Teasing Master Takagi-san 😝 ・ Volume 1, chapter 1

I’m equally stumped on this one. I’ve got:

もーいいかげんにしてよ

Just quit it already

Because:
もー: Contraction of もう, ‘already’
いいかげんにする: To put an end to + imperative ending

こっちのセリフだ

That’s my line

こっち: Pronunciation of こちら, ‘that’
セリフ: line, speech, remark

So I’m reading it as Takagi telling Nishikata to ‘quit it’ and he’s upset because he should be telling her that

But that’s largely based on context :slight_smile:

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You’ve pretty much got it.

Nishikata getting flustered and yelled at by the teacher is causing Takagi to struggle not to laugh at loud, so she tells him to “cut it out”. But Nishikata’s only reacting to what Takagi’s doing, so he’s saying “That’s my line!”, because Takagi’s the one who should cut it out.

こっち is indeed an informal version of こちら. The word is used to indicate direction. Nishikata is saying that Takagi’s セリフ (spoken line) is from (should be from) こっち (his direction). It’s the equivalent of saying “that’s my line” in English.

For anyone who’d like to know more about the meaning of かげん, I recommend watching the first half of this Cure Dolly video:

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i had a few questions on page 5 and 6.
sorry about my bad formatting, this is my first post.

Page 5
  1. 「西片ってホントいい反応するわー。」

*what is the 「って」for?
*what is the 「わー」for?

  1. 「しかもオレがやろうとしたことを先に…」
    *im unsure of what 「やろうとしたこと」means. It seems like there are multiple words together though.
Page 6
  1. does 「次の手を考えなければ。」mean something along the lines of “if I cant think about the next trick” ?

2.「どうすればいい!?」and 「どうすれば高木さんをはずかしめられる!?」
*what does 「どう」 mean in these sentences?
*what does 「すれば」mean
*im also pretty unsure of the sentences meanings as a whole.

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First of all, welcome. Take everything I say with a grain of salt, and please everyone, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe って in this case is just used in place of は。And わ is a sentence ending particle that softens the tone.

やろう is the volitional form of やる (to do). Volitional form+ とする means attempt to do. So this phrase would mean the thing that I attempted to do .

I believe it means I must think of the next trick . いけない after なければ is understood and therefore omitted.

どう means how, although it might be translated as what in this case I think. すれば is, I believe, the ば form of する, so it means if I do. I’d translate the first sentence as How could I act that would be good? or more freely, What should I do?

Again, please everyone correct me if I got anything wrong.

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pg. 6-7

次の手を考えなければ。
I must think of my next move.
どうすればいい?
What should I do?
どうすれば高木さんをはずかしめられる⁉︎
What should I do to be able to humiliate Takagi?
ねえ。
Hey.
な…何?
W-what?
消しゴム貸して、忘れちゃったの。
Lend [me] an eraser, since I forgot [mine]?

ははん!消しゴムを忘れるなんてドジだねぇ。
Haha! Something like forgetting an eraser is a blunder, huh!
そーね。
That’s right~
うーん…
Yeah…
そーいえばさー
If you say so~
消しゴムに好きな人の名前書いて、使い切ったら両想いになれるってやつあったよね。
They say that if you write the name of the person you like on an eraser and wear it out, that mutual love will develop.
あー、あったねそんなの。
They…they say that kind of thing?
今考えるとホント子供だよなー。
If you think [like that] now, then you really are a child, huh?

These pages weren’t too bad, especially with all the assistance on this thread! For clarification though, would はずかしめられる in this context be passive or potential form? I thought of it both ways, but couldn’t definitively choose between them.

On a story note, on the top 3 panels of page 7, is Nishikata just embarrassed that Takagi had no reaction to his taunt? It’s a cute exchange, but a little vague.

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This one has more of a connotation of “speaking of which” in English. It’s fairly common, so you’ll certainly encounter it more in the future.

Here is my understanding, which may have flaws:

In potential form, the が-marked noun (subject) is (potentially) performing an action on the を-marked noun (object).

In the receptive form*, the が-marked noun (subject) is receiving an action by the に-marked noun (agent).

