三ツ星カラーズ — Week 8 Discussion (ABBC)

[ChristopherFritz]

三ツ星カラーズ Week 8: Pages 55–61

Start Date: 1st of January

Home Thread: Link
Last Week: Link
Next Week: Link

Page Numbers Guide

Due to a general lack of page numbers, it can be difficult to know which page you’re asking a question on. You can use the thumbnails below to see at a glance which page number each is.

Thumbnails with page numbers for this week's reading. (Spoiler warning!)

Vocabulary List

三ツ星カラーズ Volume 1 Vocabulary

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

Discussion Guidelines

• Please blur / hide any major events in the current week’s pages (however early they occur), like so: [spoiler]texthere[/spoiler]
• When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked
• Join the conversation — it’s fun!

Participation

Mark your participation status by voting in this poll:

• I’m reading along
• I’m planning to catch up later
• I’m no longer reading

If you’ve read it before but will join in the discussion (or have read ahead), please select “I’m reading along”!

[Belthazar]

So, the すれちがい広場 is here. It’s about twenty minutes walk from Ueno Station. (I admit, I feel Kotoha’s pain on how hard it is for that sort of pass-play interaction - I have one of the Pokemon games on my DS which rewards you for walking past other people who also have the game loaded, and I think even walking up and down my university campus only netted me one single interaction.)

On page 58, Yui is near Pagoda Yakushi-do, though since street view is lacking in the area (there’s only a few scattered, and blurry, photospheres), I can’t pinpoint her precise location. She would have to teleport about 200m between the second and third panels, however.

[jrmr50]

As mentioned previously, found page 55 quite tricky.

Panel 1 - Saito: だいたいお前らは何してやがんだ

The やが in 何してやが freaked me out.
I feel like its ‘more importantly what are you lot up to’

Panel 2 - kotoha: すれちがいだが？

Got caught up thinking this だが is this だが・ですが | Japanese Grammar SRS
but could be that it’s a trailing が meaning but,and,or

‘passers by …’ not sure what… but it seems to rile up saito

Panel 3 - kotoha: ヒーローってのはなあ

The ってのはなあ tripped me up but I just found というのは | Japanese Grammar SRS

means we’re heroes right…

Got a couple more for this page but be back later…

thank you!

[omk3]

Panel 1 - Saito: だいたいお前らは何してやがんだ/

Apparently やがんだ is a contraction of 嫌がるんだ (source). いやがる according to Jisho means “to appear uncomfortable (with); to seem to hate; to express dislike”, and according to whatever example sentences I could find it basically seems to add a negative twist to the sentence it’s in. I’m also unsure how to interpret だいたい here. Generally? Roughly? In the first place? I think overall your translation is fairly accurate.

Panel 2 - kotoha: すれちがいだが？

すれちがい is apparently Streetpass on Nintendo 3DS (thanks @ChristopherFritz, I had no idea), so she’s answering “it’s Streetpass (the reason we’re here)”. が is the usual trailing が that usually softens the sentence, but in this case I feel like it’s more of a challenge ("do you have a problem with that?). Maybe it’s not though, maybe she’s just implying that it’s not working as well as she expected.

Panel 3 - kotoha: ヒーローってのはなあ

An unfinished sentence. I don’t think that’s Kotoha but Satchan. She was saying that they’re not lazing about, then she continues “As heroes, …” and then trails off with なあ (thinking aloud) and immediately after asks “なんだって”? (What was it?).

[Micki]

Panel 1

Thanks @omk3 for that reference confirming that やがんだ is a contraction of やがるんだ. If you read the right manga やがる is used in every other sentence. The bad guys in Dragon Ball can barely utter a sentence without using it.

I feel like I usually see it following the -masu stem of the verb, but references out there show it can be used after -te form as well. (If you look up やがる on Jisho it doesn’t mention this, but if you look it up on ichi.moe it does).

As well as indicating disdain/hatred for the person you are talking to, it also has a curse word feel to it (How to Japonese link). So in this sentence perhaps it might be translated as - So what the hell are you lot up to? ; or in a different context - What the fuck are you guys doing?

だいたい has loads of meanings in Jisho. Perhaps here it’s the “first of all” meaning. I’ve translated it just as “so”.

