魔女の宅急便 (Kiki’s Delivery Service) Discussion Thread: Chapter 9

Japanese Language Reading
#53

Hey hey, it’s double post time again!

While the week off might have hurt my pacing a little bit, I do appreciate the short week. Had to start a little late this time around. Let’s get back to it. From pages 3-4 of chapter 9 (Red book):

  • そのいいかたがあんまりきどっているので、キキはちょっとのあいだ、ぽかんとおソノさんを見つめました。- Read this as “The way she said it was so stilted that kiki just stared at Osono san blankly for a moment.”

  • 遠くかすんで見える時計 - Another tripup that took me a trip to ichi.moe to figure out. か isn’t a particle here, it’s the て form of かすむ. Similar issue later on the same page with ききのがさない being きき のがさない and not きき の が さない.

#54

Rather than using long hyphen or space to show how you separated the characters, I’d personally recommend using ・. It’s much easier to see than a space and isn’t ambiguous like the hyphen (since hyphen looks like the katakana vowel extender).

Thankfully as you learn more words and get more used to conjugations, these kinds of misparses happen less and less often. :slight_smile:

#55

Kiki’s been in Koriko for eight months?! The sense of time here is wack.

#56

Seems about right to me. Maybe you missed one of the passing of the seasons. Describing the passage of time has been something of a major element thus far.

Anyway, since it looks like we’re back on the original schedule, I guess I’ll need to speed up my consumption before we flip over to the next week tomorrow. Notes from pages 5-7:

  • I admit, I had to look up how to pronounce 町長. It’s better than I could have imagined.

  • ますますたよりがいのある町長さんだということを見せなければならない - This is part of an incredibly long sentence, but this is the part that trips me up. Breaking it down, we have spoiler, (たよりがい・Reliability), (のある町長さんだ・A mayor that has), (という・Said), (を見せ・To show), (なければならない・なきゃ・Must do). Specifically what trips me up is the combination of という. Reading over it, my brain wants to ignore that という and read it as “(he) must show that he is more and more of a reliable mayor.”[/spoiler]

#57

I correctly guessed the pronunciation, but looked it up anyway, because I didn’t believe that “mayor” would be homophonous with "butterfly.’ But it IS. :nerd_face::star_struck::butterfly:

ということ is all one chunk, which you could translate as “that,” so you already have it in your translation. You will like knowing this–many sentences will suddenly seem more natural.

1 Like
#58

Ah that’s very fair. The establishing of the seasons for summer and and fall were definitely prominent, but I think because there’s the extra hurdles involved with translating then processing, I didn’t register the movement of time with the passing of the seasons. That and my own disjointed reading schedule coupled with the narrative’s episodic pacing threw me off.

I think this was also the first time a specific unit of calendar time was referenced in-book. I’d rephrase what I said earlier to instead comment on how so much time has already passed for Kiki, haha.

#59

This still didn’t make sense to me, but I found an even bigger chunk that does:

~ようによっては

Depending on how you ~

2 Likes
#60

Repeat Club Discussion (Week 17) Starts Here!

Chapter 9 Part 2

V1: Pages 211 - 221
V2: Pages 191 - 200
BookWalker: ?

We’re reading to the end of Chapter 9 this week.

24 October 2020

Please briefly check whether questions have already been answered above before posting them, but otherwise don’t hesitate.

  • I’m reading along
  • I’m still reading but haven’t reached this part yet
  • I’m dropping this book
  • I’m a superhero who’s read it before but is here for chatting :books:

0 voters

魔女の宅急便・Kiki's Delivery Service :red_gift_envelope: Repeat Club
#61

Today I finally found the time to read and could catch up. :sweat_smile:
I’m finding the conversation between the mayor and the時計屋さん really funny. Specially when he wants to send the police car to steal the cog. I think this is one of my favorite chapters.

2 Likes
#62

I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of Japanese onomatopoeias being used as frequently as they are. [コッチン、アッチン、ポッチン] being used to contextually as “the ticking of the clock” is really fun to read.

