Happiness Week 9 - Absolute Beginner Book Club

Well I finished. Not sure how beneficial it was for me at level 9 on WK (level 6 when we started the book). It was fun recognizing the kanji and words that I knew as well as some bits of vocab along the way. Going through the paces of transcribing and translating everything was fun. Eventually I just went along with the flow and grasped what I could without going super deep on understanding every single bit of grammar. I think another few levels of WK and a stronger grasp of at least genki II level grammar would make this reading level a bit more enjoyable. Will be back for the next one.

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Finished! Happiness was the third manga I read with the bookclub and I have to say, I feel it was the easiest (obviously, my level also got higher, but I still think it was the easiest). The dialogues were pretty straight forward and the pictures greatly helped with the story. I’ll probably be joining the off-shoot bookclub as well!

For this final chapter I have 2 questions left:

Page 161


I believe this is spoken by Shiraishi (the girl). But I’m not quite sure if my translation is correct. My breakdown:
どうして: why
くれん: I believe this is a shortened negative form of くれる, so to not do for someone
の: sentence ending particle indication emotion.
Full translation: Why aren’t you doing something?
I believe she is referring to the situation earlier, where Okazaki passed them and witnessed the bullying, but didn’t do anything?

Page 172


Again I’m not too certain about my translation. My breakdown:
いかせて: te-form of いかす, meaning to make (the best) use of
もらいます: to ask someone to do something
I’m not sure, if the bully is prepping himself: I ask myself to do my best regarding punching you Short: I’ll do my best!. Or if this is another meaning of いかす: to keep alive. So this would mean the bully is asking Yuuki to please keep alive. I also was thinking that maybe he asks Yuuki to do his best by enduring his punch? So basically: Prepare yourself! Any thoughts?

Thanks to everyone for asking and answering questions and filling the vocab sheet! Thanks to @Micki for running the club!

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Page 161 I don’t have time to look it up but it sounds about right asking why he’s not helping yes.

So page 172 is tricky.
I read it as causative いく + もらう which is a keigo way of saying いく. It has the nuance of “asking” for permission to do the action. There was a discussion recently in the short questions thread about this construction The quick or short Language Questions Thread (not grammar) - #3517 by Vanilla (a few posts after this are also relevant)
So it is a (mockingly) polite way to say “Well, I’m starting” in my book.

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The last chapter was really cool !I was expecting a bit more action to be honest but I guess the author is going for a more realistic story with this serie.

I don’ t really understand why Okazaki went to help Yuuki like that though … Also why Shiraishi went to ask him for help without any consideration for the fact that he was bullied before. It could be that Okazaki wasn’ t a regular target of bullying ?

Thanks @Micki for organizing and everyone for making translation and answering questions :blush: It was the first time for me to read a full manga volume in japanese. I am really happy about it ! It was quite difficult for my level, but I realized that a lot of information can be taken from the context. (And DeepL translation works like a charm …) So I’ll try to read volume 2 and 3 !

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For the longest time I was lagging behind with the chapters. Then I week or so ago I finally had some free time and started chewing through them one by one. I did an oopsie and went ahead and read all 10 volumes. It was a blast. The story gets weirder, but in a good way, and I enjoyed it a great deal.

The only thing I’m sad about is not participating in the conversations, but I’ll make sure to stick to the plan for the next book club ;D

Thanks @Micki for organizing this. I wouldn’t have taken the plunge of making a bookwalker account and start reading otherwise.

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I’ve added some polls to the home thread if you want to vote on what you thought about the book:

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A little late for the party, but just finished the manga! I’ve been following all 9 threads, and just wanted to say that even async it was very helpful. Thank you all for the explanations and translations and for leading the way even without noticing. Next up: volume 2! I wonder if there’s some happiness ahead… :woman_vampire:

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