Thanks!
I’m wondering if he’s really supposed to be scary, or if it’s just a reflection of Hanabi’s state of mind. I mean, I think I’d be annoyed if some random girl turned up and started spilling condiments on me.
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I took it as more of a “he’s scary when he’s mad” type of thing. He’s definitely justified in being upset.
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Did it spill on him? I thought it was just spilled where the bottle was.
And didn’t the glaring happen while she was pouring dressing on her salad? So… while nothing happened yet? She’s also been saying that he was staring and being scary plenty of times before without her doing anything wrong.
So far I’m taking away from this that he’s just a bit unsettling to her, with him not speaking much and looking at her (for whatever reason).
A few questions from the first half of this chapter…
ebook page 34:
- きょうはもう、学校休んじゃおうかな。
Literally “I think today I’m already (at this point completely/regrettably) absent from school.”? As in, it already happened, no point in going now? (DeepL translates it very nicely as “I think I’ll take today off from school.”, which sounds great in context, but I don’t see how I’d get there.) - 「休んじゃえば？」
I get that this is 休む + てしまう + ば-conditional, but I don’t really understand what it means. The conditional trips me up. Is there something missing/implied? - 「愛子さんの、そういうところ、大好きです！」
“Aiko-san loves such things (as taking a day off)!”? ところ has so many meanings and sometimes trips me up.
ebook page 35:
- まあ、おりこうさん！
Literally “Oh, Miss well-behaved!”? - まっ、失礼しちゃう。
Is she actually apologizing, or is this a “Well, excuse me (I’m gonna do something else).”? - そのとなりには、ブルーベリーやイチゴのジャムやハチミツなどが、ころんとした丸いビンに入ってならんでいる。
What’s the ころんとした there?
I like Saki-chan, being rather cheeky despite being employed by Aiko-san. They seem like a nice match!
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Could well be, I wasn’t sure! I assumed she’d spilled it on him since she apologised.
Most of your questions are ones I wasn’t quite sure on, so I’ll leave others to answer.
I think Aikosan is (jokingly) telling her she’s being rude - as a reply to her saying that a polite child surely couldn’t be Aikosan’s niece.
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This is a pretty typical onomatopoeic construction. とした is the quotation particle + the past tense of する. This is sort of like: round jars that are doing “ころん”
That leaves ころん. If you search jisho for ころん and then scan the results for onomatopoeia you will find コロコロ, which has an alternate form (found at the bottom of the entry): ころんころん. (And remember that it’s not uncommon to see only “half” of an onomatopoeic word used.)
コロコロ has lots of potential meanings, but you can probably figure out which one makes sense in the context. 
Hope that helps!
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きょうはもう、学校休んじゃおうかな。
If it had already happened, it would be past tense, like 学校休んじゃった (not sure if the じゃった is correct there, but it would be something like that) = 学校休んでしまった. Instead, it’s 学校休んじゃおう = 学校休んでしまおう. I don’t know the names of all the tenses, but this one indicates something that someone will do, in this case Hanabi. And then the かな adds uncertainty, which is where the “I think” comes from in the DeepL translation.
「休んじゃえば？」
It’s a shortened form of やすんでしまえ, so it’s in the form of an order. And the ば is the third definition in Jisho. So, it’s like “Why don’t you take the day off from school?”. I see it as Aiko encouraging Hanabi to do what she wants to do. The theme in this chapter seems to be her telling Hanabi that it’s okay to do what you want to do (or be わがまま, selfish/self-indulgent) sometimes, rather than always showing restraint and trying to just bear unpleasant things.
「愛子さんの、そういうところ、大好きです！」
愛子さんの、そういうところ = That part of Aiko-san
大好きです = I love it
So, all together: I love that part of you, Aiko-san!
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I assumed he’s just a little annoyed by the apparently clumsy new addition to the household, and she apologized because she spilled stuff in the cafe (and because he was annoyed). But maybe someone who has a better idea what happened can chime in!
