銀の匙 (IMC) Week 2 🥄

[meagstudies]

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銀の匙 Home Thread

Week 2

Start Date: March 29
Previous Part: Week 1
Next Part: Week 3

Week	Start Date	Chapter	End Page	Page Count
Week 2	March 29	Chapter 1 (part 2)	40	22

We’re finishing Chapter 1 this week! From now on, we’re doing a chapter a week with the lengths consistently being about 20 pages

Vocabulary

銀の匙 Book Club Vocabulary Sheet

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!

Proper Nouns

Name	Reading	Notes
八軒勇吾	はちけん ゆうご	protagonist
御影アキ	みかげ あき	classmate
相川慎之介	あいかわ しんのすけ	classmate
駒場一郎	こまば いちろう	classmate
稲田多摩子	いまだ たまこ	classmate
常盤恵次	とさわ けいじ	classmate
吉野まゆみ	としの まゆみ	classmate
西川	にしかわ	roommate
別府	べっぷ	roommate

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

If you’ve already read this book but are still going to join the discussion, please select “I have finished this part.”

[simias]

🚨

吾輩？

[Akashelia]

(Not sure what you mean, can you explain?)

[Akashelia]

Story comments

Oof last week wasn’t very hard but this one was way more dense.
Very funny that he picked the school because he thought it would be super easy, and turns out it’s the opposite and he has to do a lot of exercise. (I mean I find it funny so far, because it’s a story, but not sure I will keep finding it funny if it doesn’t get better for him, not enjoying people being humiliated that much, we’ll see how it evolves)

[simias]

There’s a character in 鋼の錬金術師 that refers to himself with 吾輩 and looks like this:

week2

@Akashelia

Very funny that he picked the school because he thought it would be super easy, and turns out it’s the opposite and he has to do a lot of exercise.

I’m not sure that’s why he picked the school, doesn’t he also say/imply that it was because it was far from home? I read this last week because I didn’t want to split chapters so I don’t remember exactly.

I felt like the easy part was mostly when he saw that the textbook wasn’t very thick (and then him memorizing a bunch of stuff that eventually proved useless). I don’t know if it was his main drive, but maybe I’m overthinking this.

@Akashelia

not enjoying people being humiliated that much, we’ll see how it evolves

I also really dislike that (really struggling with the current IBC as a result) but I didn’t quite get this feeling from this chapter yet. I feel like most of the people around him are helpful or at the very least somewhat friendly, he’s just a bit of a “fish out of water” and most of his issues so far are self-inflicted. He didn’t have to run after the calf, he didn’t have to be lazy and not participate in a club etc… I think he’ll find his groove as the story progresses.

The crazy PE teacher is a trope I’ve seen in other manga so I think that’s played just for laughs, but we’ll see.

[Akashelia]

Haha OK, yes then I definitely see the resemblance!

Chapter discussion

@simias

I’m not sure that’s why he picked the school, doesn’t he also say/imply that it was because it was far from home?

Yes he said he picked it because there is a dormitory specifically, so he doesn’t need to go back home. And also he comes from a more prestigious school but seems to have picked this one because the material was so thin. He read it all in the spring break (so before the school year starts in Japan) to make sure to be top of the class (which completely backfired as the teacher says they will be disregarding this specific textbook)

@simias

I think he’ll find his groove as the story progresses.

I’m hoping so too! They also didn’t show him struggling with catching the chickens but more like his shock as seeing one being casually beheaded in front of him, so that’s more aligned with the “fish out of water” that you describe!

[simias]

reply

@Akashelia

Yes he said he picked it because there is a dormitory specifically, so he doesn’t need to go back home.

Ah right, that was it. He seems to be running away from something. At least that’s how I read it.

[Belthazar]

If anyone’s curious about it, the kids’ hometowns mentioned on page 20 and 21 are Makubetsu, Shimizu, Obihiro, Nakasatsunai, Urahoro, Betsukai, Taiki, Tsubetsu and, last but not least, Sapporo. Most of those are adjacent, suggesting the school is probably in that area too. (The specific schools mentioned are likely fictional.)

