This will be my first book club, too! I’m usually not much of a manga reader, but somehow I really enjoy the combination of shrines/traditional culture and the supernatural, so I’m intrigued. I also don’t feel ready to tackle actual novels yet (I’m at an A2/N5-ish level and can usually get the gist of NHK Easy articles, anything beyond that feels pretty daunting…). Informal language and slang is one of my weaknesses, though, so let’s see how that goes.
I got the digital version via bookwalker - and even if reading along doesn’t work out, I’m already thankful that I got to discover this resource.
This is also my first Book club ! I’m at level N5 and still working on the earliest chapters of Genki, with the help of Wanikani on the Kanji’s side.
Looking forward for this book club and the following ones !
Hi hi~ I already bought my copy, cant wait to start… as it is i have been navigating through the past readings of the club… Do you guys translate everything thoroughly? I just read the first chapter of teasing master takagi san (its free now at amazon’s by the way) and i just saw the comments in the club like going thoroughly by every word and particle. Personally i like to know everything when i read in other language but at the same time going through everything can be exhausting, how do you recommend to read or how to approach to the reading as being the first experience? Should i stop and note everything or just follow along? I felt although they were a lot of words that i didnt know, i kind of understood what they were talking about anyway (in takagi’s reading experience)
Personally I don’t see much a point in trying to write down the translations for every single sentence as I’ve seen in some other ABBC threads. It seems exhausting and it’s actually harder than just understanding things, because you have to also make up an English translation and write it down. I feel like it’s more productive to ask questions only about sentences or details that you feel you are unsure about.
Here’s my recommendation: While reading, make notes of what you feel like you don’t understand even after doing your best (i.e. consulting a dictionary and/or googling around, or whatever methods you use). After you’re done reading the week’s portion, make a forum post out of those notes. Be as shallow or thorough with that as you want to.
As an absolute beginner you’re going to have to translate a lot, that’s where everyone starts. As you read more and more, eventually you’ll stop thinking “犬 = dog” and just recognize 犬 as 犬. The problem with translating Japanese is that depending on your native language, the sentence structure could be completely backwards, and by the time you’re at the end of a sentence you’re already starting to forget the beginning. This won’t be a problem for a manga this easy though, since the sentences are usually short. So if you understand in Japanese, great! But don’t feel bad if you have to translate 90% of the story.
Yeah I kind of have the same insights, but now that you recommended it I feel more confident about it
@hotdogsuplex okay! I’ll have that in mind, thanks for the encouragement. It just happened to me when I first studied english, trying to translate everything sometimes distracts you from the fun of what you are reading. So I’ll try to follow along and not to worry too much so I can be here in the next readings with you all as well!
Sounds good! I feel like in the end it’s more important to finish the manga than trying to go for 100% understanding and burning out after a few chapters.
A side note though: Especially grammar points (e.g. particles) have a good chance of repeating during the manga. So it might be useful to ask about them the first or second time you see them without understanding them - it’ll make the rest of the manga easier for you.
Don’t feel that your pace has to be consistent, either! Some weeks you may be really excited about detailed translations and really digging into understanding grammar points. Other weeks you may want to more just skim for overall understanding. Even within chapters, you can vary intensity based on text density, etc.
Whatever learning style works for you is fine imo! If you feel that translating every sentence is too exhausting and taking away from your enjoyment, then you don’t need to. Also, since you say you’re getting the gist of what’s being said already, you should be good to go, just ask questions whenever you feel you need more understanding.
Translating every single thing can be very useful for language learning, but it’s also a lot harder than just straight up reading, where you can ignore certain things. As long as you still get what’s happening, especially for a first book, you can continue reading. If you’re curious about some parts though, or keep seeing the same stuff that you’re not understanding, or you’re just stuck, that’s where the book club comes in!
If you want to translate everything, I’d recommend doing that with shorter stories, even learner material. That way you’re not ruining your whole reading experience and exhausting yourself, and you can just consider it as extra study time.
You could also plan to read through this manga a second time, where you would indeed go the full translation route, to understand more things and get some of the nuances that you’ll likely miss the first time. That way, you wouldn’t sacrifice your initial enjoyment of the manga and would probably struggle a lot less as well.
So we have from June 15th till the 22nd to read pages 1-12 correct? I know we don’t have to per se, but that is what it means per week right, the start date is when you begin that range of pages.
Exactly. To be a bit more precise, June 15th is the date that I’ll make the thread that is for discussing pages 1-12. You can read it any time you want, earlier (you just can’t discuss it yet because there’s no thread up), during that week or later. Most participants will read during that week or very shortly before to join in the discussions, but even if you read it later you can still use the Week 1 thread to ask any questions you have about pages 1-12.
I pre-read the first pages since I know next week will be busy, so I hope it’s alright if I start with some thoughts and questions. (It’s exciting and a bit scary to be doing this book club thing, heh.) I don’t think spoilers are necessary, but if I’m wrong, please let me know!
I generally got the gist of the story, even the part with the worried older lady, and I think I got the author’s little self-introduction pretty much right. But I definitely noticed that casual language and emotional nuances are still challenging. All those particles and sentence enders, not to forget slang and shortened words… I had to look up し, のに, and のか, but I think now I understand them a little better. I still didn’t understand things well enough to attempt a genuine translation, yet I’m glad I don’t feel completely lost.
Vocabulary-wise, there was clearly a lot to look up, but I had expected that. I didn’t study vocabulary in advance and just checked it while reading. Hopefully, a few more common words will stick while I read on. I was a little amused that being a sumo fan actually came in handy - I recognised 照る from yokozuna 照ノ富士's name.
EDIT: I had accidentally posted my questions here because I somehow didn’t make the connection between the previous post and there being an additional thread for every week (I’m not having the best day today and was probably overeager to do something…), so I deleted them here and reposted them in the correct one.
Detailed questions for the book usually go into the thread that’s created for each week. That separates everything by page numbers, and makes it easier for ‘late’ readers to check comments and ask their questions afterwards. I’ve replied to your post here: 玉藻の恋 ・ Tamamo no Koi 🦊 Week 1 - #9 by Till
Yeah, the beginning can be a bit scary - glad you got over that feeling and posted your observations and questions!
Could you maybe remake the post in the thread Till linked (i.e. delete it here and post it over there)? That way we have all info and questions in the right thread.
Ooh, I hope everyone enjoys this book! It’s a really simple cute story that I think will be great for beginners. I’ve followed the artist for awhile now, and even got to meet them in person at a comic market event last year, so I’m happy to see people here reading this book too!
The artist is active on Twitter and posts lots of short comics, so check it out if you’re interested: https://twitter.com/mitokuma
Hopefully having a group of people to read alongside will keep me on track!
I kind of have the same insights, but now that you recommended it I feel more confident about it
I’ll repost over there asap.