Thank you. haven’t been able to make it work but i’ve manage to understand the chapter with the help of the vocab sheet, deepL and by reading the discussions here.
I don’t get all the details but i think i have a good idea of the general.
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Hello! I’ve been following the book club for a bit now, I had previously seen the beginner club and thought that was the lowest it went so I had been (very slowly) working my way up to it but then about 4 months ago I found the absolute beginner and was happy to see something that looked like if I struggled hard enough I could get through! I originally planned to join the last club but I wasn’t quite at a point that made sense yet and the club was almost over so I waited. This is my first ever native content (other than failed attempts at pretending I know what’s happening in various Japanese videogames) and I’m about halfway or more through N5 so I’m really jumping into the deep end early but I think this is a great way to feel accomplished and get motivated. Thank you so much to the people that keep running these clubs, they are amazing and well thought out resources that help tremendously! And I’m a huge fan of the vocab sheet because manga isn’t really straightforward to just translate or look up. I was able to read through the first 19 pages with reletive ease, there was a little bit I didn’t understand but usually got the context enough to just know roughly whether it was important or not. The news scene people mentioned was the only thing I really had an issue with, interested to see where everything is heading and I anticipate very quickly needing to grasp that vocab sheet from here on out lol. Good first week, I look forward to reading along with everyone!
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This is my first manga and first time for an online book club. Just reading all the tips and questions makes me appreciate this space even more. I tend to read and learn from the community, but post rarely. I’m looking forward to seeing this story unfold and learn along with everyone. 
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Hi guys,
Got a question on p.13, the verb 手伝う means help but would some other words like 助ける be okay as well?
Does 手伝う imply a more manual thing to deal with? 
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助ける means more help in the sense of “rescue”. 手伝う more in the sense of “helping out”. So It would sound strange to say something along the lines of “I’ll rescue you” in this scene.
Be careful only relying on the english translation can trip you up. They don’t always map 1:1 to the usage of the english verb. It’s best to see the verbs used in context. Here is a good context for 手伝う
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Right thanks !
Yeah, i’m just trying to link the reading with the vocab i know! 
Thanks for clarifying the nuance! 
PS = My head is burning with your explanation of やらされてた 
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No worries. It’s good to ask questions if you are curios. Also good to try to apply ones own knowledge.
That’s basically what I’m doing in this thread. You know you understood something as soon as you can explain it in a way that others understand it too.
Was a good guestimate on your end. But after you learn the second kanji in the next level you will see that it literally means something like “hand + transmit” which makes the meaning along the lines of “lending a hand” pretty clear I feel like ^^.
Concerning the やらされてた. Yeah that one is a hard one. I think it’s all N4 grammar but getting used to the causative passive takes a lot of time being exposed to it (reading and listening). If you need to do the 5 step process every time you hear it you will not be able to follow the next 5 sentences when it is spoken to you XD.
EDIT: In other words. It is good to know how it is constructed but don’t worry too much about applying it yourself until you have internalized it and don’t have to think how to build it. It’s the same like the て form for which I now don’t even know the exact rules how to form it anymore…
I’m also still working on that
But since you joined the bookclub you are in a perfect position to strengthen these skills with all the occurances of passive and causative that you will find in this book and the ones to come!
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Yeah, seing the passive forms for a few times now already makes it easier to read and understand it !
I’m working with a sheet paper from nihonshock.com on which there’s all the verbal forms! It’s a huge help to check quickly which one is used !
I don’t know if i could post it here though! (Found it on reddit i must admit)
p.19 spoiler, girl name?
On last page when he jerks off we see towel with name Tatsuya so i think that’s the pants shot girl name.)
Hmm. I think the girl was just a random person they happened to see. Also, Tatsuya is a boy’s name, I’m pretty sure!
it could be, but i think it would be weird? his brother is not Tatsuya, i doubt it would be random name and it would be ultra weird to dry himself with father’s name, wouldn’t it?
I accidentally read a little longer than we were supposed to this week, and I think what happens next will explain what that item signifies. We’ll just have to keep reading the rest of the chapter. 
I might be wrong though, so if anyone else has any input, I’m all ears.
okay, i ask no questions then 
i definately don’t want to spoil it to myself 
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Haha that speculation brought a smile to my face. Thank you.
I wasn’t originally going to join in since I was planning to join in two other book clubs and I thought it might be overwhelming to take part in 3, but I heard Happiness was a little similar to Tokyo Ghoul except with a different style so out of curiosity, I decided to at least read the first week’s assignment. I also picked up the free copies on Bookwalker before (and I have so many free manga on there and haven’t started on any yet so…)
Pretty pleasantly surprised how easy of a read it is (for me). I’m glad to see so many first-timers jump in because it isn’t dialogue heavy and fairly easy to follow if you just look at the art. I’m sure a lot of you will level up by the end of your reading adventure so just keep pushing on even if you get frustrated at certain points. It looks like this time there’s a good amount of support so always feel free to ask even if you feel like it’s a ridiculous question.
For example, I saw a post from someone suspecting “Tatsuya” being a girl’s name, and if you don’t live in Japan or aren’t familiar with a lot of the common Japanese names, you would have no idea that it’s a common boy’s name. On the other hand, there are many cases where a common girl’s name or boy’s name is actually the reverse (I’m looking at Nagisa in Assassination Classroom), so don’t feel embarrassed or shy about asking or making comments on stuff you’re curious about. It’s more fun to see where everyone’s line of thinking goes and whose predictions come true the further we read!
