老女的少女ひなたちゃん・Little Granny Girl Hinata-chan 👩‍👧 — Week 8 (Absolute Beginners Book Club)

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

Week 8 27th April 2024
End page 80 (end of chapter 4)
End phrase その()砂場(すなば)所有権(しょゆうけん)先生(せんせい)(たく)された
Pages 19
Last Week Week 7
Next week Week 9
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
とよ image Hinata’s past self
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
咲夜 さくや image New classmate this week
冬馬 とうま image Boy in Hinata’s class

Discussion Questions

  1. This week is our first full chapter week, how did you find it?
  2. 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!
  3. What was your favorite new vocab word from this week’s reading?
  4. 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?
  5. Hinata got really into the dango fight, did you think she had it in her?

  6. What do you think of Touma and Sakuya, our two new named characters this week?

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?

  • I’m reading along
  • I have finished this part
  • I’m still reading the book but I haven’t reached this part yet
  • I’m reading this book after the club has finished
  • I’m no longer reading the book
0 voters

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!

9 Likes

How did people find the whole chapter pace this week?

  • Easy
  • Manageable
  • Difficult
  • Too Difficult
  • I’m already an experienced reader
0 voters
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Finished my check of the vocab list.

Page 68, ツルペカ団子 appears to refer to the practice of shaping balls of mud until they’re shiny, though Google wants to call that either ツル or ピカピカ, so I’m not entirely sure why it’s ツルカ here. Regardless, it’s definitely what Hinata is currently doing with her hands. Heh. She can see her reflection in it on page 71.

Page 78, a twist! Which I kinda saw coming!

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Page 62

千春 and 冬馬 's argument. The first speech bubble each of them say I’m having trouble with. I put what I’ve got of the whole exchange below, and bolded the sentences I’m struggling with.

Touma: I think you played in the sandbox the other day, but!
Touma: Girls should be inside, quietly playing house or something.
Chiharu: In spite of you dumping mud balls and balls in the garden with no control. [and where the heck are the pompoms relevant?]
Chiharu: You’re really immature, isn’t that right? [rhetorical] Ugh, boys.
Touma: You are you calling immature, ugly!?
Chiharu: What did you say!?
Hinata: Children are so adorable.

Also, am I the only one who thinks Hinata a tad delusional for thinking this is cute?

About Sakuya, this could be interesting. She seems rather cold at the moment, but we have essentially no information on who she was on what kind of family she has now. I’ll reserve judgement until we have more info or she does something truly horrid, like tossing cats.

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Page 62

だろう is a little more certain than “I think”, so it’s more “You were playing in the sandbox the other day, right? But…” in meaning. But in English you’d probably not use “right” here, and just rely on accusatory tone alone.

This is sort of a grandma trope even in English. Like “Oh, the joys of youth”, when the kids are having an argument over something that to them is deathly serious (sandpit access) but to adults is meaningless.

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Definitely some dense sections of text in this week’s reading. I’m fighting through it, but definitely leaning on some translation help!

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Ooh, I like the new character Sakuya.

Ah, much appreciated.

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Another pretty hard chapter. Having to look up every second word in an “Absolute Beginner” reading material is pretty depressing.

7 Likes

I would say that’s to be expected. It used to take me hours to make it through one book club section of an easy manga. ChristopherFritz has a good writeup about it.

Also, feel free to ask questions in the thread if you’re struggling with anything.

7 Likes

I’m only one fourth into this chapter! 15 more pages to go. So thankful for the Vocab sheet but I do miss the Grammar sheet from the last ABBC :sweat_smile:

First question ever on the ABBC and a response.

p.64

ってなんだべ!?勝手に人のお茶飲んでからに!
What did you say!? After drinking someone else’s tea as you please!

This ~てから in the end is this one right? What is に doing there at the end?

Reply to @RedBlue

Honestly, as an adult I probably would think it’s cute too if I saw that at a neighborhood playground. But if I were related to any of the kids or if I were their teacher, I would try immediately to de-escalate the situation after they started calling each other names. :sweat_smile: It seems like Hinata can’t read the room or is just totally unaware of children’s feelings. I guess when you get to 88 years old everything just seems so trivial? :woman_shrugging:t2:

4 Likes

Honestly the teachers seem like such non-entities in this series. Last chapter, they watched Hinata overarm-throw two cats clean out of the room, and their response was just “aww, we were playing with those”. And I get that this is a manga about the kids, but the teachers either do something, or else not be present in the scene, not this middle ground of present-but-inactive.

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#1 Jisho.org: Japanese Dictionary (maybe?)

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Week 9 thread is up:

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Lagging a bit behind but I have a question about p. 67: is this a mistake in the furigana? Cause I think it should be あそぼー? Or is it one of those kanji where it’s acceptable to use onyomi as a verb?

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I’m pretty certain that’s a typo. Reckon some automatic furigana generator misparsed it, and noone caught it in the proof-read.

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