For those who are new, I post the threads roughly on Monday morning for those who are in e.g. Japan, Australia. So if you’re in the US and this seems super early, that’s why
The most important thing you need to know is: don’t feel shy about posting any and all questions you have. We’re here to help each other. I can guarantee that somebody else will be silently grateful you asked, and nobody minds explaining things to others - it’s a useful way to learn.
Further important points:
Please include the page number for every question you ask
Check whether your question has already been asked / answered before posting by searching for the page number - it’s fine if you need extra clarification though
Blur out any major events when posting, however early in the passage they occur (like so: [spoiler]text here[/spoiler]) - you only need to blur out the English
Tips for First-Time Readers
Jisho is a popular online Japanese-English dictionary, and the usual source for populating the spreadsheet
ichi.moe is a popular tool for parsing out sentences, but it’s not infallible and I would encourage you to practise that yourself where possible
Google Translate is not your friend
But: remember that the whole point of reading as a group is to help each other. It can be a lot quicker and easier to ask a question here than to agonise over it yourself. Moreover, your question and the answer will help everyone else reading along.
Character List
It’s easy to get tripped up by names, and context always makes things easier to understand. This is taken from page 4.
People who appear in this book: この本にでてくる人たち
スピッツかわい
The protagonist of this book. A dog trainer. As a result of looking after dogs who don’t have an owner, he’s rather poor. He lives in an old kindergarten building.
はなえ-さん
Spitz’s neighbour, the proprietor of a picture book store. Spitz loves Hanae-san, but doesn’t know how she feels.
黒星けいぶ (Police Inspector くろぼし)
An Inspector of the Metropolitan Police Department. Drags Spitz into cases. His face is just like a Pomeranian.
アララ尾山-さん
A thief who’s a lover of branded and high-class things. He’s clever and hasn’t been caught by the police. Loves dogs and dotes on a dog called Edward.
(The group of three people don’t appear in the first story)
Since the poor puppers don’t seem to make it into the list of characters, I just wanted to point out that the first story involves a dog called “Demange” which is French for Itchy.
Thanks for all of this, this is my first book and when I first looked at it I was overwhelmed by it all. However, with your explanations and wordlist it’s begining to make sense now. Again Thanks
でられない is a potential, so “because they can’t go outside”.
しょうがない。
It can’t be helped.
運動会ごっこでもしてやるか。
Shall I play make-belief sports day with you or something?
I think か turns it into an offer. There is a similar example sentence here. 〜てやる is like 〜てあげる, but it has a distinct sense of the ‘receiver’ being of a lower status (in this case they’re animals, so that makes sense). でも after a noun can mean ‘… or something’.
(Also, thanks for your question. It forced me to look up the か thing )
Thanks for your very quick response, but please just blur the translation - with both J and E blurred, folks will have to unblur both to read anything, which instantly makes the translation visible.
On page 9, I see the spreadsheet has a definition for なんてこった which is useful, but does anyone know the formulation for that phrase. Is こった the past tense of some verb?
なんて itself is used as an expression of surprise, sort of at the extent of something? You’d translate it as “how” or “what”, but in the sense of “what an enormous rabbit!”
So I guess with slither’s sleuthing that the こった is a contraction of こと(だ), you’re basically exclaiming “what a to-do!” or something to that effect.
It’s still a verb, acting as a conjuctive to connect the two clauses. It’s very similar to using the て-form to connect two clauses, if you’re familiar with that. Apparently it’s a bit more academic / literary though - you do see it quite a lot in books.
Page 12 references the 消えたデメキン事件 (Case of the Vanishing Goldfish), which was one of the cases in the first book. Spitz helped out Inspector Kuroboshi with the case. I’ll flag up if there’s any further context you need, but that’s probably it!
Also, I’m going to take this opportunity to flag what I like to call the “Never trust Japanese commas” rule
On page 10, you have the sentence 犬たちは しかたなく、おれがおしえた、うでたてふせをはじめた。
That past tense verb in the middle might throw you if you haven’t encountered relative clauses in Japanese before. These are a SUPER COMMON construction. They’re basically equivalent to - in English - saying something like “the bus which I caught to town”, or “the person who lived next door”. In other words a little descriptive clause which modifies (describes) a noun.
The main difference in Japanese is that they precede the noun they are modifying, instead of following it. The relative clause modifying the noun will be in plain / dictionary form.
In this case, we have the noun うでたてふせ, being modified by おれがおしえた. That’s the agent おれ and the past tense of the verb おしえる, “to teach”. So it’s “the press-up I’d taught them”.
Then you just treat that little clause like its own thing. They get はじめる’d by the 犬たち.
Also, wth Spitz?! What kind of a trick is that to teach a dog?!
The comma in the middle of the relative clause - between おれがおしえた and the noun it’s modifying - could throw you, because it looks like it breaks the sentence in two there. But remember: never trust a Japanese comma! Their placement follows no human law.
