Mine have gotten worse the longer I study Japanese
さみしさから一匹でも多くと discussion
Honestly, don’t feel bad, I read this chapter 3 times and discussed it with my Japanese friend. It’s the hardest thing I’ve had to interpret in Japanese. Somehow it’s impossible to figure out who’s speaking and there is a lot of unwritten implied text
The context is important when sentences are in fragments like this. Before the panel you asked about, Natume is thinking of Reiko and the Yokai’s memories of being lonely and he says:
レイコさんはたぶん
友人帳を取り返しに、
妖怪達が自分の所へ
訪れるのを
待ったのだ
He had the impression that Reiko was waiting for the yokai to visit her to get their names back. That is crucial to the missing words in the lines you’re asking about
he’s looking at it from two perspectives:
Reiko:
さみしさから
一匹でも多くと
Out of loneliness (she’s waiting for) one of the many (yokai to visit). The と (いうことです) is like saying, “the thing is..,” it’s just left off and implied by the と in Japanese. (I learned this pattern from the amazing notes in Satori reader, of course, I could still be wrong!)
From the yokai perspective
そんな中の一匹に
すぎないことで
さみしいと
(And the yokai) being one of many, are lonely (they don’t get called). Again, the to here is his explaining the situation from each side as a thing.
I snagged the English translation from the library and read chapter 1 in English because I was too lazy to read it in Japanese
It took me about 10 minutes and made me feel terrible about my Japanese reading speed, just like every time I read manga in English
I think the single most thing that helped me reading manga was reading novels. I used to also not understand the grammar in a single line/word bubble before, but I think now that I’m more used to reading sentences it’s a lot easier to know when something is or isn’t a fragment and if you need more information to parse it.
Not exactly actionable for this one grammar point, but as an extensive reader of manga before I read my first novel, I can say that novels have helped my manga reading a lot.
it is shocking how much more this helps!!! though the stupid long sentences still get me … there is some mental limit to how much one can process and it’s like my brain shuts down at some point when the sentence chunks are too numerous or something…
but you know what has been helping with this recently … writing like seriously it has been helping. Not filthy lies - really honest!!! Just finished Ch2 yesterday
Just responding here to let people know I made an off-shoot thread for this! I’m also asking for schedule preferences there, if anyone has any further thoughts!
Here, is Madara saying that Reiko’s daughter (presumably Natsume’s mom?) died young because Reiko couldn’t remember her? Or that Reiko stopped remembering her daughter after she died? Either way, geez, that must be hard for Natsume to hear.
page 52
Here it seems like Natsume is explaining his intentions re: the Book of Friends. How did others parse the bolded segment? Is that いま as in 今, or something else (いまい)?
This is actually Natsume talking! Unfortunately I feel like in the manga, the speaker can often be really unclear. (This is definitely one of the benefits of watching the anime.) But no, Natsume is saying that even her daughter (Natsume’s mom) didn’t really remember her because Reiko died so young.
いまい here is actually a form of negation for いる! And it’s Madara talking here. So he’s saying that he didn’t think there would even be anyone to inherit her things. (Part of his motivation for claiming the book.)
like seriously it has been helping. Not filthy lies - really honest!!! 