Since the が-marked subject is often unspoken when it’s clean from context, it’s possible looking for を-and に-marked words may help out. (There’s more to it than that, but it should help raise awareness of which other nouns are in play as a first step.)

*I personally avoid the term “passive”, as it’s an English term that’s completely unrelated to the Japanese grammar it’s ascribed to. (I’ve written a bit about passive voice vs receptive form on an earlier club read.)

I’d say so. He tried out an insult, and got a normal response as if he’d made a non-insulting statement.

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p7 (panels 3-6)

ふーん子供ね。
Hmm, a child eh.
へぇー
Hmm
なんだよ。。。
What is it?

p8

何も。。。書いてないだろ。
Nothing… There’s nothing written, right? (NB: だろ → “I think”)
オレ。。。そんな子供っぽいことしないよ。
I… wouldn’t do something that’s childish.
ほほー、そーなんだー
(laugh), Is that so.
ウソだ、またからかってんだろ。
It’s a lie. You’re kidding me again.
書いてるのか!?
There’s something written?
書いたのかオレ!?忘れてるだけで。
Could I have written it? So I just forgot.

p9

か。。。か返してくれよお!!!
G-G-Give it back!
はい。
Sure.
ち。。。違うんだよ、誰かが書いたんだよきっと!!
I-It’s not me, someone must have written on it! (NB: 違うん → different. I assume this to mean a different person)
何も書いてないじゃん!!
There’s nothing written!
てか高木さん消しゴム持ってるじゃん!!!
Or rather, Takagi-san you have your own eraser!

At this point, I feel the biggest struggle is to come back to the thread and parse it for those replies that already answered similar posts so I can compare my answers. I keep scrolling up and down trying to find the right posts.
Is there a way for people to keep track of the relevant posts?

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It can be difficult during the first couple of weeks. After that, (unfortunately) we start seeing people dropping off each week, and the number of posts reduces.

If you’re reading specific pages on specific days, one thing you can do it bookmark posts from others for pages you haven’t gotten to yet, and set reminders. Then after you read them later, trash the bookmarks.

Bookmarking Steps

If you’re not familiar with this, select on the … icon at the bottom of someone’s post to expand the icon menu. The last icon on the expanded list should be the “bookmark this post” icon.

Select the bookmark icon, and you’ll get a prompt for a reminder. If you don’t see a good date and time listed, you can use the “custom date and time” option to enter something appropriate.

Then, on that day at that time, you’ll get a green reminder from the forums, similar to the blue reminder you get when you have notifications turned on for a thread.

You can then delete the bookmark by doing the same steps, but instead of setting a date, select the trashcan icon that shows up if the post is already bookmarked.

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Bookmarking is a good idea. I really haven’t gotten into a routine (this is my first book club!) but I figured out something over the weekend that works okay.

Whenever I have trouble reading something, I search in this thread for the sentence, or parts of the sentence. To search, click the magnifying glass icon on the bar at the top of the page. You have to make sure to click the checkbox that says “Search this topic” or else it will search the entire WK forums. Once you click on a result it will hide the search results, but you can click the magnifying glass again to make it reappear when you want to look at the next result.

I’d love to hear what other people do. I’m pretty new to this and it’s taking me a long time to understand each sentence. Maybe I need to lower my standards for how much grammar I’m actually going to understand, and just enjoy the text?

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The way I work is I read one sentence, type it over in a text editor and write my best guess as to what it means. Then I try to confirm this by using several different tools: Ichi.moe, Jisho, Google Doc, DeepL, or just plain googling it. I try my best to understand every part of the sentence and take notes on which parts I need to look up, or have trouble translating.
Rinse and repeat. After seeing a grammar point a few times, it becomes easier to guess the next time around.

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I’m doing something similar - writing up sentences and then trying to take a best guess as to what they mean and looking up bits I don’t understand through a combination of means

As for keeping track of things that have already been answered, I just try to keep track of the thread throughout the day to check for new posts, and then when I get to bits that have already been answered I usually remember having seen something about page x

Obviously this method is probably not helpful to someone who’s busy and can’t check their phone or computer regularly

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It comes down to what works for you. What keeps you reading each day? Does looking deep into the grammar deter you from reading, or does it draw you into reading?

