Please read the guidelines on the first page before adding any words.
Discussion Guidelines
Everybody should feel free to post and ask questions–it’s what makes book clubs fun! But please do not post until you are familiar with Spoiler Courtesy!
Spoiler Courtesy
Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.
Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags
Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).
Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:
Example
This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.
The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.
This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.
Posting Advice
When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked. As the threads get longer, it becomes more convenient to use the Search function, which is located in the upper right corner of the forum. It is the magnifying glass which is near your profile picture! The best way to search is usually to type part of the sentence you are confused about, and select “in this topic”. This will show you all posts within the current thread which has that string of text.
Be sure to join the conversation! It’s fun, and it’s what keeps these book clubs lively! There’s no such thing as a stupid question! We are all learning here, and if the question has crossed your mind, there’s a very good chance it has crossed somebody else’s also! Asking and answering questions is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, so never hesitate to do so!
For the Bookwalker version of this manga, the page numbers in the panels and the page number in the UI are always 2 apart. If you subtract 2 from the UI page number, this will give you the accurate page number!
Live Readings
Some users are currently in the progress of arranging a time for a live reading. Join the Japanese Book Club Discord to either read or listen!
Proper Nouns
Name
Reading
Image
Notes
日向
ひなた
Main character
文夏
もか
Hinata’s classmate (Note, you’ll often see her name written as モカ)
千春
ちはる
Hinata’s classmate
Discussion Questions
What sentence/passage gave you the most difficulty? Feel free to request some help, or if you figured it out on your own break it down for the rest of us!
What was your favorite new vocab word from this week’s reading?
Was there any passage that you found particularly intriguing? Did it resonate with you (either positively or negatively)? Was it surprising? Offer any insight or new perspective? Was it just beautifully written?
So how about Hinata’s artwork?
Feel like some background kanji practice? See if you can find and read the name of Hinata’s kindergarten
Dialect Guide
Hinata speaks with a little bit of a fake old person dialect at times. You’ll see this with ぺ or っぺ replacing the ends of sentences, so e.g. だっぺ instead of だよ or だった。Unfortunately it’s not always the same replacement. As far as I can tell, this is not a real world dialect.
Participation
Will you be reading along with us this week?
I’m reading along
I have finished this part
I’m still reading the book but I haven’t reached this part yet
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0voters
If you’ve already read this book but are still going to join the discussion, please select “I have finished this part.”
Don’t forget to set this thread to Watching in order to stay abreast of discussion!
And just a reminder for our first timers! Ask away in the comments here if you run into any difficulty. These first three weeks for chapter 1 have a slower pace to help you get started. After that chapter 2 and 3 will be split into two weeks each, and later chapters will be 1 a week.
Here’s a thread with tips for your first time reading in a book club.
It’s always amused me the Japanese practice (or at least anime and manga practice) of crying out しっかり to someone on their deathbed. Like, pull yourself together, you’ll be fine.
How hard did you look? It’s Fukushima dialect. Possibly Ibaraki dialect. The use of ぺ is fairly distinctive of the north-eastern Kanto and southern Tohoku dialects, turning into べ as you get further north (though almost everything gets dakuten’d as you head north).
Not sure whether grannies using オレ as the first-person pronoun is also the fault of the dialect, or if it’s just generally older practice.
I am a pretty new reader when it comes to Japanese. I have been slowly studying the language off and on for a few years, but have not been good at keeping consistent progress, so I would still consider myself quite beginner. This will be one of the first mangas that I have read. Before this, I read the first volume of Suu to Tai Chan, and a couple of chapters of Yubisaki to Renren. Yubisaki was definitely quite challenging, and I have only been able to feel like I really know what is going on because I have been watching the show with English subtitles. I am looking forward to reading along with other people, and I hope that this book club schedule helps keep me reading consistently.
This is my first book club so I’m asking this here before I make a mistake: the vocab sheet contains the entry おか – hill when in fact the actual word is おかぜ(お風邪) – a cold. Am I allowed to just change that?
(Also I couldn’t for the life of me find where ねる in the next line came from, can someone point it out to me?)
