一週間フレンズ | Week 1 Discussion

Japanese Language Reading
#1

Week 1 Discussion | Pages 3 - 12

Chapter 0: 友達のハジマリ

Start Date: 10th August
Next Week: Chapter 0 Part 2

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一週間フレンズ Home Thread

Last dialogue bubble of page 12 for eBook readers:
何それ
こわい。。。
(The last page before it first switches out from 4-koma format)

Part of the Beginner Book Club!

Vocabulary List

Please read the editing guidelines in the first sheet before adding any words!

Discussion Guidelines

  • Please use spoiler tags for major events in the current week’s pages and any content from later in the book/series, like so: [spoiler]texthere[/spoiler]

  • When asking for help, please mention the page number (or % for eBooks).

  • Don’t be afraid of asking questions, even if they seem embarrassing at first. All of us are here to learn and someone else will probably be grateful you asked!

  • People usually find that they engage with and enjoy the discussion much more if they don’t read ahead, though of course it’s up to you :wink:

  • To you lurkers out there: join the conversation, it’s fun!

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一週間フレンズ ・ One Week Friends (Beginner Book Club)
一週間フレンズ ・ One Week Friends (Beginner Book Club)
一週間フレンズ | Week 2 Discussion
[Looking for Nominations!] Beginner Japanese Book Club // Starting Soon: Death Note
#2

It begins! And I’m rather anticlimactically going to go to bed :grin: but I will see you all in the morning…

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#3

Here’s a few fun bits of information for week one.

Kanji by WaniKani Level

Edit: I was missing one instance of 係 (WK 16) when I put this together. This only impacts the kanji total (308, not 307). The unique kanji total and levels with (rounded) percentages remain unchanged.

This first week of reading includes 308 kanji total, comprised of 146 unique kanji. (This is excluding names.)

Your recognition of unique kanji based on your current WaniKani level should be (percentages are rounded):

  • Level 3: 10%
  • Level 6: 25%
  • Level 11: 50%
  • Level 23: 80%
  • Level 33: 90%
  • Level 46: 99%
  • Level 51: 100%

Some kanji are used more than others. 俺 comes up 14 times, yet 聞 only comes up once. Knowing 俺 will help you more than knowing 聞 for this selection of pages. When considering the total kanji you should recognize based on your current WaniKani level, the numbers (rounded) are:

  • Level 2: 10%
  • Level 3: 14%
  • Level 4: 20%
  • Level 8: 50%
  • Level 16: 75%
  • Level 32: 90%
  • Level 45: 99%
  • Level 51: 100%

Recommended Vocabulary

Recognizing kanji doesn’t mean you’ll know the vocabulary it’s used in, but it’s the first step. If you see a kanji you know paired up with one you don’t know, learning it now can make it easier to learn the other kanji when you reach it in WaniKani.

The most common kanji you’ll see in week one is: 「藤宮」 This is Fujimiya’s family name.

Aside from that, common vocabulary you’ll want to know:

  • 友達 (appears eight times)
  • 数学 (appears six times)
  • 理由 (appears three times)

The following each come up two times:

  • 物好き (rendaku is your friend)
  • 仲良く
  • 先生
  • 勇気
  • 学科
  • 自分

Tiny Kanji

Many manga include dialogue outside of speech bubbles. These are typically handwritten in smaller text and do not include furigana. This can be difficult to read for anyone reading the digital release. Here’s what’s in the first week’s reading:

Page 7:

  • 「皆教卓の上にノート置いてけー」

Page 9:

  • 「藤宮さんって冷たい」
  • 「だから嫌だったのに」
  • 「自分で行けよ」

Page 10:

  • 「藤宮さん俺も運ぶから」

Page 12:

  • 「数学科室」(sign on door)
  • 「教室戻ろう…」
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#4

Q1: So I was actually wondering about a thing from page3:
人と関わろうと はせず
The first part meaning “to engage with people”, and the second part should be some kind of negative form of it? But it’s the first time I see it, and looking it up I only find はず as a grammatical form…

#5

It’s the particle は, and then せず, which is what する looks like when you put a ず on it.
It means more or less the same thing as 人と関わろうとはしないで which you can learn more about here (or your resource of choice).
I’m not looking at the book, but presumably it’s starting a sentence like “Without even trying to connect/interact with anyone…”

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#6

Thank you so much!

Q2: On page 5, the teacher is calling out Hase rather rude - お前 and やれ and the mentioning of his last test… isn’t this rather uncommon?

Q3: On page 5, they make a differentiation between 机 and 教卓 meaning desk and teachers desk … is there like an actual physical differentiation between the two, or is it just a figure of speech?

#7

:woman_shrugging:

I find the best way to answer questions like that when I have them is an image search
(There’s a difference)

Edit:no one has clicked on it so no one may have noticed but ‘an’ is a separate link

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#8

🤦 Why didn’t I think of this… Thank you

#9

Okay, couple of questions to start.

