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It’s not always easy. I actually did a search for まいあげ previously and came up with excavation (digging up buried items), which was not right at all. It’s only upon re-searching that I found the link with the English translation. And that empowered me to do the two Google image searches (which I should have done in the first place).
I finished reading chapter 1 today, but I only strongly understand the first third, and somewhat understand the second third. I feel the final third was a lot easier to read due to lack of whataretheysaying弁, but there are so many words I don’t know yet. I only somewhat followed the gist of what transpired, so I’m about to finally look over the vocabulary sheet and see what’s there before doing a re-read.
Seeing as I’m planning on reading some of the Kiki’s books in 2020, I’d better shape up!
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so fast…you’re doing great!
I am so behind…I don’t know if I can keep up with this pace…but not to worry I’ll still keep asking my silly questions…though this last part w/o the dialect is much easier for me to follow it’s the details that I wonder about like why is the mai there and other things I get hung up on … I know I should just let it go but mentally I just have to understand it or it will bug me forever!
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I know the feeling. I’ve trained myself up on “just keep reading”, but I’ve loved reading novels my whole life, and I love taking my time slowly building the scenery and actions in my mind. It’s so hard to do that when I don’t know many of the words, but at the same time I don’t want to be stopping to look up every other word.
So far, I’m forcing myself to do a first read without looking up anything, unless 1) it really nags at me, or 2) a word comes up multiple times.
This is followed by reading the thread and finding so many things that I missed. (I actually read a lot of the thread this week before reading the rest of chapter 1, and I’m thinking I completely missed some things I recall seeing talked about.)
On my second read, it’s not really reading so much as looking at random sentences and working out the grammar and vocabulary; here’s where I look up some words. This is where the majority of my time is spent. I end up with something looking like this:
(Each color is associated with a grammar part-of-speech; boldface I can mouse-over for English.)
The third read is an actual read through again to better visualize and internalize everything I’d learned from the thread and research.
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haha nice… (wish I had time to read through 3x! I barely have time to get through it once)…
my process is so crude … (compared to your nice work)
I’m sure people will laugh but eh…whatever…it’s what works for me…
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As the page count gets longer and longer, it’s getting more difficult! I’ve been fitting my manga reading into weekends so I can read ふしぎな町 on my bus commutes.
I’d hand-write notes in a notebook, but my hand gets sore after about 30 seconds of writing…
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Offtopic - jealous!!!
how in the heck do you have time for all that! There’s manga I want to read that’s finally at my level and I wish I had time for it…
I work 40 hours a week, have other stuff going on and then tack on wk reviews, bp reviews, slowing adding flo flo reviews 2x a week italki lessons (though none this week)… honestly barely have time to do the the book club …it eats up all of my remaining time…
but I honestly found I learned so much more “real Japanese” then textbook “aka boring” stuff…so I want to keep reading more interesting things than textbooks… and plus it’s fun to ask my dumb questions on here hehehe
Have to stop reading now…getting disruptions…why do people try to talk to me when I’m trying to focus on my book… 
fingers crossed for some peace and quiet in the morning and I can make a larger dent in this book …
Happy New Year everyone!
皆、良いお年を！
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Offtopic
The two 20-something minute bus commutes help! But I basically stopped reading manga in English because of the book clubs… (I must read more Detective Conan! And where did I even leave off in Soul Eater?)
My SRS reviews are just WaniKani and iKnow (the latter which I’ve gotten to under 20 reviews per day, but I plan to add new words often in 2020. Please send help!) So that helps on time.
Aside from that, having a to-do list (which I’m in the middle of writing up right now) helps because if I find myself doing nothing, I can look at my to-do list and pick something to start reading.
Yup, same here!
Score one for me being a massive introvert who holes himself away from other people outside of work =D (It’s not for everybody.)
This post feels like I’m participating in a chatroom, so I’ll just take a moment to thank everyone who pointed out the 、 by the え. I had wondered about that on my first read through, but then forgot, and did subsequent reading on my computer where I’m viewing the book as a web page with images stripped out. Thus that wasn’t there when I was trying to figure out 「えのさき」, and it was nice to find the answer here in the thread waiting for me.
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it’s me again… 
Page 23/p23
リナは、そこまでもどると、カバンを投げたしてぺったりとすわりこんだ
Actually have this figured out for the most part but not sure how the
ぺったり is modifying the meaning…?
リナは、(rina)
そこまで (there until - went there)
もどると、(to turn back and)
カバンを (bag + direct object particle)
投げた (to throw - I remember something about entering the gates to the city of Tokyo or something another)
して (I guess doing?)
ぺったりと (closely/tightly + particle - no idea how this is working here)
すわりこんだ (verb 座り込む - sit’s down and basks or in protest)
I ended up with Rina turned back and went (to where the umbrella was), threw down her bag and sat down… but that’s w/o the ぺったり what is this doing to the sentence?
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I don’t recall the context, but out of context I would read this と as “when”.
That’s a だ, so 投げ出して =)
I’ll have to re-read the section to comment on ぺったり.
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the slow painful death of hiragana + my typos … happiness …
I anxiously await your answer on this one… this was the main reason I posted the question…maybe it’s not what I am reading it as for all I know it could be some tari verb form 
oh hiragana…
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From looking into this (it’s good for me, as I didn’t give it attention when I read through before):
ぺったり is an adverb when と is added, so we know 「ぺったりと」 describes the action of 座り込む.
Looking at this page’s second definition for ぺったり:
Note that 座り込む is right in the definition! 力なく, without power, feebly. I’ve seen some sentences with 「ぺったりと座り込む」 translated as “plop down”, which means someone just sort of drops down into a seat without any strength behind it.
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thanks!
guess I need to learn how to use weblio… jisho failed me
I tend to add とは after a word in Google, such as: ぺったりととは. Weblio comes up a lot, so maybe I should start going to it first? Then, if there are multiple definitions, I drop them into Google Translate to see which looks to be most accurate to the context the word is used in. Finally, I take that definition and drop it into ichi.moe to parse it out for me. (Although I wasn’t able to get a feel for what the さま at the end of the definition is. I’ve read the translation on ichi.moe and definition in ADoBJG, but I need more exposure to get to understand it.)
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I got curious as well and found this Hinative question+answer, maybe it helps a little bit.
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It’s pretty much just a “state” or a “condition” or some such. Either that or 様子 seems to be pretty boilerplate for native definitions of descriptive (adjective-ish?) words.
The obvious online native dictionaries that come up are usually weblio and goo. I’ve been tending to go straight to goo nowadays, just because the interface seems a bit cleaner, but I don’t know how different the quality of the definitions might be. Edit: There’s also Kotobank, but it feels really clunky to me.
The Sanseido web dictionary is another good resource that isn’t indexed by search engines; they’re very careful to make sure you have an active browser session before they serve any definitions. Their web dictionary comes from their “daily concise” print dictionary, I think; the definitions are usually fairly brief and use simple language.
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On my bus ride home today, I re-read the sentences with the houses/shops, and decided to look up the unknown-to-me word むかい (“facing; opposite; across the street; other side”) this time, since it shows up thrice. Wow, that completely changed my understanding of that section! I was rather confused by it on my first read when I was just trying to feel my way through with the words that I do know.
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Okay, it may be the last day of the week, but I finally have time to start reading this 
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Wow! I want to start doing that. What notes are you taking? Words you don’t know? Figuring out sentences?
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also I’m having a hard time understanding the ていく・てくる in this sentence. I thought I understood them, but I now I’m not sure.
このはこりっぽい町なみがつづいていくような気がしてくる。
Started to have a feeling to keep continuing down this dusty town (???)
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