結婚しても恋してる: Week 9 Discussion [END of Vol 1]

[FlamySerpent]

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結婚しても恋してる home thread

Week 9

Start date: October 12th
Previous Thread: Week 8
Next Thread: Volume 2

Reading:

Week	Pages	Chapters
Week 9	11	双子育児あるある [2+9] (End of Ch 8)

Vocabulary List

結婚しても恋してる Vocab

Discussion Rules

• Please use spoiler tags for major events in the current chapter(s) and any content in future chapters.
• When asking for help, please mention the chapter and page number. Also mention what version of the book you are reading.
• Don’t be afraid of asking questions, even if they seem embarassing at first. All of us are here to learn.
• To you lurkers out there: Join the conversation, it’s fun!

Participants

Mark your participation status by voting in this poll.

• I’m reading along
• I’m still reading the book but I haven’t reached this chapter yet
• I’m no longer reading this book
• I’m skipping this book

[jaearess]

All done This last chapter made me tear up, even though obviously I knew everything turned out fine in the end.

Thanks for hosting this club once again, @FlamySerpent!

[Micki]

Hey we’re on the last section! Although it’s going to take me more than one sitting to get through it all!

Some sentences I worked on this evening:

Page 108

なんでいつもこのドラマみるとないちゃうの？
Why do you always cry when you watch this drama?
ないちゃう ＝ 泣いてちゃう ＝ to cry (ちゃう implies element of regret)

これ見るとねぇ 思い出しちゃうからだよ
Because when I watch this, it brings back memories - literally “I remember (with an element of regret)”

Page 110

新し命の報せ
new life’s news

それはふたつあるということもわかり

それは - speaking of that
ふたつある - two things are existing
という - so called
こと - thing
も - also/even
わかり - understanding, being realised (stem of 分かる)

Life-changing news, and even more finding out that that there are two of them!

Page 112

彼女の容態があまりよくなく
面会に行っても会うことができない日もあった。

彼女の容態が - her condition
あまりよくなく - not so good (adverb form - “not so well”)
面会に行って - going to meet (implies see face to face)
も - even
会う - meeting
ことができない - unable to do thing
日 - days
も - even
あった - existed

There were even days when her condition was so bad we weren’t allowed to even see her.

[Micki]

I thought we were back in しろくまカフェ on this page. Reminded me of Panda パン!

Does anyone recognise what this panda is? It looks like he’s putting it in Satoshi’s lunchbox.

[ChristopherFritz]

Does anyone recognise what this panda is? It looks like he’s putting it in Satoshi’s lunchbox.

My best guess would be seaweed on rice. The texture on it looks riceball-like to me.

[Micki]

Thanks. These look amazing!!

[_Marcus]

Some sentences I worked on this evening:

You’re a star! I’m now up to page 112, and you’ve answered all of my questions! Micki, you’re amazing! Thank you so much!

[_Marcus]

Does anyone recognise what this panda is? It looks like he’s putting it in Satoshi’s lunchbox.

If I had a job that made me work 12 hours a day and forced me to regularly take the last train home, and had a child to look after, and my wife was in hospital with premature twins, I can tell you for sure that I would not have time to be making panda shapes in anyone’s lunchbox, and that’s a fact!

[Micki]

Well that was a good chapter to finish on. There was some nice vocab in there around pregnancy and hospitals. I liked 全身麻酔 for general anaesthetic (whole body cannabis drunk!)

A tricky final sentence and well worth a final break down - page 117-118:

このときの経験は「あの日失わなかった笑顔を大事によう」という想いの礎となっている。

このときの経験は - regarding the experience of this time
あの日 - that day
失わなかった - didn’t lose
笑顔を - smile + object marker
大事によう - let’s treasure (I think)
という - called
想いの - thought, mind, heart + possessive particle
礎 - foundation stone
となっている - becomes

The experiences of this time have become the cornerstone of my heart. I call it, “treasuring the smile I didn’t lose that day.”

[_Marcus]

Thank you for that great sentence breakdown Micki!

And with that, I have just a few last questions in order to finish this manga…!

Page 113

早期出産の連絡を受け 急いで病院へ.
早期 - early stage
出産 - childbirth
の - 's
連絡 - to get in touch
を - object marker
受け - to receive, get - masu-stem
急いで - quickly
病院へ - to the hospital

Loose translation: “When I got the message that the delivery had started, I rushed to the hospital”
But…

• where is the verb?
• I think I remember that the masu-stem can be used in place of the て-form, is that is what is happening with 受け…?

Page 114

僕らの不安を募らせた
僕らの - our
不安を - anxiety + を
募らせた - and here’s my question…

• 募らせた is the verb 募る, to become become stronger, and I see from Jisho that this is the causative form (and in the past tense). Just typing words like “causative” makes me want to go to bed, but I have to ask - what the heck does it mean? Especially in this sentence? I’d translate it as “our anxiety became stronger” or, more naturally, “we got more and more worried”. How does the “causative” fit in with all this?

