I think I read somewhere once that the 赤べこ was some kind of superstitions remedy to ward of smallpox if I remember correctly. I’m not sure what the history is with the こけし though?
Also, looking back at page 7, what is ヤツだね? I just noticed that I can’t find ヤツ in any of my dictionaries?
I thought it was やつ , and then the “thing, object” meaning.
I have only seen it in hiragana before, not sure if there is any meaning to it being in katakana here?
Hey, welcome to the wanikani community. Just want to say, I like your avatar, Ritsu from k-on is a funny character lol. Thanks for pointing out that definition, it wasn’t bold in takoboto so I glanced over it I guess.
Its a little difficult to understand everything in that dialogue on page 7. When Tomo says ますかの赤べこだよ。 she goes on to say: でも当たったのが、生ものでなくてよかったよ。 I wonder if there is a play on words there with the word (ます) which means “to be” but also comes up as 鱒 “trout, sea trout” in my dictionary? Maybe I am just reading too much into it 
Edit: Also on page 8, しゃけ can mean salmon or shinto priests at a shrine?
Edit 2: まさかの赤べこだよ。 I miss spelled oops…
It’s nice to be reading something instead of just doing wanikani. Do you go back and forth between reading and wanikani when you are studying? It seems more fun right now to try to read this manga then cram a bunch of kanji/vocab that are not in context.
Ritsu is super cute! 
You had me really confused for a moment - I think you read the sentence wrong? It says まさかの赤べこだよ。 in my copy.
For the しゃけ, I figured she was talking about the raw fish that landed on her head.
On page 2 (one of the colored ones) you can see しゃけ as well, while the panel shows the fish that later lands on ゆっこｓ head.
My bad, sorry for the confusion. My dyslexia kicks in sometimes, I’m bad enough with English haha. The sentence makes more sense now that I’m reading it correctly 
So, then I guess that the raw fish is just a random occurrence in an “ordinary” manga
Edit: spoiler
I try to do WK reviews right after work, then hop into my day’s reading right after that. Although sometimes I go straight to reading, then I have a double-sized review session waiting for me that night…
Just to confirm: Do you mean then or than? (It’s hard to tell, because people often use then when they mean than. It greatly impacts the meaning!)
If you’re enjoying reading manga then doing reviews, I’d say manga-reading for me is like the reward for getting my reviews done =D (If I do them…)
But if reading is more enjoyable than doing kanji/vocab reviews, I totally understand that. Especially now that I’ve gotten to the mid 20’s.
Kanji in native material can be measured in two ways: how many unique kanji are used, and how many overall kanji are used. (Many kanji are used multiple times across a volume.)
By WK level 20, you’ll know about 40% of the unique kanji in what you read, but overall it’s going to be about 80%.
If you read a lot, the more common kanji (such as 私, 行, and 言) become “invisible”. So while you only need to look up about 20% of the overall kanji, it feels like more. And because those kanji are often used only a few times in the volume, memorizing it don’t help much later.
At this point, each time you see a kanji you recently learned from WaniKani, you can feel the progress you’re making. And because you still have 60% of the unique kanji waiting to be learned, you’re constantly learning kanji that are showing up in what you’re reading.
Sorry, I meant than. My bad. That actually sounds like a good idea: doing reviews first, then doing book reading afterwards. As for the SRS, either go fast and burn out, or go slow and lose interest, those have been the biggest problems that I have had so far with wanikani. Maybe reading along with this book club will help with it? Time will tell.
Edit: added a quote.
Daily reading definitely makes it easier for me to go at my slow-and-steady pace!
(But I’m also helped by having done iKnow’s core 2,000 deck before I started reading. Granted, I probably forgot over 1,200 of them over those few years of going through the deck. And at best I learned maybe three kanji along the way. This is why I advocate joining the book clubs and reading early!)
My guess is all those objects were originally in Shinonome’s school bag.
Good observation. Maybe I should actually look at the pictures more closely from now on 
It is a lot of information to take in, starting out.
hi!
in the first page, is 忘れてた short for 忘れていた?
Yup! Shortening ていた to てた is common in spoken Japanese, so you see it all the time in Manga. Same with ている to てる.
Hi all. I’ve just started chapter 1 and this is my first book club, so I was wondering what the best way to read things like this is.
My plan is to read through once with no assistance and try to piece together as much as I can, then read through again using the vocab list/other resources to check the stuff I’m not sure about. Is this a good way of doing things or are there better methods for improving reading comprehension?
this is how I used to do things, and I think it’s a good approach. I only stopped for manga because I don’t feel like I need to anymore…
Nice, thanks. A couple of pages in and I’m starting to realise this is gonna take longer than I thought…
If this is your first time reading native material, it’s normal to take even longer than that.
It may be comforting to know that 日常 leans toward the more difficult side due to the surreal nature of the material, and therefor taking longer is extra expected. It’s perfectly normal.
Should you find the pace is too fast to keep up, you may want to also check out the Absolute Beginner Book Club, which typically goes through easier material at a slower pace.
Yeah, from what I’ve read so far, there’s a fair amount that’s hard to work out from context alone. The katakana greeting bit is a good example. Not totally sure what’s going on, but the 2nd read through with the vocab list should clear it up a bit.
I’ll see if I can catch up/keep up for now, and maybe have a look at the absolute beginner if I struggle. Ty!
Alright, better late than never.
Nice first chapter, a lot simpler than I thought it would be, based on all the kanji and innate weirdness of 日常. Looking forward to the next one.
Thanks to everyone who worked on the spreadsheet so I didn’t have to look anything up by myself. 
I’ve decided to see if I can get through this whole volume before the next beginner book club starts in a few weeks. Having seen the anime a few times is definitely helping me understand what’s happening. I just have one small question for this chapter: I thought I had gotten pretty okay at deciphering Japanese fonts, but I can’t tell what the second to last kana on page 14 is, where Mio’s saying バカや＿う. It looks kind of like れ or ね, but that doesn’t quite make sense in context (ろ/ロ would make the most sense in context, but it doesn’t look like that at all).
Edit: Okay, I now see it again almost immediately in chapter 2, where it’s really clear that it’s ロ, which just makes me ??? How is that supposed to look like ロ?
