Jisho is a popular online Japanese-English dictionary.
ichi.moe is a tool for parsing out sentences. You can type/paste in a whole sentence and it will try and break the sentence down into its individual parts.
Deepl will translate a sentence from Japanese to English. It’s obviously not going to be right all the time, so if you want to check your translation it’s normally better to ask in the thread.
Discussion Guidelines
Spoiler Courtesy
Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.
Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags
Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).
Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:
Example
This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.
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This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.
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Participation
Will you be reading along with us this week?
I’m reading along
I’m still reading but I haven’t reached this part yet
I’ve already read this part but I’m here for the discussion
いわれる is the passive form of いう, so here it means like ‘to be called’ ‘is called’ sense
「こんな かお」と いわれる おばけ
This is a noun phrase; when a sentence/phrase modifies a noun. You can tell that’s what it is because of the short form/dictionary form verb being placed directly next to a noun.
[ 「こんな かお」と いわれる ] おばけ
[ “This kind of face” is called ] monster
The monster that’s called/known as ‘this kind of face’
おばけに 出あった
Encountered the monster
「こんな かお」と いわれる おばけに 出あった
Encountered the monster that’s known as ‘this kind of face’
「こんな かお」と いわれる おばけに 出あった 田助は
And then there’s actually another, larger noun phrase here.
[「こんな かお」と いわれる おばけに 出あった ] 田助は
Everything in brackets is modifying 田助
[ Encountered the monster that’s known as ‘this kind of face’ ] Tasuke
The Tasuke that encountered the monster known as ‘this kind of face’
大あわて!
あわてて is kind of like being flustered/panicked, so 大あわて is like ‘big panic!’ or ‘great haste!’
Literal translation:
The Tasuke that encountered the monster known as ‘this kind of face,’ big panic!
Natural translation:
When Tasuke encountered the monster known as ‘this kind of face,’ there was great haste/big panic!
Also, I’ve added the vocab on this page to the vocab sheet, so that should help with lookups!
I saw some people addingさん to make names where names are not known. So I think on p. 128, they make the name 道を通さん from 道を通る to pass on the road ← みちをとおさん
But in “Almighty” Google Translate (which works way way better if it has the correct kanji fed in) , it interprets 道を通さんのか as “Will you pass through?” Which absolutely fits the situation, but I don’t really grammatically see what they did there…
通る is intransitive so it can’t take 道を as a direct object. I think that would be something like 道に通る
I think this is 道を通す and it’s some kind of slurring of 通すなのか or something. Or maybe 道を通さないのか？ I can’t open the book to check the context right now though.
OMG the casual slurring in here!!
I have no idea what all the じゃんs and stuff are!
I’m not used to Kansai storytelling LOL
Ummm…I typed in the whole chapter of vocabulary
I accidentally wrote too much and all of the font got tiny…I tried to shorten it, but the font stayed small
I also didn’t know whether to put kanji in the kanji column where it’s common, even if it wasn’t in this book… So I followed your lead and entered into the spreadsheet exactly how it is in the book
This is always the hardest part of reading!! If only everyone spoke with perfect textbook grammar all the time
Oh, wow, thank you!!! Adding to the vocabulary sheet is pretty time consuming so I’ve gotten a bit behind with it I’ll take a look at the formatting later.
Yeah, I’m sure the other way would be fine too but I figured it’d be best to show the words as they are in the book since that’s what we’re reading
Yesterday I tried to translate the two chapters of this week without looking Up vocabulary. I can’t translate whole sentences yet, but I think I already recognize more words than 10 weeks ago.
Will there be an offshoot book club for Volume 2? Has someone already read it and is able to say If it’s the same difficulty (Grammar) as Volume 1?
Hi AWR
Congratulations on bashing through almost this entire book! I see you’ve gotten darn good at interpreting!
I'll give it a go
This grammar point that I want to look at is in Genki Chapter 15-4 St. Olaf college link, about using sentences to qualify Nouns. I call them “Adjectival phrases”, Genki calls them "Qualifier Sentences). Sometimes, in my sentence interpretations, I use parenthesis to keep them straight. And I usually connect them to the Noun they modify using “that”.
So, as in the Genki example
昨日の買った本 → (昨日の買った)本
(yesterdayのbought) book (kinou no katta) hon the book (that) I bought yesterday
買う (かう to buy) → casual past tense 買った bought
Nb. Genki says that Qualifying sentences are “short form” (present or past; affirmative or negative), which here I call “casual past” instead of “short form past”, meaning 買った instead of the more polite 買いました…
I’ll add the rest of a sentence around it
私はもう(昨日の買った)本を読みました。
私 (わたし I, me)
もう (already)
読む (よむ to read) → 読みました (past tense “read”)
Rough: Iはalready (yesterdayのbought)bookをread.
“Localized”: I already read the book that I bought yesterday.
