Like last week, this week’s pages are pretty dense with a lot of back-and-forth conversation. But if you can make it to next week, it’s smooth sailing from there! Take a look ahead to see what I mean. Generally, the pages with Yotsuba on them have much simpler dialog, especially when she’s talking to other children.
Cultural notes! In the final panel of page 16, they’re talking about garbage collection. For anyone unaware of the process, in Japan, different types of garbage are collected on different days. For example, here’s a schedule I saw near Asakusabashi:
(Note that “flammable” and “inflammable” are mistranslations - they should read “burnable” and “non-burnable”.)
Rather than putting your whole garbage bin out on the kerb as is common in places like the US, UK and Australia, in Japan you instead just put your bin bags in a communal collection spot. The pile of bags is protected from birds and other animals by means of a weighted net thrown over the top, something like this:
My translation would be “I live next door, please call me Ayase” but once again, don’t both parts of 住んで-おります mean to live? What is this? “I’m residing living” or something
～こられる is the passive of くる, though here it’s the passive-as-formal-active voice type thing. ～てくる adds a sense of movement towards the speaker to a verb, but doesn’t necessarily mean “to here”. Both parts are necessary for the full meaning of the sentence, but yeah, they don’t really come across if you translate it to English.
～ておる is a more formal way of saying ～ている. Fuuka’s speaking style in this whole section is quite formal.
I tried translating the little blurb on this page, but to be honest, I couldn’t make out the kanji and I’m unsure about the hiragana
Page 16
Hello!
Could it be that you’re the person who just moved in? (I had no idea that 方 could be used to mean person)
Yes? That’s right
I knew it!
Alright (I’m assuming this is a shortened Yoshi)
I’m Ayase, I live next door
It’s good to meet you
Ah, no, it’s my pleasure
Are those boxes meant for the trash?
Ahh, I’d like to do that but…
You put cardboard out with the recyclable trash
On Friday
Ahh
You see the net by the utility pole?
That’s where you put it
I see
Page 17
Burnable trash is Monday and Thursday, non-burnable is Saturday
If there’s anything else you don’t know, feel free to ask
You are a high school student, right?
Yes? Is there a problem?
No, I was just thinking that you’ve really got it all together
My time in high school is already…
Well, I’m not too responsible even now
Please be responsible!
Ahh, I’m sorry
Incidentally, are you living here alone?
Ah, no, I have a little daughter
She dissipated some time ago
Huh?? That’s horrible!
Page 18
Should I go search for her?
Oh, it’s fine
This happens all the time, so even if you worry…
…Really?
What do you mean?
Ah, well
I’m leaving after this, so I’ll keep an eye out to see if I can spot her
Thank you
If you see a kid and think “Man that kid is weird”, that’s probably her
Haaaah
Page 19
Ah, that’s right, what’s this kid’s name?
Yotsuba
Yotsuba
Yotsuba it is!
Man, there were some pretty dense pages today, A whole bunch that I wasn’t able to translate on my own either.
I actually watched a youtube video talking about this kind of thing (it was a listening practise video on the ‘speak japanese naturally’ channel) some time ago , with like a designated area you have to leave them, rather than just a bin outside your house like we have here. Knowing that already made it a lot easier to figure out what was going on here.
OK, so yeah. This weeks was another that was quite challenging! I’m happy to know it get’s a little easier ffrom now on, haha.
I got the gist of most of it I think, with plenty of help from the vocab sheet.
I do have one question, a couple of times そうですけど is used. I don’t think I’ved come across this use of けど before, I’ve only seen it used as meaning something like ‘because’ but that doesn’t really make sense here. Can anybody explaing that?
In my eyes it’s like “but” with omitted “(what about it?)”
Like on page 16 when she asks him if he moved here, he replies with “yes, but (what about it?)”, basically expecting her to continue speaking with that info confirmed.
I’ve heard it described as passing the conversational “baton” to the other person. Dad seems to overuse it in this exchange with Miss Ayase. Perhaps he’s uncomfortable with how she has it so together for her age compared to himself?
I was like net? Why is there a net over there and what does that possibly have to do with cardboard?? That’s a different way to do collection..
I have to look over passive forms for this area.. but, on her being formal.. she uses just about every maximum formal option she could have in that greeting, lol. Then the dad was like “uh.. oh ya, I have manners, too”
As far as I know, けど is only used as the short form of けれども as a sentence connection meaning “but / however”. So, I read this as him being like “I was going to but..” and trailing off as to mean he doesn’t know what the neighborhood’s rules are or where to put it yet. Although, Fuuka uses it like right after in a similar way.. so..
I wanted to see if it really gets easier after this and decided to read a bit ahead… In the end I accidentally read through 2 entire chapters lol
(Without the vocab sheet, so I didn’t understand that much from text, but I actually like this manga now xD)
Looking forward to going more in depth on it
I was laughing so much reading the exchange between the dad and Ayase. What great characterization using degrees of formality. しっかりして下さい indeed.
Thank you, I hadn’t known this existed!
I’m very glad for the vocab sheet provided. The one thing that makes trying to read unfamiliar material so diffcult for me is always the pausing and having to look up things. It takes up a lot of energy and focus. Now I try to do an initial read-through, with a second one using the vocab sheet. It goes so smoothly!
Same. I decided to read a bit more after I finished this week’s pages to see if it really got easier and suddenly I’m 2 weeks ahead It does get a lot smoother from here.
よつばと！・ Yotsuba&! (Absolute Beginners Book Club) // Home Thread
