I thought this as well and as you wrote it, sound effects are normally written in Katakana. However, I may have read too much manga… possible that novels have sound effects in hiragana also?
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Just finished Chapter 3 Pt. 1 after stockpiling ~4 pages for Friday (thanks Ghost of Tsushima…).
Fairly easy last few pages all things considered! Only stumbled a bit in the conversation between Kiki and Jiji about where to go, but Kiki talking to her parents and her farewell were all pretty easy to get through. Relatively simple conversation that wasn’t about worldbuilding haha.
I quite like that Jiji is a bit snarkier in the books (going hand in hand with Kiki being a bit brattier). I love the movie adaptation with all my heart, and the book has been a nice way to revisit the story.
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I already read this weeks by mistake - I was just a bit too adsorb and didn’t noticed until it was too late. 
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This is where I have a love/hate relationship with Disney's dub of the movie.
I’d seen the dub many times before I saw the movie in Japanese, so it was a bit of a shock to learn that Disney gave Jiji a ton of brand new dialogue practically any time his mouth wasn’t showing. Because it’s what I’m used to, it’s hard to not expect all the extra dialogue when watching in Japanese.
Disney did later do an English release that cuts out all his extra dialogue, but the audio on that (at least on my copy) is really choppy (like everyone’s talking into a fan).
I don’t remember much from when I read the original English release of the book, so if it turns out Jiji’s more snarky in the book than in the film, I’ll consider accepting that maybe Disney adding additional snarky lines for Jiji maybe isn’t the end of the world.
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I’m still revising p. 44-37 before diving into the second part and I have a little question. ジジ says 「どうして女の子って、こうむだな問題するんだろう。
I thought って is used as a quotation mark after what is being said, but in this case seems to be used after who said it.
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Ah in this context it’s not quoting anything (or well, it is, but not in the conventional sense). This is quite common and it’s closer to setting a topic than quoting what someone said (similar constructs exist too like ってば/ったら do the exact same job with different nuances). So I guess you can think of it as similar to は here? But I wouldn’t want to depend on this comparison with は and would just try to understand it as its own thing.
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I got a copy of the subbed version on VHS when I was real little. My parents did all sorts of little tricks like that to get me reading as quickly as possible, though nothing worked nearly as well as telling 3-year-old me that I couldn’t play a video game because it had too much reading in it. That got me reading full books before I turned four.
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Thank you for the clarification! 
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Interesting, I’ll have to check out the sub at some point. I’ve always enjoyed Jiji’s dialogue in the movies, owing much of that to Phil Hartman’s performance. I’d have to rewatch again, because reading the book now Jiji comes across as a bit more quippy specifically against Kiki.
Did anyone ever help you with this? (I’m a little behind, so I just got to this part), and I got a little confused here, too. I disagree with your interpretation because, whatever it means, the というように part means that it is describing the way Jiji is stretching and bunching himself while gazing into the mirror from the side. Maybe it’s something like “not wanting to be outdone,” ?
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My interpretation was wrong. What I got in the end (after a couple of people replied) was that he was stretching and bunching himself while gazing into the mirror from the side as if saying: I can’t afford to lose (against Kiki)
Not wanting to be outdone would work too, I think
That comes from:
てはいられない can’t afford to JLPT N2
というように as if saying
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I think both of your interpretations are fine. One is a more literal translation.
Just a few ideas about these two structures:
てはいられない – this is actually a form of ている. Instead of memorising this as a separate structure, I’d suggest noticing that いられない is the negative potential form of いる, and remembering that ている indicates a continued state. Thus, 〜てはいられない literally means ‘cannot continue in the state of 〜’, and that, by extension, means things like ‘can’t afford to’ or ‘can’t continue to’
というように – your interpretation isn’t wrong, but it’s quite literal, and is in fact more literal than what the phrase means in most contexts. という here is just a sort of ‘descriptive quotation’, if you will: what comes before という describes the noun that comes after it (e.g. 本をたくさん読んで、よく勉強するという方法=the approach known as ‘reading a lot of books and studying often’ OR ‘the “read a lot of books and study frequently” approach’). Additionally, while ように is an expression used to describe how something is done, it also often conveys a sense of purpose, and I think that’s good to know. In this case, however, I think describing the manner of action is the main purpose of the phrase, and so, while your translation works, I think removing ‘to say’ altogether is possible: ‘…as if he could not afford to lose to/be outdone by…’
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Well, took Saturday off and now look what’s happened. I’m sick. Not with the big scary disease, I don’t think, but definitely with something. This must be my punishment. Gotta get back on track. I’ll only get sicker if I stop here. Probably.
From pages 1-2 of this week’s section:
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今まで灰色とこい青の世界だったもの - I feel like I’m misreading this one, as I can’t really parse the grammar. Particularly とこい.
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いろいろな色 - I just like this.
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川の終わりは海っていうもの - The grammar I know tells me to translate this as “At the end of the river is something called the sea”, but that doesn’t seem right, since they were talking about the sea earlier. EDIT: Wait, maybe it’s more like That sea we were talking about?
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Jiji’s description of the kind of town he’d like… Well, you’ve got to appreciate a cat that knows what they want.
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Get better soon! 
For your questions (I’m lagging behind due to workload, so just ignore me please if this does not fit the context):
こい is 濃い here, making this dark blue.
いろいろな色 I like that too 
川の終わりは海っていうもの Its definitely the case that 川の終わり is the subject here, so your first attempt is better than the second one 
Also, I’ve often found that という has a very light meaning and does not need to be translated as “something called”; it’s more to mark something as being special or so, hard to describe. Maybe like putting quotes around it? At the end of the river is “the sea”. (Or maybe context would make this clearer… sorry!)
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Ah, thicc blue. Of course.
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Now matter how many times I read this sentence, I just don’t get the meaning:
低い山は昼のやわらかい緑におおわれ、空中に浮きあがろうとでもしているように軽やかに見えます。
The second part doesn’t make sense to me: -Even if it seemed to be visible in the sky, it looked light ???
空中に浮きあがろうとでもしているように軽やかに見えます
空中に = in the sky
浮きあがろうとでもしている = trying to float [or something like that]
The でも here isn’t translated as “even”. I think its meaning is closer to “or something like that”, but of course you can’t put that in the English. It has no equivalent, I feel it introduces some uncertainty. (although if you think hard, you might reach an “even” nuance here, but that only gets in the way if you want to understand it in its JP context without English)
軽やかに見えます = looked light
“[the mountain] looked light as if it’s trying to float in the sky”
(I explained the minimum, but feel free to ask about more details if a certain construct still looks weird!)
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Thank you very much! It’s much clearer now. I forgot that it was still referring to the mountain.
In this sentence, I had translated っていう as something like “it is said”. Do you think it possible to translate it like that?
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How exactly would you translate the whole sentence using that phrase though? I think you’d translate it as “what you’d call” or “what is called” (even though the latter translation is passive and so isn’t as literal of a translation).
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