I see your point and I agree that it makes some sense but that sounds so unbelievably rude to me, especially within the context of Japanese social norms, where direct forms of address like あなた or 君 (let alone こういう人!) would be considered rude already.
On the other hand at the very beginning of next week’s segment he’s shown patting her on the head for no obvious reason, which I’m pretty sure is also generally a no-no in Japanese society, or indeed any society.
Two panels later she responds that they go to the same college. I took it as her being like “actually we’ve met before,” supporting that he was saying they hadn’t. But that’s part of next week’s reading.
You all make good points and make me doubt my interpretation. I still find it shockingly rude if that’s the intention, it’s bizarre that she would barely acknowledge it. Then again, as the tone of the manga develops it will become easier to manage our expectations for how these characters behave.
Also amusingly I just stumbled upon a very similar turn of phrase while playing Fata Morgana (for the book club):
She’s showing a portrait of a person she’s looking for, and refers to the person in question with こういう人。 At first I thought “Ha! See, the person she’s talking about is not here and yet she uses こういう!” but then I suppose that it may be because she’s holding a picture and that’s what she’s referring too, even though the person is not with her at the moment.
I have the English release, they have the same translation (I also took ほら as a reaction to his closeness, but they have it as a reaction to the めずらしい part. Exotic zoo animal lol.)
I’m a little late and it’s my first book club, so that’s not a good look
Below are my translations. It was a bit of a struggle, especially pages 9 and 11, where I had to look up quite a few things. Hoping it will get easier once I get into the swing of it.
Page 3
恋はこの雪みたいに音もなく降ってくるのかた
Love’s appearance is similar to this snow silently falling
曇天の空から世界の色を変えながら
While from the dull sky the world’s colour is changing
Page 7
私の世界
My World
間も無く橋元です
Soon is it is Hashimoto
Page 8
かわいいワンピースがセールで手に入るなんてで手に入るなんて
How did I obtain a pretty dress in a sale
かわいいものと
Cute stuff and…
あ リンちゃんエンスタアップアップしtる
Ah, Rin has uploaded something to Instagram
友達. 大学. SNS. いいね. ぽち
Friends, University, Social Networking Service.. Like… (pushes button).
Page 9
なんとか今は
Something or other, now…
がい外国人？
A foreigner?
場所き聞かれてる！？
Huh? Is he asking about a place?
Page 11
よかった話せる人来てくれた
I’m glad someone who can speak has come to help
銀髪 。。。
この人どこかで見たことが
Silver hair… I have seen this person somewhere…
そうだりんちゃんと同じサークルの人
That’s right, he is a person in the same circle as Rin
すごい盛りあがつてる
Amazing! They are getting excited (???)
場所わかった。。。？
Does he know the place？
助けてもらっちゃったな
I am saved, huh (???)
Page 13
あ話じゃなくて すみませ
Not sign language… ah… すみま。。。(typing on phone)
口の動き読める？読めない？
Can you read my mouth? You can’t read it?
近いつ。そういうことか。。。
Come close. So that’s it…
さっきの人日本語パラパラ
That person just now, speaks Japanese fluently
そうだったんだ。めずらしいいき物みたいに見てくる
That was right. He is looking at me like I am some rare creature.
Looking back through this thread now I can see a lot of my queries have been answered, which is great.
Looking forward to next week being more confident to have a go at translating without looking up so much!
It’s hard to tell but I read it as a small っ, which is used in manga at the end of words to represent when something is said with emphasis, or ended with a glottal stop. You’ll commonly see it with あっ (ahh) and えっ (ehh), which you can imagine saying with a sort of choked off ending.
I’m also seeing this volume using the small っ at the end of onomatopoeia to show it was abbreviated from the dictionary form, which I didn’t realize was a thing.
There’s no “how” in the sentence. Maybe なんて confused you? Is this case it’s a bit like “or something like that” in English. It softens the sentence a bit but doesn’t really change the meaning.
I hope this isn’t taken as rude but I did want to mention, regarding your evaluation of the 手に入る usage—it is actually translated as “I got” in the official english translation, as in, it already happened.
Oh I guess the dress in question is the package she’s holding. Makes sense, doesn’t seem to be normal luggage. I didn’t pay attention to the drawing so I thought she was talking in the future as well. I don’t fully get why she wouldn’t conjugate in the past here though.
Ah, you’re right. I completely missed that she’s holding a bag.
This goes to show just how important appreciating the artwork is in manga!
I went ahead and asked Grok (LLM AI) about it to see what it says. I simply gave it the sentence, no context, and asked for a translation and whether it’s past tense.
As Grok says, it’s (obviously) not past tense (which in Japanese can be thought of as a “completed action” versus “not completed action”). But this suggests an implication of completion.
When prompted for more information, Grok said:
AI Disclaimer: When using an LLM (large language model) AI such as Grok or ChatGPT, it may hallucinate nonsense and respond with absolute conviction and certainty of what it’s saying. I tried to get Grok to provide links to web pages that would back up its claim, but it failed at that.
I asked ChatGPT the same to compare. It pretty much agrees with Grok, and likewise fails to give me any websites that I can link to for further reading.
Ayumu unexpectedly encounters his classmate and clubmate Urushi at a bookstore. This one’s a little more debatable on whether it’d be considered present or past tense, as they just encountered one another when he says this.
Thank you for this. I’m going back and rereading from the beginning today. With hitting WK10, where I am on Wagotabi, and other miscellaneous stuff since book club started; I suddenly had a jump in my comprehension. Hints like these are extremely helpful on reread to deepen my understanding and further language learning.