I wonder if it’s possible to locato Ezono with that satellite photo on page 37…

Page 26, TPP in the second panel is the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was under negotiations when this manga commenced in 2011 (though Japan didn’t join until 2013). The TPP ultimately went un-ratified, largely thanks to Inmate P01135809 pulling the US out. Though I gotta say, I skipped over the rest of that page. All y’all can research that terminology on your own time.

Oh, a sneaky extra school on the omake page. Akkeshi.

Chapter discussion

@Akashelia

And also he comes from a more prestigious school but seems to have picked this one because the material was so thin.

Think the choice was mostly because of the boarding. The fact that he expected the course work to be easy was a side benefit.

[Doumori]

@simias Finally!

Cross-referencing Arakawa-sensei's characters! \o/

Though I think Armstrong would be running ahead of them. Encouragingly flexing and sparkling of course.

@Belthazar

Chapter discussion

Think the choice was mostly because of the boarding. The fact that he expected the course work to be easy was a side benefit.

I agree

I don’t think he enrolled to be the best. But then he became bitter because all other students had goals. And then he saw how the other students struggled with math… But he was willing to help them no problem.

[simias]

speculation

@Doumori

I don’t think he enrolled to be the best. But then he became bitter because all other students had goals. And then he saw how the other students struggled with math…

I suspect that there’s a prejudice aspect to it, although maybe I’m reading too much into it. He might have thought “oh it’s a school for rednecks, that should be easy” but then during this chapter he realizes that he didn’t judge them fairly.

[Marifly]

All done with this week’s reading. A few pages were very very dense. Did any of you read those pages to understand it, or did you just skim over it? I tried to read it, but I’m not sure if I understood all of it. Also not sure if we’re supposed to understand this, or if it’s just to show how “fish out of water” the MC is?

[Belthazar]

@Marifly

Also not sure if we’re supposed to understand this, or if it’s just to show how “fish out of water” the MC is?

Yeah, I kinda went “I understand the general mood the manga is trying to covey” and moved on. The fact that the words start to wander out of the bubble borders suggests the latter, though it’s probably worth noting that native speakers would likely understand the gist of the words even if they don’t understand their precise meaning.

If you’re curious to know what it says, but not quite so curious enough to spend half an hour with a dictionary, here’s how Yen Press translated these panels:

Summary

[simias]

@Marifly

Also not sure if we’re supposed to understand this, or if it’s just to show how “fish out of water” the MC is?

Note that the text clips the text bubbles, giving it this “overstuffed” feeling. So it’s meant to sound dense and complicated and the actual meaning is not super important.

That said if you don’t mind doing a bunch of lookups I don’t find that stuff very hard to read. It’s just jargon vocab, the grammar is straightforward. I also find that this is a situation where the use of kanji really shines, words like 細胞増殖 can be guessed from spelling alone.

Then again I played Parasite Eve in Japanese so maybe it prepared me for this:

[Marifly]

Thanks, both of you! I did try to read it, and I got the general gist, but not everything. Thanks for posting the translation, @Belthazar!

@Belthazar

native speakers would likely understand the gist of the words even if they don’t understand their precise meaning.

Yeah, that’s what reading it in English felt like. Looks like the MC understood even less than that, given his reaction in the last panel!

[polv]

@Belthazar

Oh, a sneaky extra school on the omake page. Akkeshi.

トライベツ appears to be an area in Akkeshi, and not using Kanji, only Katakana.

Not sure if left vertical text of Geegle Map is Photec Co. or something. Not sure what that Co. references.

@simias

giving it this “overstuffed” feeling. So it’s meant to sound dense and complicated and the actual meaning is not super important.

I tried to read, but not sure if I really understand biology…

Some keywords – 胚盤(はいばん) (and the first Kanji). バイオプシー biopsy trips me on Katakana a bit.

More fun in manga is about reading handwriting side-scribbles, rather than dense typed, imo.

[Belthazar]

@polv

トライベツ appears to be an area in Akkeshi, and not using Kanji, only Katakana.

Aye, for a lot of the places mentioned, the area of the town mentioned is also real, just not the school.

@polv

Not sure if left vertical text of Geegle Map is Photec Co. or something. Not sure what that Co. references.

Yeah, a bland name version of something. The copyright on the current satellite imagery in that area all seem to be some combination of Airbus, Landsat, and/or Maxar Technologies.

[Jezzieangel]

Summary

MC definitely feels like a city boy, or at least not from farming families like most of the other kids. He definitely has an attitude of “dumb country bumpkins” towards them at first, which I think was what those really dense panels about cloning beef were supposed to represent–that prejudice being overturned as he realizes that sounds complicated, he doesn’t understand it, and yet his classmates are discussing it as casually as last night’s baseball game. “Oh, these kids aren’t stupid. They have extensive knowledge in a very niche area. I have no knowledge in this area. Now I feel like I’m the stupid one.”

And then instead of feeling superior, he feels inferior, because everyone else around him knows things and he’s the only one who doesn’t.

[Belthazar]

@Jezzieangel

MC definitely feels like a city boy, or at least not from farming families like most of the other kids.

Oh, no question about that - he’s from Sapporo, after all. (Though to someone from Tokyo, he’s probably the country bumpkin. )

[GolyBidoof]

@Belthazar

If you’re curious to know what it says, but not quite so curious enough to spend half an hour with a dictionary, here’s how Yen Press translated these panels:

I noticed that halfway through the page, some of the lines in Japanese started going over the textboxes, and it seems like they replicated the effect in English as well xddd
Admittedly, I got into reading about the stem cells as well and I even added the word for it at the bottom of the chapter 1 dictionary, but I have a feeling that some of the phrases, like the X-chromosonal increase just went through one ear and left through the other ear, I didn’t get too much of it

@Marifly

I tried to read it, but I’m not sure if I understood all of it. Also not sure if we’re supposed to understand this, or if it’s just to show how “fish out of water” the MC is?

Same here, and my feeling is strongly on the side of the fish out of water conversations xddd

One of expressions I really wanted to get right in this chapter was:

実習農地
実習農林

and from what I understand, it means something like “Practical farmland” and “Practical agricultural and forestry” studies, always fun when you google a term and nothing comes up, so you have to stitch the expressions in pieces xddd

There was a moment when I saw the word 乳牛 being used a few times and I was like “I’m having a stroke, right?”
As it turns out, both 牛乳 and 乳牛 are words in Japanese, so that was a fun revelation to go through xddd

Also, the way how the word 諸君ら was used: I’ve heard 諸君 before, maybe I wouldn’t have been thrown by 諸君たち, but 諸君ら is interesting, this sounded a bit kansai-benish to me??? Like, it feels a bit less polite than just 諸君 in the first place, but I might be wrong?

Either way, I’m still not super on-board with the plot of the manga yet, but my brain had successfully restarted the ability to think in Japanese and the second part of the second part of the chapter felt pretty easy to read, so I can use the momentum and try to catch up with Chapter 2 as well

[Belthazar]

@GolyBidoof

As it turns out, both 牛乳 and 乳牛 are words in Japanese, so that was a fun revelation to go through xddd

I mean, it’s kinda like the contrast between “cow’s milk” and “milk cow” in English (though we ruin the contrast by typically saying “dairy cow” instead). Fun fact, there’s a lot of times in Japanese where you’ve got two words which consist of the same pair of kanji switched. The most common one you’ll probably come across all the time is 日本 versus 本日, and at your level you should have already come across the 光栄 / 栄光 pair on Wanikani.

The trick to remember (in general for all jukugo, not just in these specific situations) is that the first kanji describes the second kanji, so 牛乳 is cow-milk and 乳牛 is milk-cow.

@GolyBidoof

but 諸君ら is interesting, this sounded a bit kansai-benish to me???

ら is just a slightly rougher pluralising suffix than たち, not really dialectical. (If there’s gonna be any dialects around here, though, it’ll be Hokkaido-ben.)