銭天堂 | Week 1 Discussion

Japanese Language Book Clubs
1

Week 1 Discussion | Pages 7 - 13

Chapter 1: 型ぬき人魚グミ

Start Date: 4th May
Next Week: Chapter 1 Part 2

Zenitendou

銭天堂 Home Thread

Last sentence of page 13 for eBook readers:
古銭の柄の入った、こい赤紫色の着物を着た人で、どっしりと太っていて、まるですもうとりのような迫力がある。

Part of the Beginner Book Club!

Vocabulary List

Please read the editing guidelines in the first sheet before adding any words!

Discussion Guidelines

  • Please use spoiler tags for major events in the current week’s pages, like this: [spoiler]texthere[/spoiler]
    Use and identify details tags for any content from later in the book, like this:
    [details=Spoilers for chapter 9]
    texthere
    [/details]

  • When asking for help, please mention the page number (or % for eBooks).

  • Don’t be afraid of asking questions, even if they seem embarrassing at first. All of us are here to learn and someone else will probably be grateful you asked!

  • People usually find that they engage with and enjoy the discussion much more if they don’t read ahead, though of course it’s up to you :wink:

  • To you lurkers out there: join the conversation, it’s fun!

Participants

Mark your participation status by voting in this poll:

  • I’m reading along
  • I’m planning to catch up later
  • I’m skipping this book

0 voters

If you’ve read it before but will join in the discussion (or have read ahead), please select “I’m reading along”!

12 Likes
2

Welcome to the first discussion thread, everybody! Excited to start reading :blush:

Quick reminder that we’re reading the prologue and the first four pages of Chapter 1 this week, for a total of five pages.

So please don’t panic at the title saying “Pages 7 - 13”! It’s not as much as it appears.

Also… If you find you’re struggling with the prologue, I’d just skip it and go to chapter 1 :wink: I think the prologue is a bit harder and lacking in contextual clues.

4 Likes
3

Oh, nice. I just discovered BookLive’s reader actually has an option to hide the furigana…

furigananashi
furigananashi515×693 136 KB

I do wish I could make the text even bigger though… is blind kitty

8 Likes
4

I started reading these pages over the last week, since I was worried about not being able to keep up, with this being my first “beginner” book. Thankfully, I think I should be able to keep up just fine!

In any case, I did jot down some questions I had as I was reading. I hope it’s all right to throw these all in one post; I didn’t want to spam the thread with a post for each question.

Page 7

パチンコ玉くらいの玉 - what does くらい mean here? Something like ‘-like?’ I’ve only seem くらい/ぐらい as something like “approximately” before, so I’m not sure. ‘Pachinko ball-like ball?’. (That looks weird in English, but I’m guessing that’s a matter of ‘pachinko’ and ‘ball’ being two words. It would less weird if it was, e.g., ‘football-like ball.’)

Page 7

ようござんすねえ - I don’t understand the よう here. Nothing I found really seems to fit.

Page 10

水の中に入るたびに、頭がパニックを起こす。 - I can’t figure out たび here. I think the sentence means something like “Going into water triggers a panic attack.” Possibly it’s 度, like “Every time she goes into the water, it triggers a panic attack”? (Maybe a little liberal with that translation.)

Page 10

そんな考えが、うわっと頭にわいてしまう。 - Having a lot of trouble with this sentence. It starts like, “That sort of thought…”, but after that, I’m lost. うわ seems to be something like “Yikes” or “Wow”, but then I don’t understand what the っと is. 頭にわいてしまう, at a somewhat wild guess, means she’s about to start crying, with わいて being 湧く, so tears are “welling up”, but again that’s mostly just a guess.

Page 12

そう思おうとしたけれど - I was originally going to write about how I couldn’t understand this at all, but after some digging, I managed to figure it out on my own! It’s apparently an N3 grammar point, which explains why I hadn’t hit it before, I guess, but volitional form + とする means “to attempt to do.”

4 Likes
5

Fancy! Wish I could turn on some more furigana in the physical copy :wink:

@jaearess that’s great to hear :blush: I’d definitely put all your questions in one post - no need to save them up or anything, but it’s best not to post many times in a row, as you say.