Regardless, any common grammar you have trouble with one week, you’ll see it again in a week or two. Then another week or two later, you’ll see it again. And again. So you’ll have plenty of time to get used to it.

Any uncommon grammar you have trouble with, you might not even see it again for several weeks, so you’d have a good chance of forgetting it anyway.

How do you know if grammar is common or uncommon? You’ll have a good feel for it by weeks three and four. You’ll recognize certain things keep coming up again and again, so you’ll know those are what you want to give extra attention to.

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Just finished the first chapter and have been reading up on everyone’s comments. Grammar is one of my weakest things right now so I have so much to learn, Just wanted to thank everyone here for making it enjoyable! I’ve seen the anime so it helps knowing what is going on and it helps keep me from getting frustrated lol. I have to remind myself I’ve only been studying Japanese for 3 months (and the first couple weeks were Hirigana and Katakana)

Also huge shout out to everyone helping, but especially you ChristopherFritz! Thank you very much for your detailed explanations and encouraging me to join the book club despite me just recently starting. I think I speak for everyone when I say thank you so much for taking the time to explain and help us understand! I really do appreciate it!

Let’s keep at it everyone and we can all get through this manga together! By the end maybe we all can look back and be able to read these early chapters with ease!

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This has been such a wonderful resource so far. Thanks everyone!

I’ve only gotten to page 8 but this thread has been such a huge help already. The last panel on page 7 was very difficult, but the explanation by ChristopherFritz was amazing! I’ll most likely be behind (darn you full time job) but I hope to be able to contribute to the discussion once I get more comfortable with adding this to my study schedule.

So far I’m really loving how self-serious 西方さん is. The perfect target for a teasing-master!

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I’m so envious! I took Japanese class in high school in the mid to late 1990’s, and only got myself to a point where I could start reading something like manga a few years ago. (I still don’t have the stamina for a light novel, although I occasionally work on it.)

Sometimes I wonder whether it’s good to encourage reading so early as, such as your situation, because you’ll have such a small vocabulary. But, I like to think, if you can tolerate vocabulary look-ups (made easier when our vocabulary sheet fills up), then anything that helps you learn grammar and internalize grammar earlier on will greatly help in your Japanese-learning journey. For example, you’ll be able to slowly recognize what’s going on in WaniKani’s example sentences, even if you don’t know all the words in them.

As someone who does this a lot (looking back on manga I’ve previously read), I highly recommend it.

My one word of warning is to not get your hopes up for compete ease initially. There may be some grammar you haven’t gotten down yet, and there will be words you’ve forgotten along the way.

But! There will be words and grammar you’ve learned that you didn’t know yet back on this initial read. You will see things that, by a few months from now, you’ll look back on and realize you know them now. Then you’ll read another book club pick (or perhaps an offshoot club for Takagi), and after that you may browse some random pages from volume 1 here, and you’ll find even more things that you recognize. The progress will be palpable.

Yes, there will still be parts you don’t recognize at a glance, even after months and months of reading. (Unless you’re able to learn grammar faster than a slowpoke like me!) But keep at reading and keep at learning, and finally the glorious day will arrive when you realize…there’s still thousands of vocabulary words left to learn =(

Thus concludes today’s motivational talk =D

I can definitely relate. My first manga, I was averaging four panels per day. Took me probably a little over six months to get through the volume. (Didn’t help that there was no furigana, so I was looking up all the kanji, and I was going it alone, so no book club guidance for learning grammar!)

Worst-case scenario on scheduling, you can skip a chapter here or there if you want to maximize how much you read “in real time” with the club (since it seems the chapters are self-contained stories).

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I guess this is as good a time as any to ask the question that might have already been addressed: when reading, I feel decently confident with grammar with the exception of small things here and there, but my vocab is very limited. When studying vocab how should I choose what to study and what to ignore? I know this is probably a very personal question and it really depends on the person but I wonder what other people’s “Philosophy” is on this subject.

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Thanks for your kind words! Please don’t overestimate what I know. I hardly understood a lot and most of what you say goes over my head. I’m going slow on Wanikani and I struggle with Genki grammar. I’m only understanding a little here and there. So your explanations help so much.