Yep, go right ahead. The sheet is auto-generated by a script (I think?) and sometimes it just parses things wrong.
Perhaps the ねって in the first panel, though that’s particle ね plus quotation particle って. For some reason, the sheet is sorted in order of the rating within each page, rather than in page order.
The しっかり tripped me up when I read this, cause I didn’t know about the practice. I thought it was like “hold tight (please don’t die)”. but now I think it might be more like “safe travels (to the afterlife)”? Can anyone enlighten me?
According to this it is part of the dialect, and is not exclusively used by elderly women.
I knew that older women might use おれ, but this is the first time I have seen it!
(I also read somewhere that lesbians may use おれ to refer to themselves, but I am not sure how common that is)
story comments
I found it surprisingly sad when the mom didn’t react to the drawing of her Cute Hinata drew her mom and only got a silent stare in return.
Well, what a start to my first japanese book. I had to start a little early because I have work commitments for the coming week. But I think the extra time helped me to get a better feeling for how to make the most of the reading or should I say: recognize individual kanji and grammar points and look up the rest with a dictionary and Deeple
story comment
@Jiell I was also so confused by her mother’s behavior. And then Hinata’s reaction with the joke. It was quite sad.
But all in all, it was a very nice start and I can well imagine that I will continue to enjoy the story in the coming weeks.
A more general question: How do you do this if you don’t know the kanji, but the furigana are unfortunately difficult to read due to the eBook quality. Is there such a thing as a kanji search engine?
And maybe someone can help me with a grammar question:
At page 5 I stumbled across the conjugation of 運ぶ. When I used Deeple it seemed to be past tense. But when I looked it up at Bunpro verbs ending with ぶ should end with んだ.
(Please tell me if I should mark this as a spoiler. I wasn’t quite sure )
For looking up kanji: i added the handwritten keyboard (on mobile) and just write my best guess and look it up on jisho (but every other site would work, too, I guess)
I find using the handwritten keyboard is very useful, it’s not only quick, it’s also a got practice
The dictionaries I use have the option to hand draw the kanji. You can also search by radicals. Jisho.org has both of those options. Though the ebook quality needs to be good enough to accurately see the strokes of the kanji Sometimes it’s too bad for even that.
運ばれる, past tense 運ばれた, is passive (Bunpro link). She was carried to the hospital.
In the Edo period in various regions, it was widely used by both men and women from all walks of life, regardless of nobility. After the Meiji era (1868-1912), the number of female users decreased in the common language, but it persists in dialects, particularly in the Tohoku region.
Then she creates a 浮世絵. Depends on how old she is, I guess.
I just finished the part for this week and it wasnt hard at all I’m so proud since it’s my first time joining. And I love the discussions that are going on here, they help a lot.
I studied the vocabulary beforehand, that was a big plus and made everything way easier, I still have to strengthen my grammar, though. I’ll now go over the sentences again, trying to analize the grammar used. I bet I’ll have a bunch of questions soon.
y’all are the best and I’m very thankful this book club exists
I actually missed when I read this before that they gave us Hinata’s old life name so early. I remember running into it later and being like “oh, so that was her name before”
Page 9 - Reaction discussion
My read on it is that Hinata presented it as her work, but it’s so far beyond the expected skills for her age (when her classmates will be just about colouring within the lines) that the possibility Hinata is showing her own work doesn’t even occur to her mom.
Hinata picks up on that reaction, and realises how unusual the drawing is. and goes along with the story of one of the teachers drawing it, because she’s trying not to be weird.
As far as I understand it, 浮世絵 is the art style independent of what medium is used. Wikipedia corroborates this:
genre of Japanese art (…) woodblock prints and paintings of such subjects as female beauties…
…like Hinata’s mum☺️
I’m not a native speaker so correct me if I’m wrong, but “goes along with” implies that someone else first brought up the idea, doesn’t it? Her mum did ask who painted it for her, but she comes up with the idea of her teacher being the one all by herself. (Not that there are many options to choose from around a kindergarten though haha)
It’s 
So cute!
Cute Hinata drew her mom and only got a silent stare in return.
I’m so proud since it’s my first time joining. And I love the discussions that are going on here, they help a lot.