I’m just going to bed unfortunately though, so can’t help with answering them right now :sweat_smile:

At a quick glance though, I think you’re right about your first question from page 10 - たび is indeed 度, so 度に = “whenever she enters the water”.

4 Likes
6

I’m excited to be a part of the discussion! I do have a question. I got the ebook version from Honto, so is it possible for someone to post the last sentence we are supposed to read for tomorrow? From the paper version?

4 Likes
7

Yes. A ball resembling a pachinko ball spilled out with a clatter.

It’s よい meaning good. She is saying いいですね, but using keigo. You can see the same pattern in set phrases like おはようございます (from はやい meaning early) and ありがとうございます (from ありがたい meaning grateful)

Yes. :smiley: https://jlptsensei.com/learn-japanese-grammar/たびに-tabi-ni/

うわっと - this is like “with a shriek (of うわっ!)” It might be metaphorical rather than literal scream in this case. The small っ goes with the うわ, and the と is the particle you use to mark a quotation or the sound/manner in someone does something.
So maybe… Those sorts of thoughts welled up in her head like a scream.

11 Likes
8

We’re excited to have you join us! Welcome to the book club!

The last line on p13 is this one.
古銭の柄の入った、… まるですもうとりのような迫力がある。

PS your avatar is making me hungry :joy:

9

I hadn’t even run into the mention of this conjugation before, heh. Thanks a ton! I couldn’t find much information on it searching in English, either. Nearly every page I found was actually just about verbs, with some noting you could add お- to adjectives for keigo. I did manage to find one post that explained how to perform the conjugation, at least. For anyone else interested:

8 Likes
10

I think my Japanese textbook mentioned something about this-- something in relation to よく, I think. I can find it later and post a picture, if you like!

11

I’m not exactly sure what “for tomorrow” means :sweat_smile:, but just to clarify in any case, we will be reading this chapter from today for one week, not until today.

Other than that: Welcome :slight_smile:

1 Like
12

Aaaaaa, finally!! /o/ Thank you for the thread! \o/ I will read it today, so glad to be reading a real book /o/ :3

2 Likes
13

Heehee, such excitement!

I’m visiting someone this weekend, but gonna try to read the first page this morning (I’ve added some words from page 10 to the sheet) and the rest tomorrow evening or Monday (which is a bank holiday here, hooray!).

Thanks to whoever added a separate sheet for the prologue :+1: just thought of that this morning but it was already there.

3 Likes
14

Thanks for the clarification! That makes more sense :laughing:

1 Like
15

I just realized you are only reading 5-6 pages per week! Whew…I thought you folks were going to be doing a chapter a week and I was looking at 30 pages and going there’s no way on earth I can even try to keep up! Guess I’ll have to jump into this book now after all :slight_smile:

Darn it I still want to continue vol 2 in girls last tour also…there aren’t enough hours in the day!!! どうしよう haha

1 Like
16

It’s only five pages this week, but it will pick up a bit over time if you look at the schedule in the home thread. But even then only up to 10 pages per week, except for the 11.5 to finish the book in the last week. So two weeks per chapter, except the first chapter which goes for three weeks.

1 Like
17

worst case I fall behind…as long as wk and the threads still exist… I’ll try my best :slight_smile:

5 Likes
18

I was worried about falling behind as well, and @Radish8 suggested if that does happen, you can always skip a chapter, since each one is supposed to be a self-contained story. You can even come back later, since like you said, these threads will still be around. (I’ve personally worked my way through にゃんにゃん探偵団 and have started reading よつばと！ along with the old threads for those books, so I know it works pretty well, even for books done quite a while ago.)

2 Likes
19

Has anyone taken a bash at the prologue? I had a look at it several months ago when I was working out the page numbers and vaguely remember it being a bit incomprehensible :sweat_smile:

3 Likes
20

I don’t think it was very difficult, which probably means I missed out on stuff :joy:

The worst thing was that it has absolutely nothing to do with the first chapter though…

Looking forward to your questions if you still have any :slight_smile:

4 Likes