Page 3

He says 俺はそんな彼女を見てただ, followed by “I thought I’d like to become friends”.

I’m not totally certain of the nuance of 見てただ. I’d interpret the phrase as “I’ve only looked at her but”, but that feels like I’m squishing two meanings into ただ: it can mean ‘only; merely’ and it can also mean ‘however; nevertheless’, but can it really convey both at once?

Otherwise, is it just “I’ve only looked at her… I thought I’d like to become friends”? I would have thought that in that position it would be playing the role of the conjunction rather than an adverb…

Page 6

Last panel of RH strip. 成績的な意味で

?

話したこともないのに どこがいいわけ？

Not totally sure of this use of どこ - is いいわけ ‘explanation / excuse’? In which case, is this literally “where is your explanation [for why you’re interested in her despite never having talked to her]”?

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#10

I think you’re tacking the ただ onto the wrong sentence part. It’s “見て、ただ友達になりたいと思った” (also with the space after 見て)

I saw her, and simply thought, “I want to be friends”

I would like some clarification on that, too :smiley:

It’s not いいわけ meaning “excuse”. It’s どこがいい (“what part/feature/characteristic is good?”, the どこ is not really referring to a place, but kind of) + わけ, with the wake probably being some sort of untranslatable thing (my bet is that it’s point 5 in this stackexchange post) that probably doesn’t add too much meaning (which is why I kind of ignored it)
So, “You’ve never even talked, what (part) do you like about her, anyway?”

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#11

:exploding_head:

Right, well, that makes sense now :sweat_smile:

Dangit, that’s what I originally thought, but then the わけ was throwing me.

#12

Found some more nuance on the わけ (since it seems like the phrase どこがいいわけ comes up often)
Basically, the わけ emphasizes that his friend doesn’t agree with him or can’t understand why he likes her.

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#13

I really like the art style and story introduction so far.
Sorry to be no further help with the grammar questions though.

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#14

I checked this out and I think I’ll join this reading for a change. It shouldn’t take too long to read and the concept is interesting.
I’d never seen a manga that mixed regular pages with 4-panel ones before :thinking:

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#15

The coloured pages are really beautiful.

Ah, I was wondering if this was weird or not! I don’t have much experience with the 4-panel format so wasn’t sure if it was standard to mix it up or not. Great to have you join :blush:

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#16

I don’t think it’s toooo weird. K-On did it as well, as I recall.

I don’t really know how Japanese comic publishing works… I know a lot of them are published by chapter in compilations, but in the US a lot of comics published in newspapers would have around 3-4 panels every weekday, and then the popular ones would get a sunday spread. Which means that in the collected volumes, you’d get a mix of 3-panels and full or hall pages.
:woman_shrugging:

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#17

I’m going to assume that question mark means that you want to know what it meant, so… my take on it: In case you don’t realise, it’s kind of just adding information to the first part of the text bubble. It’s referring to how he got a bad test score, as mentioned on page 5, so the other guy is saying it should be a ピンチ from a 成績的 perspective(since, well, his results were bad), and not a チャンス like Hase is saying(since, well, I assume the other guy thinks that’s a weird reaction to that).

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#18

net-resizeimage Read for this week!

I’ve watched the anime and I seriously think it’s an underrated story ^^ I’m glad the book club ended up choosing it :v:

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#19

Done with this week’s!

I like it so far, though this part didn’t have a ton to it, just a bit of an introduction to the characters. It looks like we’re going to be getting to the premise/twist of the manga pretty soon (which most people probably already know from reading the summary.)

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#20

Adding in his calling out Hase-kun’s low math test score immediately following this, I get the impression he’s the stereotypical unconcerned casual young teacher in his first years of teaching.

The English release goes in that direction as well:

Watching her, I just thought… …I’d like to be friends.

的 can turn a noun into a な adjective, which we can see with the な following after it. 成績 (grades) becomes an adjective describing 意味 (meaning). So the line is along the lines of, “in terms of your grades”. While here he’s saying (over all) It’s a predicament, in terms of your grades, if you imagine he said it reversed, 「成績的な意味でピンチだろ」, it reads as In terms of your grades, it’s a predicament. It’s simply reversed here because Shougo-kun counters Hase-kun’s チャンズ with ピンチ, then clarifies.

You can take the pattern 「～のどこがいいわけ？」 to mean “What’s so great about ~?” (It throws off the learner who expects どこ to be “where” in English.) Applied here, 「話したこともないのにどうがいいわけ？」 would read as, “Since you’ve never even talked to her before, what’s so great (about her)?” You can search this pattern on Google to find many examples in use. I’m under the impression that there is a nuance of (as @Myria mentioned) not understanding why Hase-kun likes Fujimiya-san.

Looks like I’ll be reading page 7 and beyond after my weekend grocery shopping trip. ~heads out~

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