Page 116

頑張ってくれました

• I’m used to the phrase 頑張ってください - please do your best. And on the TV news tonight I heard a warning go out to people in the big typhoon clean-up saying (if I remember rightly) 頑張ってすぎないこと - don’t do your best (ie don’t work so hard that you hurt yourself)! But what is 頑張ってくれました? Does it mean “I did my best”? But what is the くれ in the middle?

こうして 長くて短い

• is this the same as the English “well, the long and short of it is…”? If so, that’s great!

---

And that’s it… I’ve finished! I must admit, I didn’t think I’d make it to the end of this one and almost quit at one point. For me the characters are simply not interesting enough, the husband bland and docile and the wife manipulative and greedy, and the story tries too hard to be sweet and cute so it comes off as a bit fake. However, there were sparks of humour and, it has to be said… I learnt a lot of Japanese from it!

And that’s thanks to this club! Thank you @FlamySerpent for setting up the threads, thank you everyone who posted questions and answers, and thank you @Micki for your amazing work on the vocab list and your incredible sentence breakdowns. I couldn’t have read this book without you! Thank you.

[2OC3aOdKgwSGlxfz]

早期出産の連絡を受け 急いで病院へ.

• where is the verb?
• I think I remember that the masu-stem can be used in place of the て-form, is that is what is happening with 受け…?

My understanding is that the verb is implied by context and the use of へ which implicitly indicates a movement verb (in this case, 行く, I believe)

Regarding 受け, you are right, specially in literary settings you can use the stem of the verb as a way to connect sentences the same way you’d use the て-form of the verb
(grammatically, this is called Formal Conjunctive. Bunpro and Tae-Kim links)

However, as far as I know, you cannot use the stem of a verb for other ways the て-form of a verb is used. Or at least, I’ve never seen something like たべいる instead of たべている, for example.

But what is 頑張ってくれました? Does it mean “I did my best”? But what is the くれ in the middle?

My understanding is that this is using くれる (to give), in part tense. The use of a verb in て-form + the verb くれる is a grammatical construct that is used when someone does something for someone else. So this basically means “you gave (it) your best effort (for someone else)”. In this case “it” would be the whole process of giving birth / being born, and the ‘someone’ they did it for is in general him and his whole family, as far as I understand.

[Micki]

僕らの不安を募らせた

So causative I understand as “making something happen” or “letting something happen”. I like Tae Kim’s reference to Captain Picard - “make it so!”

So here I would read it as “made our anxiety grow stronger”.

こうして 長くて短い

• is this the same as the English “well, the long and short of it is…”? If so, that’s great!

That’s how I read it too!

[_Marcus]

Thank you both @2OC3aOdKgwSGlxfz and @Micki!

[Micki]

So, wrapping up this book, thanks to @kitsunensei for recommending it! It’s been a really nice read for me. I enjoyed the mix of casual Japanese in the dialogue, but more literary Japanese in Shingo’s storytelling. The short chapters broke it up really well.

The level was perfect for ABCB. There was plenty of vocab to look up but most of the grammar was straightforward for N4/N5 level. So many of the words I did look up were common words on Jisho that are now going into Anki!

Most of all I enjoyed lots of little insights into Japanese culture, and Shingo’s awful work life balance…

There have been lots of people posting that have made this book club work and thanks to everyone. Especially to @Belthazar @2OC3aOdKgwSGlxfz and @ChristopherFritz
who answered so many questions, and always so quickly! And of course to @marcusp for asking lots of them (which is what makes the book club work!)

And of course big thanks to @FlamySerpent for putting all the threads together and setting up the poll for what we do next. またね！

[ChristopherFritz]

Anyone know what this ろ is doing here?

「お腹空いたろ？」

It seems like 空いたろう is a compound of 空いた + だろう, although this combination of past tense た and だろう into たろう is something I’m not familiar with. If this is what Shingo is saying, it would mean he’s dropping the う at the end.

Am I on the right track here? Wrong track?

[Micki]

Could be this (from Jisho):

[ChristopherFritz]

Could be this (from Jisho):

That looks like it exactly. Thanks!

[MissDagger]

Finally got here. What a nice and fun manga. I really enjoyed it and I look forward to reading the other two volumes in the series when I have time.

A big shoutout to all the people who asked questions and answered them, especially: @Micki, @marcusp, @ChristopherFritz, @Belthazar, and @2OC3aOdKgwSGlxfz!

Also a big thanks to @FlamySerpent for hosting the club! And @jprspereira for stepping in when FlamySerpent needed a break!

I’m in all you guys’ debt for helping me through this wonderful manga.

[jprspereira]

Oh, this chapter was just too good and I legit cried It requires so much strength to go through what they did… and they did it! aaaaaaaaa

[Belthazar]

And done.

Thought I should probably finish off this book before I started the next one. I… don’t really think I have anything to add to the thread. Though, I am amused by how much more rugged the preliminary sketch of Shingo looks.