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.
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.
The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.
This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.
When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked. As the threads get longer, it becomes more convenient to use the Search function, which is located in the upper right corner of the forum. It is the magnifying glass which is near your profile picture! The best way to search is usually to type part of the sentence you are confused about, and select “in this topic”. This will show you all posts within the current thread which has that string of text.
Be sure to join the conversation! It’s fun, and it’s what keeps these book clubs lively! There’s no such thing as a stupid question! We are all learning here, and if the question has crossed your mind, there’s a very good chance it has crossed somebody else’s also! Asking and answering questions is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, so never hesitate to do so!
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
I’m very glad that this story is so much easier to follow along with for me, grammar wise. I’d also like to thank darkR4bbit for their effort last week. I’m going to try and actively contribute again!
I also thought this story is a little easier than the first one, although I’m an intermediate learner so sometimes it’s harder to judge. But the first one seemed to have more old timey/fairytale type language and this one I think is a bit more straightforward.
Heyho!
I haven’t really read any Japanese in 3 years (used to read along a little with the BBC back then) so I thought I’d start here and now caught back up with the club.
I also found the second story much easier. Partially that might be because I’m getting back in the groove but I think partially that’s also because the vocabulary seems more common? Not sure.
I stumbled a bit when she asked for her feet to be cut off, I might have glossed a little there… I will probably do a more careful reread during the week. I’m usually not that great at posting questions in these threads but am looking forward to reading through the discussions!
すると and then
どうした somehow
ことか
おどり つかれて got tired from dancing
やすもうと should have a break
おもっても thought
くつが shoes
ひとりでに by itself
うごいて moved
とまらない didn’t stop
のです
And then somehow she got tired from dancing, she thought she should have a break, but the shoes moved by itself and didn’t stop.
Sentence 3
でも、だれも とめる ことは できません。
でも but
だれも No one
とめる to stop
ことは
できません Not able to
Seems like you were quicker than I was, haha. Your translations seem to mostly be the same as mine. Personally, I think the first sentence is slightly different. I think it means that she lost herself to the dance, as if she got into a trance of some sorts.
4th sentence
The fourth sentence describes the red shoes wearing Karen dancing out of the party hall, passing by/through town, crossing a field, into a dark forest. (I believe くらい is dark (暗い) in this context). The onomatopoeia’s function is to make it clear she went through those places one after another.
Attempting to explain こと
こと is something that is hard to grasp and at my current level, I don’t think I could really explain it to you other than that it’s used to make things into a " thing". For example, in the third sentence it’s used to modify the verb to stop (とめる). What it does is.. it transforms it into the general concept of the act of stopping, rather than functioning as a verb in that sentence. This article on Tofugu might be useful, especially the part on actions.
Personally I kind of just accept the way it’s used and go with the flow. I have sort of started to understand it passively, I think? Hence why I struggle with explaining, sorry. It might start to click with experience. But Soggyboy (or someone else) might be able to do a better job than I do, haha.
Only thing you’re missing here is the ても in 思っても, which means ‘even though’
‘And then, somehow, even though she was tired of dancing and thought she would take a break, the shoes didn’t stop moving.’
Oops that’s my bad, I put the ‘extent’ meaning on the vocab sheet before. Fixed now.
Yes, like BurnedGoose said, こと translates literally to ‘thing’ but represents a more abstract/intangible idea, so not a literal ‘thing’ as in object, but a ‘thing’ as in incident, occurrence, idea, and so on. It does not translate directly into English and often disappears in a translation.
It looks like both uses of こと here are essentially part of set phrases/expressions.
In sentence 2 we have どうしたことか which seems to be an expression.
I’m guessing each chapter is it’s own self contained story? I just bought the book and plan on joining next week but want to know if I need to have read the first 45 pages in order to understand what’s going on or if I can just join in next week picking right off at the start of the chapter.
Ah, you’re close, but I think the only thing missing is that the shoes are not doing the action of ひっぱったりたたいたりする。The one doing the action is Karen.
I think you may have misidentified this as a noun phrase:
ひっぱったり たたいたりして くつ
The reason it’s not actually a phrase describing a noun is because noun phrases always use the short form present tense verb before the noun. This has the て form so it’s not creating a noun phrase. If we just take the て here as the regular ‘and’ usage:
Welcome to Week 5 of 10分でよめるこわいはなし ・ 10 minute Scary Stories 
Resources and vocabulary
Discussion Guidelines
Participation
but I think partially that’s also because the vocabulary seems more common? Not sure.
So glad they’re helpful!