Welcome to the よつばと！ Book Club!
Join the Absolute Beginner Book Club Here!
Read about this series on Natively
Summary
While most people find the world mundane, five-year-old Yotsuba Koiwai sees it as a treasure trove of amazing bustle and wonderful places to explore. When she and her adoptive father, Yousuke, move to a new city, the energetic young girl naturally sets out to investigate the neighborhood on her own.
After a few incidents at the local park, the Koiwais become acquainted with their neighbors, the Ayase family. Their three daughters—mischievous college student Asagi, responsible high school student Fuuka, and kindhearted grade school student Ena—eventually all take a liking to Yotsuba and join in on her antics, despite their sheer ridicule.
From learning how to use a swing to figuring out how to stop global warming with air conditioners, Yotsuba’s ability to infallibly find fun in everything, both amazes and annoys the people around her. Along with Yousuke, the Ayases, and friends she makes along the way, Yotsuba embarks on daily adventures, each one a step in her quest to enjoy the simple things in life.
View the nomination post here.
How it works
In this book club, we will read a set number of pages from the first volume, with separate discussion threads for each week’s readings. In those threads, we’ll discuss vocabulary and grammar, share advice for learning Japanese, and have fun reading manga together. If the book club is popular enough, we can potentially read later volumes in an offshoot book club, which would run alongside the other clubs in the forum.
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.
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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.
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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).
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Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags
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:
Example
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
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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.
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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!
How do I join in?
- Get yourself a copy of the book (see “Where to purchase” below)
- Click on the participation poll below to let us know you’re planning to join in
- Set this thread to “watching” so you get updates on the group (go just past the last post in this thread, click on the grey box that says “normal” or “tracking” and change this to “watching”)
Where to Purchase
- Amazon JP: よつばと!(1) (電撃コミックス)
- Amazon US: Yotsuba& Volume 1 (Japan Import)
- Internet Archive (Free eBook Rental): よつばと! 1 by あずまきよひこ | Open Library
- Chapters 1 and 2 are available (legally) here: よつばと！｜カドコミ (コミックウォーカー)
- There are other store pages on the learnnatively page.
- I’d also recommend eBay, as pre-owned Japanese copies are cheap and readily available.
Schedule
| Week | Date | Pages | Chapter |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 7/11 | 3-9 | 1 |
| 2 | 7/18 | 10-14 | 1 |
| 3 | 7/25 | 15-19 | 1 |
| 4 | 8/1 | 20-29 | 1 |
| 5 | 8/8 | 30-42 | 1 |
| 6 | 8/15 | 43-52 | 1 |
| 7 | 8/22 | 53-63 | 2 |
| 8 | 8/29 | 64-76 | 2 |
| 9 | 9/5 | 77-88 | 2 |
| 10 | 9/12 | 89-100 | 3 |
| 11 | 9/19 | 101-116 | 3 |
| 12 | 9/26 | 117-129 | 4 |
| 13 | 10/3 | 130-142 | 4 |
| 14 | 10/10 | 143-157 | 5 |
| 15 | 10/17 | 158-172 | 5 |
| 16 | 10/24 | 173-186 | 6 |
| 17 | 10/31 | 187-204 | 6 |
| 18 | 11/7 | 205-225 | 7 |
Resources and Vocabulary
- Complete list of Vocabulary for Yotsubato! Volume 1
- Advice for those new to reading
- Jisho, a popular Japanese-to-English dictionary
- ichi.moe, a tool for parsing sentences. You can paste a sentence, and it will try to break it down to its individual parts.
- Manga Kotoba has an auto-generated frequency list for all words used in each volume
Membership
- Yes
- Yes, but I might start late
- Maybe
- No
- I’m reading after the club has finished
Remember - set this thread to watching!
)
) and I just straight out died from laughing 
When will be decided when to start?