Also spent today catching up haha! Really quick read all things considered, and yeah I also quite like the last few pages of part 1. Really fun back and forth, and in a way that’s charmingly quaint (very much vibing with the rest of the book). The panic that both of them experience gets pretty funny, especially with 町長さん doing warmups while stressed out.

2 Likes
#63

Lmao I had to doublecheck that I correctly read the Mayor’s line about people spraining themselves or breaking out into rashes if he clapped to start the race. Good to know I read it right the first time lol

This chapter is pretty snappy with the back and forth, I’m really enjoying it.

You also lose a great line in translation: 「それからまゆを八の字にまげ」legit made me laugh irl

#64

Alright, it’s Friday and I’m ready to get right into discussing the new chapter.

What do you mean, it’s Tuesday?

What do you mean, it’s the same chapter?

I must have fallen behind, for reasons that are wholly unrelated to the video game Paradise Killer.

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Anyway, the book must go on. Thankfully, it’s another short week, so I can just go three-ish pages at a time.

  • 小さくおじぎをしてうたうようにいいました - Well, this is cute. I also unconsciously bow/nod when on the phone with people.

  • Even if they don’t have a big marathon, having your clock tower working on the Big Miso Day (Which is how my brain keeps translating 大みそか) seems pretty important. This plan is messed up.

  • Boy, this mayor is a serious drama queen. Further fueling my theory that anybody both younger and more accomplished than me is just the worst.

Alright. 3/10 down. Time to give the next three pages a first read.

I’m definitely not imagining it, I’m running into far fewer sentences that I can’t puzzle out on my own with a dictionary and google. Slowly but surely, all my question bullet points are being replaced with comments. A good thing, too, as there are fewer guiding hands to help pull me out of the grammatical muck at this point in the story.

7 Likes
#65

I love having you in our book club. Your posts always crack me up.

3 Likes
#66

Oh, good. I did my math wrong. I had 3 days to read 7 pages, not 2. Means I can procrastinate the triple for another day, yet. So, thoughts from the next two pages:

  • コリコの町から西にむかってお行儀よくならんだ山を三つ飛びこすと、- Welp, streak broken. Right there in the first sentence I come up on something I don’t quite get. Is it saying the mountains are politely lined up to convey that they’re in a neat little line?

  • Always stretch your pinky before doing a pinky promise. Don’t wanna sprain it.

  • おじいさんは笑いながら、自分の小指をキキの前にさしだしました - Please don’t imitate this behavior. This is illegal in 38 States.

1 Like
#67

… what? :sweat_smile:

And I do think streak unbroken, your interpretation sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

1 Like
#68

https://jisho.org/search/行儀よくする means “to behave well” so I would translate it as “orderly” or “neatly”, I guess. But otherwise, I agree with you and Belerith.

Too lazy to search this in the book atm, but are you sure your IME did not play tricks on you here? :thinking:

:exploding_head: What does it mean?

1 Like
#69

It most certainly did. This is a bad holdout from my tendency not to look at the screen when I’m typing. This is fine in english, as I can generally ‘feel’ when I made a typo. It doesn’t work so well with an IME.

Anyway, time to offload the next two pages from my brain so I can finish out the chapter tonight. Let’s reread.

  • Phew. I was worried there. The last page I’d read ended with kiki saying they’ll just go home, but then right as I turn the page Jiji threatens to turn our dear sweet girl into a heartless thief. Well, maybe it wasn’t so dramatic, but I’m glad Kiki didn’t need to learn this particular lesson.

  • あたしは魔女よ。ちゃんとやれるわ - I can’t believe it. I thought it was set dressing when they explained in chapter 2 that the only two pieces of magic Kiki knows are how to fly, and a magic spell that will make any clock work perfectly for 24 hours at the cost of the user’s own life. What a brave girl. I’m almost too scared to turn the page, but I’ll see her noble sacrifice through to the end.

2 Likes
#70

I can’t tell if you are joking, but did this really happen in chapter 2? What page?

3 Likes
#71

This didn’t actually happen. :eyes:

2 Likes
#73

Random thought finishing this chapter. Does the clockmaker realise the clock’s still actually broken, or are they going to have the same panic next year?

3 Likes