Yippie, I’ll look at these when I have more brainjuice left!
Thank you for helping with the nuance of these, I like learning the nitty-gritty of things. ![]()
We are peas in a pod then.
The thing that struck me most about this chapter is that wonky swing. Seems to be made of footlong bars instead of chain links. Is that the usual in Japan?
自分で反動つけたら動くから。
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I literally translated this as “Because it (the swing) will move if you apply (some) recoil yourself.”
But then I thought about how Yotsuba could ever understand this other little girl’s physics lesson, but she did! Or rather, she intuits the meaning.
So I more loosely translated it as “Use your body (and legs) to keep it (the swing) moving back and forth.”
Yeah, floating handwritten text next to characters’ heads is something of a standard style in manga that I generally think of as aside comments.
Yep, or ~ないといけない to just ~ないと, which can throw people the first time they come across it.
I did a Google image search for ブランコ, and yeah, images of swings like that are definitely in the majority. It makes the chain a bit less flexible, but there’s like a 99% reduction in the chances of little fingers getting pinched between links. And it’s not like you really need that much flexibility anyway.
I wonder if I took a photo of one myself…
Ah, here’s one. Took this one in Utsunomiya back in 2019. Just, uh… ignore the mud. There’d been some flooding in the area a few days earlier.
Noted, I’ll ignore the mud and focus solely on the caution tape.
Phew. Finally caught up with the read-through and translations after forgetting that this book existed for the past two weeks
.
This week has certainly been a lot easier than the previous ones, and thankfully I didn’t have to cling to the vocab sheet quite as much this time.
I’m starting to get rather invested in the story too lol, so I’m really excited to continue reading.
oh this is nice, thank you
@JupiterJesus @Hismena @Twelvewishes
Thank you all for the clarifications!
forced myself to catch up. trying to read-through twice: once digitally, once in paper. digital version is a lot easier to copy-paste words into jisho or use yomitan to do a quick lookup. paper version has zero support, so is more like a reminder of what i’ve already been over digitally.
even with jisho/yomitan it can be pretty rough to make sense of some sentences.
1st read through. what i understood (or: the noticing game):
- 自分:: self
- で:: not really sure about で as a particle.
- 反動:: i mistook 反 as the same kanji as 友 and recognised 力 as power. the second kanji was familiar; couldn’t place it.
- つける:: no idea
- 動く:: NOW i know where i’ve seen this before. うごく. to move.
- から:: is the FROM particle. it was explained in both jlab and yokubi, but i can’t make sense of it in practice yet.
at this point what i can make sense of is: 自分で反動つけたら動くから
move … self …
2nd read through. with jisho:
- 自分:: self. most likely yourself
- で:: particle most likely indicating the means of the action
- 反動:: kick
- つけたら:: i still can’t make any sense of this
- 動く:: move
- から:: from particle? what is this doing? what information is it conveying here?
best guess? something like: if you kick, you can move yourself.
but even with jisho picking apart sentences word by word… what is つけたら? none of the definitions made any sense to me? what is から doing? i’m expecting it to bridge two things, but here it’s at the end of the sentence. what is で doing? is it just specifying that the self is the means in which the action is created?
jisho can give you the pieces, but it’s no ikea manual for how to put them all together.
This was a lot easier than last week, but maybe that’s just because there’s less dialogue. I especially loved the visuals on p27, so funny!
Page 20
Girl: To - mo - rrow~
Girl: It’s the - summer - holi - days~
Girl: Hm?
Page 21
Girl: (I wonder who that is?)
Girl: (It’s a child I haven’t seen around this area…)
Girl: (Someone strange… A foreign kid?)
Girl: (Also…)
Girl: (I wonder what they’re doing…)
Page 22
Girl: (Aah, they’re coming!!)
Yotsuba: Um, what’s that over there?
Girl: What?
Yotsuba: Over there…
Girl: Are you talking about the swing?
Page 23
Girl: Like this.
Girl: You can play with the swing by doing this.
Yotsuba: Oh - oh!!!
Yotsuba: Let me! Let me! Let me try too!!
Girl: Okay.
Yotsuba: Push, push!!
Girl: Okay, okay!
Page 24
Yotsuba: Oh… Oh…!!
Girl: If you kick, then you’ll swing.
Yotsuba: Ohhhhh
Yotsuba: Ahahaha!
Girl: Well, bye then!
Page 25
Girl: (What a weird kid…)
Girl: (Was that her first time on a swing…?)
Girl: (Ah, come to think of it, there’s a new person coming to the vacant house next to ours…)
Girl: (Is it possible…)
Page 26
Girl: Woah, woah!!
Girl: Hands! Hands! Don’t let go with your hands!!
Yotsuba: Hands?
Page 28
Girl: Are- are you okay?! Are you okay?!
Page 29
Yotsuba: Sc… scary…
Yotsuba: … scary…
Yotsuba: Scary-y-y-y-y!!
Girl: Huh?! Wait…
Week 4 here we go!
Glad we’ve all made through the storm of early chapters! Can’t wait to catch up with the current chapter ! ![]()
As usual, my notes and translations down below! As always, translations is in French so that i don’t burn out out of double translating ![]()
p.20-21
Petite fille : Demain c’est les vacances d’été. Lalalala
Tiens, c’est qui? J’ai [jamais] vu cette fille ici. Elle est bizarre.. Elle est étrangère? Qu’est-ce qu’elle fait?
Learnt 変わった can be used as an adjectif meaning “weird”
p.22-23
Petite fille : Waah, elle arrive.
Yotsuba: Ehh, c’est quoi ça?
Petite fille : Euh, c’est une balançoire. Tu fais comme ça pour t’amuser!
Yotsuba; je [veux] faire, je [veux] faire. Yotsuba aussi veut le faire!
Pousse ! Pousse
Learnt the expression : こうやって which means “like this”
Also learnt the verb 押す which means to push. ![]()
p.24-25
Si tu prends de l’élan toute seul, tu vas bouger ! Allez a+!
Elle était vraiment bizarre cette gamine..
Ah mais au fait, la maison de la rue d’à côté était pas vide? Il doit y avoir de nouvelles personnes.. Si ca se trouve..
Glad i got the right meaning based on kanji but damn this pronunciation exception … :o
p.26-27
Ouahhh, ne lâche pas avec avec tes mains!!!
Yotsuba: mes mains?
p.28-29
Petite fille : ça va? ça va???
Yotsuba: こえ ?? Je sais pas vraiment ici.
I don’t really know what the こえ stands for.. first thing coming to mind is こわい but i’m pretty convincent thats not it! ![]()
No, you’re absolutely correct. This is the same casual vowel slurring we saw back on page 7 with すごい being rendered as すげー.
I really thought she was braver than that and didn’t think too much about how dangerous it was.. ![]()
Well, she wasn’t crying at least. I imagine most 5 year olds would be a screaming ball of snot after an event like that! ![]()