But like I said I know/understand so little. It’s only because of reading the communities comments and knowing the anime I know what’s going on. I’m slow and I I’ve been struggling with my reviews. It’s only because of people like you in this community that I’ve learned and picked up a bunch. But I still understand so little. So thank you for being there and I wish you the best!

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What I found worked for me is to go through the Tango N5, N4 and N3 decks. They contain ~4500 really common words, which will save you the effort of having to reinvent the wheel. If you send a guy on reddit named Nukemarine proof of purchase (e.g. a photo of the physical books with a bit of paper with your name on it, or a screenshot of the purchase confirmation for the kindle books), he’ll send you an Anki deck with example sentences and audio. I really, really enjoy these books, because each sentence generally only contains vocabulary you’ve already learned up to that point and appropriate grammar points for that JLPT level, which makes them great for listening practice too!

On top of that, I keep an eye out for vocab I come across while reading. If there are words out there that look useful or fun to learn (because I think they’re likely to come up a lot in that particular book), I check in Anki if they’re in the Tango decks (I bought all of the books) and if so, I move that card to the front. If not, I’ll make a custom card for it myself.

I find this is the best of both worlds. I do some manual ‘mining’ for words for context-rich learning, but I also have a LOT of cards to fall back on when I don’t have the time to mine. I would say that if you’re starting out from scratch, you might as well finish the N5 and N4 decks before you start mining, because those words are so common that you really can’t go wrong with them!

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It’s certainly a matter of personal preference and how each individual prefers to learn, but in my case, I never actively study any vocabulary at all. I look up most or all of it when I come across it, then I promptly forget until I come across it again. I’ve noticed that if I encounter the same word I’ve looked up before in a different context or source (textbook, manga, Wanikani example sentence, Japanese movie or anime), a lightbulb suddenly lights up in my brain, a connection is made, and the word tends to stick. If I don’t run across a word I looked up for quite a while, it gets forgotten, but I think that’s okay. This is the best way for me, because long vocabulary lists and words out of context just make my brain shut down. Wanikani vocabulary is different, because there’s already a connection with the kanji it uses, and some connections are so unexpected yet fascinating that they stick at once.

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It’s fun seeing kanji/vocab I’ve learnt through WK pop up, such as 見

Another set of pages done, with some notes/questions alongside them. I’m finding some bits are coming a little easier now that I’ve got a ways in (though it’s still tough and slow for me). There was even a sentence or two here I didn’t even really need to think about outside of checking the vocab. As usual, please feel free to let me know if I’m off, or expand on anything I’ve brought up

Chapter pages 12 and 13

「今のうちに高木さんの消しゴムに誰かの名前を書いといて・・・」
During this time(?), on Takagi-san’s eraser, I’ll write someone’s name.

  • I wasn’t sure what the うち here was, but seems like it might be 内 (which I’ve learnt in WK ^_^) which can mean during. So it then becomes “the duration of now” or something along those lines

Edit: reworded this a bit to make it slightly clearer what I meant

「トイレから戻ってきたらからかってやろう。」
I’ll tease her when she returns from the toilet.

「さーて誰の名前を・・・」
Now~, who’s name… (likely about to say “should I write”)

「な・・・」
Huh…

「すでに書いてる!?」
There’s already writing on it!?

「見たらムズイか・・・!?」
Would it be wrong to look…!?

  • Not too sure on this one. 見たら would be the conditional, and ムズイ means bad, while か can indicate that it’s a question, so putting that all together I feel like asking if it’s wrong to look makes sense.

「ひ・・・一文字くらいなら・・・」
If it’s only one letter…

「ろ!?」

「ろ!!!」

「てことは!?」
“ろ” is what’s written!?

「オレの名前じゃないなあ・・・」
That’s not my name…

「いや・・・別に全然ショックとかじゃねーよ。」
No… that especially shouldn’t shock me at all.

「くそっ!!見てやる!!」
Damn!! I have to look!!

「こうなりゃ全部!!」
I’ve got to see the whole thing!!

  • The こうなりゃ bit was confusing at first, but looks like it’s already been covered.
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