Oooh, it’s Aiko-san that says it. That makes a lot of sense, thanks! (I think it might be a slightly ironic “Well, excuse me.” / “Well, terribly sorry about [being like] that.” then, as a 失礼します variant, but that’s just a guess.)
It sure does - I learnt a lot, thanks! This was pretty much all new to me.
And thanks for the explanations, @aamunoz. Seems like I got every single one of those wrong, haha. I would’ve never gotten the second one right, but I really should’ve seen the volitional in the first…
What’s きょうはもう? “again”, because she often took days off in the past, although for different reasons than oversleeping?
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I think the もう would be the “already” sense. “At this point, I wonder if I should just skip school today,” is how I took the feeling of that sentence. She’ll already be late anyway, so why not just skip?
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I’m still reading the chapter, but my feeling from the previous one that Hanabi just finds Yamato intimidating (without him specifically trying to be so) is holding. He just kinda seems like a quiet/reserved kid who tends to keep to himself, and maybe he has a bit of a resting bitch face or something, and Hanabi can’t help but find him a little scary since she doesn’t know him
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I agree with this!
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Alright, properly finished this chapter. Here’s the last batch of questions. Sorry that I have so many, and thanks for helping me so much!
ebook page 37:
- ふわっとした雰囲気の絵なのに、野菜や肉などの細かいところまで、…
In the second part, I’m not sure what the の is exactly connecting (野菜や肉など and 細かいところ?) and what the result of that connection is. And what does the まで do there? Literally “Vegetable and meat and such の detailed points まで”? I also found a dictionary entry that defines ところまで as “as far (much) as you can (go)” or “even to the point or moment”, which kind of fits, but then the の becomes even more puzzling for me. - …ていねいに描きこまれていて、いかにもおいしそうだ。
What’s the こまれて part there? 込む with the meaning “to do thoroughly”?
ebook page 38:
- それでケンカになったらなったでいいじゃない。
Is that actually two fragments without a comma? Like それでケンカになったら、なったでいいじゃない。 And the second part is something like (literally) “what became (what happened) is alright, isn’t it?”?
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Yep, pretty much. If I’ve understood correctly, commas are basically ornamental in Japanese writing, used to convey a feeling, not subject to grammatical rules like in English.
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の is connecting the nouns 野菜 and 肉 to ところ, and 細かい is the adjective modifying ところ. So 野菜の細かいところ would literally be “the detailed parts of the vegetables”. の is gramatically necessary here because you are connecting two nouns (野菜 and ところ), that normally cannot just be smashed together. 野菜細かいところ would be unnatural and strange. Would be like saying “Vegetables detailed parts” instead of “detailed parts of vegetables”.
まで there is specifying to what degree (the drawing) has reached - all the way to drawing the vegetables and meat and other ingredients (など) to minute detail (細かい 's literal meaning is “minute”).
Yes, that’s my understanding too.
This is actually the grammar structure たら～で.
The bunpro link explains it way better than I can, but basically A たら A で B means even if A is the case, there’s a point B that is in contraposition to A.
ケンカになったらなったでいい => Even if it turns into a fight, that’s fine.
Normally you wouldn’t think a fight is a good thing - that’s why B (a fight is good) is in contraposition to A (becoming a fight).
You could argue that this is indeed two fragments
ケンカになったら => if it becomes a fight
なったでいい => by means of becoming one it’s (actually) good.
It’s very common for N2 and N1 grammar points to be complex combinations of previous grammar, which I think you could say applies here too.
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P42-44
なんでも楽しんでやらなきゃ、もったいないもんね
= If everything isn’t fun, it’s a waste ??
And I think the next sentence is Hanabi’s reflecting on how her mum doesn’t seem to enjoy cooking?