So I’ll try to apply that grammar to this:
{この (とうげの )てっぺん}には、いつも、{(「こんな かお」と いわれる) おばけ}が 出る。
Rough: {This(mountain passの}peakには、always, ("this kind of face"it is said) apparitionがcomes out.
…Yes, AWR! You are 100% correct! It is aggravating that they don’t have a word in this sentence for “having”, because it would be better English to say “the apparition that is said to (have)‘this kind of face’”!! ええfrustrating! … So with a strict word-to-word interpretation, without the “having”, it reads more like “the apparition that is called ‘this kind of face’”…
Clean: On this mountain pass, the apparition that is called “this kind of face” always comes out.
And If I were a professional interpreter, I would just say what should be said in English “localization”: On this mountain pass, there apparition that is said to have “this kind of face” always comes out.
この峠の天辺には、いつも、「こんな顔」と言われるお化けが出る。
Kanji Notes
…天辺 (てっぺん peak, summit Anime Top 7K) literally “the area of heaven”
…天 (on’てん kunあま heaven WK2)
…辺 (on’へん kunあた,べ area, side WK47)
…天辺 has rendaku てん→ てっ and へん→ ぺん
…峠 (とうげ mountain pass, the worst N2 Anime Top 12K, News Top 7K WK59)
…顔 (on’がん kunかお face WK20)
…言う (いう to say WK5)
…お化け (おばけ usu.kana ghost monster, apparition Anime Top 6K, News Top12K “化change”), see related 化ける (ばける to change form, to transform WK8)
No - I’ve only jumped in this week. This is my first story. I’d planned to start with the next book but I figured that as this book was separate stories, it would be possible to start mid way through rather than waiting to June. The delivery charge on two books is only a little more than one book.
We haven’t covered Modifying clauses (As they are called in JFBP II) yet, I think they’ll come up this term. However, I like grammar and I think I’ve got the idea.
Yes, that seems like a perfectly fine way of thinking of it. I’d say the “it is called” meaning of と言われる has a very broad meaning; it doesn’t mean that someone is standing next to the monster saying, “Well I’m going to call you ‘this kind of face!’”
Agreed. I tend to translate literally in the book club here because I find it more helpful to focus on what the Japanese is specifically doing (here it’s using “is called”), but yeah “it’s said to have” or “with” or “is known as” would probably all be fine English translations.
Awesome job! I’m not surprised that your understanding has improved a lot, you’ve been working hard!
I haven’t read any of the other books in the series. I know the ABBC read a few of the second grade readers before, so you could check out those past clubs and follow along the threads!
I have some books that were already read in a book club. I will try to read one of them or Volume 2 on my own after I’ve done a bit of studying. Maybe 2 month is a good amount of time. I want to really understand more Grammar Points and Not Just guess the Sentence structure.
I really like the “math-related” inflection-point radicals in the kanji. Mountain山 and then 上minimum/maximum下, the changing of which is a “critical point” in math, or an “inflection point” of curves (local peaks and minima)
I think I saw it in the Frieren Manga first, soggyboy… when I was binge-reading the other month.
AWR, I “joined” this club ages ago, but then couldn’t get around to doing the readings… So I will be trying to “catch up”. So far, I’ve only read those story; and the first story. So maybe we can play “catch up” together?
CherryAppleさん, I haven’t really noticed that the grammar is really any easier than anything else. In fact, I always had a worse time with books that used less kanji, because the machine translator that I consulted had less clear of an idea of what was trying to be said. I saw lots of advanced grammar (ながら "doing A while doing B) etc etc in this story. Plus, I have been studying Japanese for 6 years, and I had little idea what to do with the casual, garbled contractions!
For that reason, I feel like graded Readers, rather than general kids books, are better for ramping up reading (although I never did that!) BUT since I think it’s super-important to read someone that interests you, I found middle-school kids books to be best (because they have kanji and Furigana, since they are also learning; but also more interesting plots and funny characters)…
But I am not great example to follow, because I always end up “biting off more than I can chew”, and then slowly grinding my way through…
I think If you really want to learn Something, No Matter what, you have to Challenge yourself. Not to the extent that you burn Out. But enough to Not be bored / underwhelmed. I realised that several Times during school. It was the Same with learning english. At First I was in C-course. We didn’t even wrote vocabulary Tests in class. So I didn’t really learn vocabulary. After I changed school, I got into B-course, because there was no C-course. I don’t know If the Lessons were harder, but we wrote vocabulary Tests, and after 2 or 3 years I got into A-course.
Because of that experience I wanted to start relatively early Reading my First book in Japanese and why I was so frustrated with the Volkshochschulkurs I did Last year.
Welcome to Week 11 of 10分でよめるこわいはなし ・ 10 minute Scary Stories 
Resources and vocabulary
Discussion Guidelines
Participation
LOL
Adding to the vocabulary sheet is pretty time consuming so I’ve gotten a bit behind with it 
I’ll take a look at the formatting later.
