午后のあくび / Afternoon Yawnings - BBC Book Club - Week 3

This week, will start the Summer part ! Stories this time are all about sky: birds, clouds, wind and rain. They can all have little secrets !

Week 3 April 4th 2026
Start chapter 7
End chapter (included) 10
Last Week week 2
Next week -
Home Thread 午后のあくび

Vocabulary

Vocab sheet
This vocab sheet was generated automatically with Mokuro and Ichiran. It may thus contain mistake. Feel free to correct them !

Manga Kotoba

Discussion Guidelines

Everybody should feel free to post and ask questions–it’s what makes book clubs fun! But please do not post until you are familiar with Spoiler Courtesy! (even tho, to be fair, there is no real story in that book and not much to spoil).

Spoiler Courtesy

Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.

  1. Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
  2. Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
  3. Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags

Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).

Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:

Example

This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.

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This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.

Posting Advice
  • When asking for help, please mention the page number or a the very least the chapter number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked. As the threads get longer, it becomes more convenient to use the Search function, which is located in the upper right corner of the forum. It is the magnifying glass which is near your profile picture! The best way to search is usually to type part of the sentence you are confused about, and select “in this topic”. This will show you all posts within the current thread which has that string of text.

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Proper Nouns

Name Reading Notes
あわこ Main character
ねね香 A little girl from the same neighborhood
かご中 かごなか Ayako’s colleague. Her head is a bird cage

Discussion Questions

What was you favorite story this week ?

Participation

Will you be reading along with us this week?

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These were cute again! I want to taste the sea wind candy.

vocab:
こうやって - thus; in this way​
うっすら - slightly; lightly; thinly; faintly; dimly​
怪盗 - phantom thief
雀の涙 - drop in the bucket; pittance; chicken feed; insignificant amount; literally: sparrow tears
五月晴れ - fine weather during the rainy season​
駄菓子屋 - small-time candy store; penny candy store​
異国 - foreign country
抜け道 - shortcut or loophole
ゆらめく - to flicker
一変する - to do a complete about face

Grammar point: ず-form ずに (JLPT N3) | Bunpro

omg the end of Ch 7!! ねね看ちゃんの「え〜?バーゲンのチラシ!?つまんない!」もっともあわこちゃんが「大変!早く行かなきゃ!」 is perfect

also the end of chapter 10??

Yes, that made me chuckle as well. I think little details like that help ground the story in everyday life, instead of it just being a surreal story about a guy on top of a water tank on the roof.

I loved the story about the sparrow pretending to be a swallow — the resolution was really heartwarming.

I did have some trouble parsing the sparrow’s lines, though. For example:

わたしはツバメである従って穀物は食べんのです。
“I am a swallow, and therefore I don’t eat grain.”

The vocab sheet lists 従う as “to obey,” but it seems that 従って (したがって) means something like “accordingly” or “therefore” here.

Also, 食べん being a contraction of 食べない always trips me up.

Alonzo, thanks for picking out that scene. I didn’t get it the first time, but it was worth looking at again.

The first panel of chapter 8 gave me some trouble, but I think it’s a use of と that I wasn’t familiar with:

ツビメが低く飛ぶと雨

seems to be ‘when a swallow is flying low, it means rain’ if I understand correctly.

Anyway, this was a fun week. I really liked the stories.

yes, i agree with your understanding! here’s bunpro’s explanation of that use of と

as you can see, it’s a pretty strong version of an “if/then” connection

Thank you!
I’ve been having trouble with とs lately, and it’s really nice to be able to zero in on what the issue is

Also found chapter 8 a little difficult, but i’m just putting it down onto a particularly well spoken bird.

わたしもあんな風になれたらと

燕尾服に身をつつみ

たらと、Tripped me up a lot. Is this combining two conditionals or making a list?

Also using an を followed by just the noun form of a verb is confusing