Gonna read from the beginning till chapter 11, meet ya all in a few hours…
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Binge read that sucker
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Chapter 10 was pretty easy. I only have one small question.
Page 61:
…福島先生にどのように話し出すかがだいたいきまっていた。
I’m slightly confused by かが. I have a guess, but I wanted to double check. Basically, I think it’s か as question particle and が as subject, though I don’t know that I’ve ever seen が after an embedded question. 
So it would be broken up like this:
（福島先生にどのように話し出すか）がだいたいきまっていた。
So it would mean:
“How we should begin talking to 福島先生” was more or less decided (not easy to translate だいたい).
Is that right?
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I believe it’s right. At least, that’s how I would read it.
は is also used after the か question marker, but that you probably remember seeing.
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I think I’m used to seeing neither は nor が, as in this example from here:
- Where is Japan?
- 日本はどこですか？
- I don’t know where Japan is.
- 日本はどこか知りません。
- Do you know where Japan is?
- 日本はどこか知っていますか？
This website has an example with かが though:
私は彼が何を言ったかがわかりません。
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I see
Somehow I have a very clear conscience of seeing は being used multiple times, but I can’t be 100% sure if I see が consistently. Seems it can be used, though.
“…か” basically means “if …”
I think those other examples you know are because を disappears after か
Maybe in some cases, like with 知る, but 分かる is intransitive and it often still goes か分からない. Maybe just a matter of being casual and dropping the particle in general.
Does it? I don’t read it that way…
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Well, not when there’s a question word like どこ or どの in there.
So it’s not applicable to that sentence, my bad.
図書館に行ったか知りますか
Do you know if (he) went to the library?
Something like that. Unless I’m wrong!
That’s still kind of how I think of it even in the other case. I’m not trying to translate it while I read.
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Yeah, it’s great to be at the point where you don’t have to explicitly translate everything. But it definitely makes it harder when you have to ask/answer a question. 
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I thought the same thing about the か + が when I saw that sentence, but I read it the exact same way.
Chapter 10 was definitely one of the easier ones so far. Side note, it’s weird trying to imagine a teacher lighting up a cigarette as he’s talking to a bunch of kids at school.
On to chapter 11 now.
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Well it was the 60s.
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I know, different time + different culture. It’s still a weird image to me.
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Just randomly I came across this post about use of かい・だい as question markers this evening.
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I think it was one of Japanese ammo Misa’s videos (not sure which one) where she said not to use it unless you’re trying to sound like some eccentric old fashioned anime character or something because only old people speak that way.
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Life goals.
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He even has “kai” in his name. It would be weird if he didn’t use it.
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Looks like we think alike 
Edit: I even liked that comment. Come on, brain…
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