I had to re-read the last page or so a few times to figure out who speaks speaking. I think I’ve got it now, but I’m not 100% sure I’ve got exactly what 愛子さん is saying. When Hanabi asks if she can stay there, does she refuse, because she’s saying she can’t, or just tell her that she needs to persuade her mother herself?
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Hanabi asks if she can stay here, and Aiko-san tells her of course, she doesn’t even have to ask. Hanabi asks if Aiko-san will explain to her mother, and Aiko-san refuses and encourages her to talk to her mother herself. Her mother’s no oni, so if Hanabi talks to her sincerely, she’ll surely understand.
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You pretty much got it. I would say something like, “When doing anything, not having fun is a waste”. And I believe the next sentence is saying that when Hanabi was asked to do those cooking tasks by her mom, she did so reluctantly.
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Just finished chapter 3, sofar I like where this story is going, one of those “growing up to be who you want to be” stories, quite fun and hopefully contains a lot of everyday words to practice.
I’m curious, I find the reading waaay harder than the current ABBC book club reading. Is this because this book is difficult, or rather because ハピネス (the abbc book) is easy? What are the thought on that?
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the secret of the book clubs… people are often guessing the difficulty… and until the book is actually started, it is not really known how difficult it will become…
I will say that this book is (IMHO) a perfect fit for the beginner book club, difficulty level and all…I’m very pleased actually … Reading Japanese isn’t easy and takes lots of practice… any level you jump it’s going to be difficult…if you can stick it out (book is interesting, not too hard - looking up 90+%, etc)… try to enjoy it… if you aren’t having fun, then either it’s probably the story doesn’t work for you, or the level is too hard making it miserable looking up every word/grammar point.
I’m not reading the ABBC book so I can’t comment on comparison, but if you consider the actual intent of the book clubs:
ABBC: For new readers to Japanese (never read anything in Japanese before) know some N5 grammar
BBC: For new readers with some reading experience and grammar (read some before but never a light novel or anything other than easy manga) know most if not all N4 grammar (helps a lot if you have started N3 grammar)
IBC: Can pick up and read that wall of text w/o panic … (not there yet)… maybe all N3 grammar
ABC: way too hard lol…j/k… real books/real topics/ where things actually get fun (definitely not there yet)…and comfortable with whatever comes your way.
This is just my perception but generally the book club difficulty does sometimes range and sometimes things are easier than others and as has been mentioned sometimes a more difficult book might get picked because the book club members are recommending books they think might fit and as people gain more reading experience, it might skew the difficulty curve upwards over time. Might be why some of the easier books cross between the ABBC and BBC range.
Home | Natively | The book-reading community for Japanese language learners (learnnatively.com) This site gets recommended a lot…people that finished reading the books, rank them compared to others by difficulty and the in general the WK books are there and you can get a feel overall perception of ease or challenge…
All in all though, remember you can always put the book down and come back to it later and read it using the resources already generated, the vocab lists and what not are usually still here for later use.
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Personally I feel like ハピネス is definitely less draining to read and feels easier. But I think that is mostly because it does a loooot of storytelling via the visuals (which imho fits pretty well for the story! It really adds to the kind of ominous atmosphere). There just is not a lot of text in general, even compared with a lot of other manga I tried reading before. I’m not sure if sooner or later people might start actually talking about what they are experiencing a little more, but that hasn’t really happened so far (I was worried some more specialized vocab might come up, but there hasn’t really been any).
I can’t really judge the difficulty of 夜カフェ because I’m all biased with it being my pick 
I have read two of the other BBC picks before (Death Note and 時をかける少女) and to me 夜カフェ so far seems similar in difficulty to 時をかける少女 (at least until you get to the big explanatory stretches that use some fancy vocab in 時をかける少女) and a lot easier than Death Note (but I think that was deemed to be one of the more difficult BBC picks). I haven’t read any of the other ABBC/BBC picks so there might have very well been some picks that fall somewhere in between ハピネス and 夜カフェ
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