[jrmr50]

Thanks, that explains why DL translated it as ‘What the hell are you guys doing?’
Have had to add howtojaponese to my allowed list as my ISP was blocking it!

[jrmr50]

ahhh okay, one of the reasons that I found this page so hard was not quite being able to bend すれちがい as ‘passing each other’ into intelligible sentences.

what you said about the second panel makes a lot of sense about the trailing が. I’ve even put in my notes “given the response she’s insulting Saito somehow”

[jrmr50]

Page 55, Panel 6, kotoha

そのくらい余裕どこだそれは

Another one of those where I can get the puzzle pieces but just can’t make them fit together
Is the main part of the sentence 余裕どこ? I can’t fit them together and that breaks the entire sentence for me as the other parts feel auxillary to it.

that about surplus where is really

thanks

[ChristopherFritz]

@jrmr50

Page 55, Panel 6, kotoha

It’s hard to tell because it’s all in one word balloon, but she’s essentially mushed two sentences together in her excitement:

「そのくらい余裕」
「どこだそれは」

[Ylienna]

Thanks a lot for the explanation and the link to How to Japonese. It’s certainly useful to know how やがる works and when (not) to use it

[jrmr50]

Thanks, are these the translations?

Page 55, Panel 6

そのくらい余裕

that about surplus ==> that’s too much ==> that’s too far

どこだそれは

where is that

[pjames43]

I was hoping for more of an explanation of 東大デモクラシー. I feel like I understand the rest of what さっちゃん is saying, but I don’t see how any of it explains the term Tokyo University Democracy.

Edit: is it simply that she is trying to say 灯台下暗し as an excuse for why they are so far away and messing it up, and that is why ゆい yells it at her?

[Micki]

@pjames43

I was hoping for more of an explanation of 東大デモクラシー

She first said it when they were hiding behind the tree where Yui was counting. She was trying to say 灯台下暗し(とうだいもとくらし) which means “it is darkest under the lamp post; it’s hard to see what is under your nose”. That phrase would have made sense given the situation.

But it’s a complicated phrase and she’s only young so she’s said it wrong, saying something that doesn’t make any sense.

For what it’s worth the Tokyo University campus is just the other side of Ueno Park.

@jrmr50

そのくらい余裕

I read this as - That degree of surplus! Where is that? i.e. Where do I find this place which has an excess of people with streetpass?

[omk3]

@jrmr50

そのくらい余裕

余裕 is one of those words than only end up being confusing when you look them up in an E-J dictionary. “Surplus” almost never fits. From what I understand from coming across it multiple times, it basically means that something is easily within one’s capabilities, be it time, space, money, or whatever else. That there is room for it, for want of a better word. Or even a surplus of room, to be more exact. So when Saito teases them by saying they’d never walk that far, Kotoha counters “This much is easy”/“We could easily walk even further” At least that’s how I understand it.

[MrGeneric]

@omk3

That there is room for it, for want of a better word. Or even a surplus of room, to be more exact.

I have always thought “ample” was a better fit than surplus, based on its usage.

[Micki]

I was torn between whether the 余裕 referred to the amount of Nintendo devices that would be there, or the amount of time it would take to get there. From the flow of the conversation it immediately follows Saitou’s comment about the time to get there so probably the second makes more sense. So I prefer your translation to mine.

[ChristopherFritz]

@omk3

Kotoha counters “This much is easy”/“We could easily walk even further” At least that’s how I understand it.

This is my reading of it as well. Saitou says it’s too far, and Kotoha says she can go so far as that for StreetPass.

@omk3

余裕 is one of those words than only end up being confusing when you look them up in an E-J dictionary.

Every time I feel confident in my understanding of 余裕 as used in a sentence, I look it up in a J-E dictionary just to fill myself with ample doubt and uncertainty.

[ChristopherFritz]

@Micki

She was trying to say 灯台下暗し(とうだいもとくらし)

Coincidentally, this expression came up in another manga I'm reading today.

[jrmr50]

Thanks ‘Streepass’, I’ve got ‘Streetlife’ by Gladys Knight and the Pips stuck in my head now.

[jrmr50]

Page 61, Panel 5, Kotoha
I see いっぱい a bit, have we discussed it before? Find it tricky.

Page 61, Panel 6, Yui

気持ちがね

Not quiet sure how best to convey in English given the context