘘つけ (うそ is a common way to express disbelief. I haven’t heard 嘘つけ yet but I guess it serves the same purpose here).

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