黄泉のツガイ・Yomi no Tsugai Book Club! (Beginner Japanese Book Club)

黄泉のツガイ・Yomi no Tsugai Book Club! (Beginner Japanese Book Club)

Join the Beginner Book Club Here!
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黄泉のツガイ・Yomi no Tsugai Book Club!

Currently Reading: Week 1

Introduction

In an isolated village, two twins were born, separated by day and night. It is years later, and while the older brother Yuru has become a hunter of animals, his sister Asa has been locked away in a cage, ordered to perform a special duty that prohibits her from meeting more than a few select individuals.

On an otherwise inconspicuous day, a group of armed men riding in helicopters, referred to as “dragons” by the citizens, assaults the village in search of Yuru, killing every adult on sight. When Yuru attempts to meet up with Asa and flee, he finds a dead body instead—on top of that, the person who killed her claims to be Yuru’s true twin sister.

Before the woman can capture him, Yuru is rescued by a man named Ryuu “Dera” Tadera, an outsider who frequently visits the village. However, it is not long before the two are cornered. In a last-ditch effort, Dera makes Yuru give a gift to the deity of the village, summoning a pair of daemons whose existence is bound to reveal the truth behind these chaotic events. (source: myanimelist)

View the original nomination post here

How it works

We create a reading schedule, with a set number of pages to work through each week. Each week we create a new discussion thread for that week’s reading. In those threads we discuss everything from vocab and grammar to the characters and story. We try to help each other by contributing to the shared vocab list, by answering each other’s questions and by keeping each other motivated.

What to expect from the this book

This book seems pretty average for the Beginners Book club. There’s full furigana, but the plot might feature world/lore specific vocabulary not encountered in every day situations

If you are a complete beginner to Japanese the Absolute Beginner’s Book club is likely a better place to start, but if you have been learning Japanese for a while and want to give yourself a challenge, then this will be a good book to read with the support of the group.

Where to purchase

Physical:
Amazon JP
CD Japan

E-book:
Amazon JP
Bookwalker
EBook Japan

Schedules and Links

Start date: June 6th, 2026

Week Pages Chapter No of Pages Start Date Link
#1 3 → 23 1 20p June 6th Week 1
#2 23 → 43 1 20p June 13th [Link]
#3 43 → 63 1 20p June 20th [Link]
#4 63 → 85 2 22p June 27th [Link]
#5 85 → 107 2 22p July 4th [Link]
#6 107→ 129 3 22p July 11th [Link]
#7 129 → 149 3 20p July 18th [Link]
#8 149 → 169 4 20p July 18th [Link]
#9 169 → 190 4 21p Aug 1st [Link]

Vocab Sheet

Vocab sheet

Resources

* [Jisho ](https://jisho.org/)is a popular online Japanese-English dictionary.
* [ichi.moe ](https://ichi.moe/) is a tool for parsing out sentences. You can type/paste in a whole sentence and it will try and break the sentence down into its individual parts.
* [Deepl ]( DeepL Translator | World's Most Accurate Translator ) will translate a sentence from Japanese to English. It’s obviously not going to be right all the time, so if you want to check your translation it’s often better to ask in the thread.

Discussion Guidelines

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.

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:

Summary

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!

Membership

Will you be reading with us?

  • Yes
  • Yes, but might start late
  • Maybe
  • No, not this time
0 voters

Which version will you be reading?

  • Digital
  • Physical
0 voters

P.S. Most of this post was stolen from past contributors. Thank you all who have built up this club over the years <3

When would you like to start reading?

  • 30th of May, no break after previous book club
  • 6th of June, one week in between bookclubs
  • Other, motivate in comments but unlikely to keep momentum :slight_smile:
0 voters

Reserved for future use

I have so far avoided almost all spoilers for both the manga and anime, but bought the 3 first volumes solely based on the fact that it is the same artist as FMA. FMA defined my teens.

Does anyone know how many volumes the first season of the anime cover?

For some reason, all the formatting in your opening post has been ecaped - you need to do a find/replace on the text and delete all the backslash characters.

As of episode seven, it’s just started on volume three. It’s supposed to run for two cours, so at that rate it’ll probably cover somewhere around eight or nine volumes, though we won’t know for certain until we get there.

Thanks, had to open in Markdown to see it, but I think I fixed everything now.

Eight or nine volumes, that means anime for Christmas then I guess :sleepy_face: :face_with_spiral_eyes:

You missed the links in the “Resources” section, but otherwise it looks good.

Yay! \o/
For all those lurkers who loved FMA: come join YnT! It would be fun! they said…
Somehow I feel like it would be a younger branch of FMA book club and I’ll finally be able to cross post some pictures and jokes! *happy

Well, I just realized that I have the digital version of vol 1 from the Golden Week and I finished up reading with the 気になった book club, so I might as well join this one :eyes:

I failed miserably at the IMC for FMA, both because it was too hard for me and because it didn’t really hold my interest…but I’m thinking about giving this one a try.

This will be my first bookclub and also my first a little more advanced manga in japanese so I’m really excited to start!

Actually I think it’s quite similar to FMA language wise. If FMA didn’t have so much religion/alchemy/military words :see_no_evil_monkey:.
Anyway come join us for the first volume and then decide!

@rkiveriver welcome! It could be difficult at start but becomes easier with each volume!

Read the first chapter of this when I went to Japan for the first time a few years ago. It was on a bookshelf of manga that you could borrow at one of the hotels I stayed at, and I needed to kill some time while I washed my clothes. I quite enjoyed it, and have been meaning to get back around to it so this is probably not a bad excuse to read it

It’s been a while since my last book club. Had to quit learning for about 3 years for personal reasons.

Anyway, I happened to get the first 3 volumes when I was in japan recently so I’m excited to start reading again!

My copy just arrived in the mail! Excited to get start reading after a couple year break from using Japanese. First time participating in the book club \(^.^)/

Is there going to be a weekly schedule soon? Looking to see how much to read the first week :slight_smile:

Updated OP with my thoughts on the schedule. It was relatively even to split on 20 pages per week. Briefly looked through and there were pages with relatively little text as well.

Started reading this today to get a bit ahead - I’m a slow reader right now ha. Excited for the discussion to begin!

YES I want to be IN! 110% count me in

@Christianw Will you be creating a Week 1 link and/or vocab list today?