Few days ago. You can take a look at the changelog here: Changelog – jpdb
Also, if you still see any weird/bad sentences feel free to report them to me (you can just use the contact form in the “Contact us” page if you don’t want to bother contacting me directly; link’s on the bottom); I still intend to improve the sentence picking algorithm even further.
Ok so I’m not sure I’m right but how I interpreted the third bubble was something along the lines of “That person’s thoughts never wavered, they simply waited in prayer.”
I think this one is up to interpretation and it’s supposed to be open-ended. I think it probably is though since it makes sense.
That’s a lot of recent updates with good features! Thank you for your hard work!
I looked this up in A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar, and it says: “Te mo is used when that which is expressed in the main clause is not what is expected from the content of the dependent (te mo) clause.” It translates it as roughly “even if; although.” A few of the example sentences translate it as “no matter,” so my best attempt at translating どんなに時が過ぎ去っても幾度となく月が海を照らしても was: “No matter how much time passes, no matter the countless occasions the moon shines upon the water…” I think it repeats because this isn’t actually a complete sentence. There are two dependent clauses without a main clause.
I wonder if maybe we’re actually on the wrong track with “thoughts” as the translation for 想い? I wonder if “hope” might be a better translation. What I came up with for その者の想いは揺らぐことなく…ただ祈り待ち続けていました was: “That person’s hope, without wavering… [they] just continued to pray and wait.” It makes more sense to me that someone’s hope wouldn’t waver, if the rest of the sentence is saying that they just continued to pray and wait.
This last panel took me a bit to parse. My best shot at translating 今宵お聞かせするのはとある魔女の物語… was: “Tonight, what I will humbly tell you is a certain witch’s tale…” Is this roughly correct? I wanted to double check that I was understanding what was going on with the mid-sentence verb here, and the way the sentence was broken up.
This is my first time reading something like this, and there’s a lot of grammar that I don’t know (I’m still back in mid-N5 level grammar where I’m at in my textbook, haha), so take all of my guesses and grammar info with a grain of salt!
HI, If anyone knows any website which gives japanese ebooks for free cause i cant afford them but i really wanna participate in this. If there is none I will buy it. Anyways.
Hello! I do not think you will be able to find this book for free unfortunately. However, if purchasing it right now might be difficult that’s totally okay. The resources for this club will be up and available for use whenever, so please don’t feel pressured to start the book now if it’ll be an issue. As far as free books, I would highly recommend keeping your eye on the Bookwalker Freebie Thread . People post here what books are currently available for free on bookwalker. I personally have been able to get some books used by past bookclubs from here for free. It seems that the first volume of Flying Witch is currently free, which was read by the beginners bookclub in the past, so there are resources for it on the forum! However, if you do want to buy the book for this club and read along we’d be happy to have you, I just don’t want you to feel pressured!
This is kind of just a fun thing I found that just barely relates to your question (lol)
I’ve been deep diving into the difference between 変わらない and 変わらぬ for like an hour now so hopefully I’ll always remember it, but jisho pointed me to the Japanese translation for the song “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love for You” by Glenn Medeiros.
Not only is 変わらぬ used, but the kanji for 思い is changed to a more romantic 想い- so both kanji (and word forms) were used to indicate nuance/emotion/poetry. I’m sure it gives the impression of a romantic song better than saying 変わらない思い.
((Even google translate detects a different nuance, though I’m not sure the emotional complexity is the same in English vs Japanese.
変わらぬ想い : unchanging feelings
変わらない思い : thoughts that do not change))
Now that I’ve got the first word of the entire book on lock 1.5 hours in 
And for y’all’s viewing and listening pleasure 
:
Omg I never would have expected that tangent I went on with that song would help me literally two sentences later with 想い
Sure, Ill check it out.
Thanks!
Here comes my next question from page 4
There’s a sentence here, where 黒巻さん says: そんなに緊張しなくても、大丈夫だよ。I interpreted this sentence as "You don’t have to be nervous so much, it’s going to be alright’ However I don’t understand why we even need ても here. Does it actually mean: “Even if you are not nervous so much, its okay?”
Finally on page 5 i’ve had a bit of trouble:
Thanks again for all the help.
Based on people’s comments I wanted to knock out page 1 early, so here is where I’m at.
