三ツ星カラーズ — Week 8 Discussion (ABBC)

Japanese Language Reading
#13

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.

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?

5 Likes
#14

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.

6 Likes
#15

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

7 Likes
#16

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.

5 Likes
#17

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.

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.

6 Likes
#18
Coincidentally, this expression came up in another manga I'm reading today.

Screenshot_20220102_145553
Screenshot_20220102_145553880×364 134 KB

5 Likes
#19

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

3 Likes
#20

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

3 Likes
#21

いっぱい - See definitions 3-5 on Jisho. It means full, to the maximum, a lot, things like that. I’m not sure how streetpass works - if it has an upper limit I assume she’s reached it. If not, then she got enough passes to be happy.

気持ちがね - I’m not sure. I think that it might be 気持ちが悪い with 悪い omitted. Or it might be just an appeal to them to show some consideration for her instead of just celebrating their streetpass success.

3 Likes
#22

Although there is a limit on the number of StreetPasses one can have queued up, the limit’s low enough that she would have been able to reach it at the station. You can retrieve the StreetPass items in a game to open up space for more StreetPasses, which Kotoha would have to have done considering how long the two are at the gathering of 3DS players.

With this gaming knowledge, I take いっぱい to mean “lots” as in she received lots of StreetPasses.

(As someone who’s been both staff and vendor at various comic, gaming, and anime conventions, I know exactly what it must have been like for Kotoha going through and clearing out the StreetPass queue, only to have that green LED repeatedly light up each time another StreetPass comes in.)

This one plays on すれ違(ちが)う’s meaning of “to pass by one other” or “to miss each other”. Kotoha is saying she got a lot of passes, then Yui supplies the が-marked subject (the thing that was passed by) as 気持(きも)ち (Yui’s feelings). Consider that Yui is pouring her heart out about what she’s just been through, and Kotoha completely ignores her to comment on the StreetPasses.

7 Likes
#23

Page 61, Panel 6, Yui
そうだね
気持ちがね

I feel like I actually got pretty close with this one. I didn’t get that Yui is marking it as the subject of Kotoha’s statement though, I just translated the そうだね as more of a “That’s true” and 気持ちがね as “But what about my feelings”.

2 Likes
#24

Here’s my take on it:

Kotoha: “There was lots of passing by!”

Yui: “You’re right! [Passing by] my feelings!”

I’m still a learner though!

Edit: I just realized that I put feelings as the object rather than the subject here. I’ll have to rethink it when I have time later.

3 Likes
#25

I feel like I is the part that I got the most wrong. I was so stuck on the surplus meaning of 余裕 that I assumed she was just excited about the large number of people playing Streetpass and the surplus of stuff she would be able to get there something like "That much surplus. Where is it?. Reading the chapter again it seems more clear that she reacting to Saitou telling her that it is 20-30 minute walk way, and that is too far for them.

3 Likes
#26

No, Saito thinks it’s too far. Kotoha thinks that it’s not far at all, considering she can play her game at the other end.

2 Likes
#27

Ah, I was off. I interpreted it as Saitou was just saying it is too far away for them in order to goad them into going “far away” to give him break from them. I am a still at the point where even if I know every word in a sentence and the grammar being used, I can still miss a lot of nuance.

1 Like
#28

I also interpreted it this way, since Saitou has a sneaky sort of expression on his face.
Also on the next page in he is laughing and saying something like “I drove them away from this town”

2 Likes
#29

Saito does say it’s too far a walk for them, and he says it in such a way that they will want to contradict him and take up the challenge. He does in fact intend to send them far away, and Kotoha reacts in just the way he expects her to, by replying that this far isn’t really far at all and immediately setting off. Saito is happy that the girls left his patch, the girls are happy because they do get lots of Streetpasses. The only unhappy one is poor Yui, forgotten in the park.

8 Likes
#30

So I wasn’t far off in my interpretation of events. I really more missed how Kotoha is using 余裕 in her response. It was a new vocabulary word for me so I just went with the first definition of surplus and then tried to figure out how to make that work contextually. It sounds like it is rarely used to mean a literal surplus of something such as Mii Streetpass players. And much more often to mean sort of an excess of anything, in this case too much distance for Kotoha and Satchan to cover. At least when I run into it in the future, I will have this definition in my mind.

2 Likes
#31

I found this week a bit harder and have several more questions beyond what was already covered:

  1. On page 57 panel 4 Sacchan says そのゲームちょーだい which I translated as Please “do” (play) this game with me. (I’m not familiar with ちょーだい so using the Jisho definition “please do for me”) and then on panel 6 she says 大声出すよ? which with the look on her face I think she is asking should I shout to get his attention. My understanding is Sacchan is a bit bored while Kotoha plays so she starts bothering a random person to show her the 3DS, is that correct?
  2. On page 60 panel 3 there is どしたどしたそんな泣いて which I translated to Why are you crying?. Why is it どした and not どうした?
  3. Next on page 60 Sacchan says それにその格好なん which I translate to Besides that figure. Is this Sacchan being a bit slow as she can be and surprised to be seeing Yui?
  4. On page 60 panel 5 Yui says ここどこだと思ってるの, does this translate to Is here where you where thinking (to be hiding)?
  5. On page 61 panel 2 Yui says どんだけ隠れるの！？ 照れ屋か！ I’m pretty lost on this one and translated it as OMG were you hiding (here)? You’re a very shy person?!. Again, I’m not sure if this is at all correct?

Thanks for the help as always!

6 Likes
#32

ちょうだい is essentially the same as ください. “Please give me that game”, basically.

She’ll shout to get someone else’s attention if she doesn’t get what she wants. Basically “gimme it or I’ll scream”.

Casual speech casually shortening the vowel.

格好 also means “appearance”. Like, her clothing. “What’s with that get-up?” sort of thing.

Reckon it’s more like “Just where do you think you are?” (A question she answers herself in the following panel on the next page.)

The second line is a question - are you a shy person?

10 Likes