老女的少女ひなたちゃん・Little Granny Girl Hinata-chan 👩‍👧 — Week 7 (Absolute Beginners Book Club)

Welcome to the seventh week of the Little Granny Girl Hinata Chan book club!

Week 7 20th April 2024
End page 60 (end of chapter 3)
End phrase 奇跡(きせき) と言っていいひととき
Pages 9
Last Week Week 6
Next week Week 8
Home Thread 老女的少女ひなたちゃん
Last Panel

Vocabulary

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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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).
  3. 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 image Main character
文夏 もか image Hinata’s classmate (Note, you’ll often see her name written as モカ)
千春 ちはる image Hinata’s classmate

Discussion Questions

  1. 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!
  2. What was your favorite new vocab word from this week’s reading?
  3. 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?
  4. Have you encountered the water bottle cat repellent idea before? I’ve heard it here, so it’s not just a Japan only thing.

Dialect Guide

Hinata speaks with a little bit of a Fukushima 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.

Participation

Will you be reading along with us this week?

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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!

7 Likes

Hinata, chasing the cats away from the sandpit is one thing, but if you chase them away from the litter box that you set up for them to use, you’re sending mixed messages.

So, if you’re wondering what’s with all the bottles, cats are supposed to hate the light caused by the sun reflecting off water, so you’ll sometimes find a row of plastic bottles lined up along the edge of a property when you’re walking the streets in Japan. It… doesn’t always work.

1008ompe02

Though mostly what I’m wondering is where she got them all from.

12 Likes
p.58

Having trouble parsing the last sentence of the chapter. それはひなたが寝ている時限定の奇跡といっていいひととき。
”それはひなたが寝ている時限定の奇跡” = A miracle that only happens when Hinata is sleeping

“といっていいひととき” = however it is a good moment (???)

Reading so slowly makes me a lot more invested in this story than I otherwise would be after just 60 pages!

Chapter thoughts

I really thought we were about to see character growth for Hinata though, not her turning everyone else into cat-haters!

2 Likes
Page 51

「ちゃんとお話しできたらよかったのにね、ね猫さんと」
I’m not sure what is meant here. “If you can reliably tell the story then wasn’t it good despite cats” ? That doesn’t make sense.

Page 52

[お台所に一緒に立つとかまだまだ先のことかと思ってたけど]
I think I figured this one out but it was difficult so I’m sharing my thought process.

First, the と思ってたけど at the end is “I thought this, but” so the rest of the sentence is something she used to think.

Then お台所に一緒に立つとか is “things like standing together in the kitchen”

And まだまだ先のこと is “still a long way off before those things”

か question marker

So, altogether I have “I used to think aren’t we a long way off from being doing things like standing together in the kitchen like this”

「教えてなくてもどんどん覚えてくれるから助かるわぁ」
I think this is something like “Also I am not teaching you but because you are quickly memorising (the recipe?), that helps me” but I’m not sure on that conjugation. Also is 覚える here being used in more of 学ぶ or 習う type way? Because it feels a little weird for her mother to say she’s memorising even though Hinata does remember from her last life, because from her mother’s point of view she should be learning these kinds of things for the first time.

Page 53

Top half, is Hinata trying to tell us that because she used to be old she can’t learn new things anymore, (excuses) or have I completely misinterpreted that?

1 Like
Page 58

I parsed it like this:

それはひなたが寝ている時 - while Hinata is sleeping
限定の奇跡 - a limited miracle
と言って - however
いいひととき - good for a short time

Then I put it together as: While Hinata is sleeping, a miracle happens. However, (because the miracle is limited) it is good (only) for a short time.

2 Likes
Page 51

This is a case of the topic coming at the end. In a more straightforward wording, it’s 猫さんとちゃんとお話しできたらよかったのにね.

のに coming at the end of the main clause has an effect of adding a wistful tone of “if only” or “I wish”.

Page 52

Well, your English wording is a bit awkward here, but otherwise that’s basically it.

The も adds a meaning of “even if”. 教えてなくても = even without me teaching you…

Yes. The verb 覚える specifically refers to the moment of memorising something, rather than the act of holding something in memory.

Page 53

My feeling is that it never even occured to her that she could be caught new things.

2 Likes

I caught up! Yay!

Page 53

With the accompanying picture it feels like she remembers teaching her grandson stuff and is sad? Maybe some mixed in guilt that she’s denying her mother that experience because she doesn’t need to be taught any of that?

4 Likes
Page 53

This is definitely a feeling that does come up, see also the “oh, I uhh learned it from a picture book” back in chapter 1. I’m not fully sure that’s the feeling here, compared to e.g. nostalgically missing her time with her grandson, but it could be.

Week 8 thread is up, it’s our first full chapter week so please do share how you feel about the pace once you’ve read it!

5 Likes