(I tried to do all of it without looking at the vocabulary list first, which definitely made things challenging for a few of the words!)
There are things that are unchanging.
No matter how much time passes,
No matter that the moon shines on the sea on countless occasions
That person’s feelings, without sway…
Simply wished, and continuing to wait.
This evening, I will humbly tell you the story of a certain witch’s tale…
I know in the beginning it’s past tense- 変わらぬものがありました - but translating it literally didn’t seem correct (there were things that never changed). At least not based on this first page since it ends on a continuation. Maybe it’s just me, but for this panel being purposefully romanticized this seemed more poetic?
過ぎ去る as it’s own verb, instead of me originally thinking it was 過ぎる＋去って had me hung up for a while 
So, question- are we thinking 祈り here is the noun prayer, or the -masu stem of the verb to pray/wish 祈る? I was originally thinking noun, but there’s no particle between it and 待ち so I’m thinking it’s showing the chronological order of the actions? (The line break for me also implies sequential actions.) Plus it might open us up to the interpretation of wishing on the moon instead of praying, which have different nuances.
That whole text bubble is confusing to me, because I don’t know how many incomplete sentences there are or if the whole thing is a sentence. The は after その者の想い makes it sound like the feelings are doing the actions later, not the person? But then, if we’re being romantic and intentionally vague, perhaps it is an incomplete sentence that ends after 揺らぐことなく…So the next sentence just blasts right into verbs and maybe we’re talking about the person this time?
Second go at those lines might be:
That person’s feelings were/are without sway. S/he simply wished, and is continuing to wait.
Anyway, the last line seems pretty obvious.
EDIT: spoiler fixed. Line breaks, amirite
I just don’t understand how ても works here
I agree with fallynleaf. It’s kind of giving a lot of sultry pauses to hype up the coming story, I think.
Also, idk how to reply to more than one post at a time, but I don’t want to spam too hard so this is a response to fallynleaf:
“That person’s hope, without wavering… [they] just continued to pray and wait.”
I think we should keep the ている form in mind here, so it isn’t past tense and likely is going to use -ing. So [they] are continuing to pray and wait. I brought it up in my post too that I think there’s a sequence, where it’s first simply praying (or just praying), and then continuing to wait.
今は不安かもしれないけど
My understanding is that かもしれない is a set expression meaning “may”, so I’d take it to mean “You may be anxious now, but…”
And then the bit about regaining her memories.
Ah that clears it up, also why 知れない wasnt written with kanji.
It’s also worth keeping in mind how the set expression is built.
I’ve only ever seen one resource (Cure Dolly) break this down. I haven’t seen every resource out there, but every other one I have seen just says basically “かもしれない means maybe or possibly” and there they call it a day.
今は不安か = clause ending in a “question mark” か
も = inclusive topic marker
しれない = しる + potential + negative
Essentially meaning, the answer to the question is among those things that cannot be known.
Wow thats crazy, thanks 
Random tidbits based on my innumerable encounters with ぬ in the wild:
Thank you so much for this, that’s absolutely superb.
I had trouble getting ぬ to stick in my head as it felt a little ‘random’, like an exception, your post should be perfect to get it stuck right in there!
Particularly the point about devoicing and the ん hanging around in modern Japanese. Beautiful!
Aw man, another complexity
This made me think that’s why so many practice by reading news- but then that’s not really conversation learning either.
Guess I really will have to climb out of my hobbit hole to truly learn this language
想いは揺るぐことなく is an adverbial phrase that applies to the actions later on. Whoever is doing the actions is doing so without so much as a wavering of their (thoughts/conviction/however you want to translate 想い here). It is the same sentence by the way, not one sentence that trails off and then a separate one that comes after it.
Here’s some further reading on ことなく: https://jlptsensei.com/learn-japanese-grammar/ことなく-koto-naku-meaning/
It’s fundamentally the same as ことがない・ことがある, as in 聞いたことがない “I’ve never heard of that”, but the ない becomes なく because it’s now behaving as an adverb instead of an adjective.
In ただ祈り、待ち続けていました, the verb stem is acting just like て form, so it shows a sequence yes. Line breaks in manga are something that can be tricky to get a feel for…sometimes they break a sentence, sometimes not. In this case it’s still the same sentence.
It looks like they just released a promotion that lets you read the book for free until September 23.
Linking it here for anyone who’s interested:
