We have begun!
I wanted to share some important points right away, which nobody will read because it’s too long, but at least I can say I told you…
Vocabulary Sheet
Please read the guidelines in the first sheet!
The more people contribute to the vocab sheet, the easier the job is for everyone, so please don’t be shy about adding words. We often have issues at the beginning with people not following the guidelines though. The most important points that get missed:
- don’t add a word if you aren’t confident of its meaning or how to parse it
- entries must be in dictionary form, not conjugated however they are in the book
- do not include kanji unless they’re present in the book
- don’t dump the entire dictionary entry in the ‘meaning’ column; remove alternative spellings, limit it to only the relevant translations, etc. - no entries wider than one column width
Asking Questions
ASK QUESTIONS! Seriously, ask ALL the questions!
Questions help everybody. Other people might be too shy to ask the question you post. Someone might not realise they’d misunderstood a sentence until seeing your question. The person answering your question might deepen their understanding of the topic, or realise they hadn’t paid enough attention.
Clearly include the page number or percentage. It makes it so much easier for people to answer your question, and for other people to search for answers in the thread.
Do not post spoilers for the week. Lots of people keep up with the thread before they’ve finished the week’s reading. Please blur out anything interesting that happens using [spoiler] ooooo text here! [/spoiler]. Err on the side of caution.
Reading
The first few pages of a new book are always hard. You dive in headfirst with no context. Try not to get discouraged!
Some setting to help people ease in: Rina (リナ) has just arrived at this town’s station. She is travelling on her own, and asks a passerby the way to the Valley of Mist.
Some characters in this book speak with a dialect. Hopefully somebody with literally any knowledge of this subject can provide us with more help, but so far my highly intellectual understanding is that we’re going to see k sounds becoming g sounds, and t sounds becoming d sounds. You can see this in the passerby’s response to Rina, where she says さあ、きいだごどねえなあ - i.e. さあ、きいたことねえなあ.
okay GO GO GO! 
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