(Sorry) but I don’t really have the time to read all the above comments already in this thread. I did read and skimmed through a few, and I saw someone asking about the news report on page 16. (@Gorbit99 I think this was you?) It’s pretty text heavy so…
Here's my translation of it in case you're stuck.
I tried to translate it so it follows the Japanese text:
Today at early dawn, on the street of Tokyo (Metropolis) Nakano District,
42-year old Koshi Kobayashi who lives nearby, was found fallen down by someone passing by.
Thoughts on this week's reading
So the MC is a pushover and basically the class’s dog, but that sets up his potential for character development later. It looks like he has one real friend who looks out for him, but I get the impression they aren’t officially friends and the other guy just feels sorry for him and wants to reach out because the MC isn’t a bad guy. Either way, the friend guy seems like a good guy.
We already got some foreshadowing based on the opening and the news report. We see MC’s home situation is also a little stressful on him being compared to his older brother. What other way to relieve the stresses of school life and family problems as a raging hormone teenager? I personally could have done without the scene, but it looks to me this is MC’s coping mechanism being very passive and all.
So far not bad. At this pace, I don’t mind reading it since there’s a place to discuss it. But if it follows the same pattern as some other works without being spectacular in some aspect, I don’t see myself continuing past the first volume.
Originally, I wasn’t planning to look up words and just leave it to context to understand them, but there were so few I had to look up that I thought if I looked them up, I definitely won’t forget them the next time I see them, so I made a personal list below. (I know the club has its own vocab list, but this is just for my personal tracking purposes.)
List of vocab
お会計 おかいけい bill (at a restaurant); check
羽目になる はめになる to get stuck with (some job); to end up with (something unpleasant)
未明 みめい early dawn; grey of morning; gray of morning
路上 ろじょう on the road; on the street; in the street
通りがかり とおりがかり passing (along the way)
未明 was the only one I genuinely didn’t know and looked up the others for confirmation purposes,
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Oh, don’t worry, I have the whole thing translated already.
The common issue is the sentence that says “警察は何らかの事件に巻き込まれたものと”, because it’s unfinished and nobody’s sure if it’s supposed to be “といます” or similar or like it’s supposed to be followed by another sentence
Hi guys !
This is the second manga I’m reading in Japanese, alongside Yotsuba that I started last week and I’m reaaaaally excited to start actually immersing by reading fully in Japanese !!! I’m so glad these book clubs exist
I was not paying attention to the page numbers and went a little farther than page 19, and I discovered I could actually understand quite a lot of the sentences (except that news feed, ouch) already with the grammar and vocabulary I already learned, and that’s the most gratifying feeling ever !!
I can’t wait to keep reading and learning
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Since I promised I’d be around here if I were still alive, I’ve got not other option but to start reading along with everybody here.
Being the first time I’ve read a manga in Japanese, it has obviously been fairly difficult. As others have pointed out, the first part with so much food in katakana was painful, specially for me because it’s one of my weaknesses (i really like the word 弱点). On the other hand, the news parts was kinda manageable, at least to get the gist of it, but I wouldn’t hope to replicate such sentence structure just yet. There was some vocabulary that I understood due to my anime experience, but I admit that I had to check the Vocab Sheet quite a lot. (Thank you for providing such resource!). Overall, my speed was atrocious but I did enjoy it.
As per the story, I’m decently invested in it so far. Seems like the author has painted the main character’s background while tying it to the suspense part quite successfully. Okazaki’s character seems a bit underwhelming so far, so I hope that he develops into something more proactive and strong..
I do have a question, and it’s that I don’t understand why do some words or expressions are sometimes written in hiragana when they have a kanji origin. Because it can make reading stuff actually harder, as it increases ambiguity and removes the possibility of guessing the word’s meaning by kanji alone. Is it for convenience sake, inherited because writing kanji on paper is hard or something?
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There are many dimensions to this question. Sometimes the author feels the sentence would look to “academic” or “formal” with too many Kanji thrown in. And so some of the words are written in kana.
Even just in this segment you saw that the news cast was pretty chock full of kanji. Signifying the “official/formal” feel a newscast should have.
Hiragana also have a “softer”/“easier” feel and so it could be something that signifies that. Thats also why sometimes katakana are chosen for words not normally written in them because they have a “foreign”/“fancy” feel.
Sometimes it’s just because of the target audience. If you are targeting shounen you wouldn’t want to overwhelm them with obscure kanji even if they do have furigana. That can be the other way around if you go for some lightnovels which are known to even use obscure kanji.
It could be just the preference of the author. Or sometimes its a general preference. 此処(ここ) you will find written with Kanji on rare occations, though the preference is clearly on kana.
In the manga Yotsubato!, the main character Yotsuba doesn’t use any kanji. Signifying that she is still a child and wouldn’t know how to use them even though the other characters do speak with kanji.
It’s pretty interesting to look at how authors work with this stuff. Sometimes you will find the same word just 3 sentence further along written in a different way.
Keeping your mind primed in the background for this stuff can help a lot to get a better feel for the current situation/circumsances.
Ah and one thing you touched on is ambiguity. Sometimes you can write the same homophone with two different kanji and the author wants to let both possibilities stand for the time being. Though I would say this usage is not the most common one.
It is for sure really useful to get used to the words in both their kanji and non-kanji form ^^
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Natives don’t know every kanji either. Most words have a kanji representation, heck, some particles have kanji if you really feel like you want to suffer. To my eyes the news broadcast was quite dry, because of the fact that it used incredible amounts of kanji.
Edit
As a sidenote, jisho (and jotoba as well) has a small tag next to words indicating if they are more commonly written using kana alone. This was one of the reasons, why for example 又was moved from level 2 to level 51 on wanikani.
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