おじさまと猫 Chapter 1 Discussion Book Club
I haven’t started one of these threads before, so this post will definitely get some major edits.
So far we have a vocab sheet.
Shoutout to @Sarabrina for starting this book club and @frayderike for starting us off with such a lovely vocab sheet.
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I don’t know if digital readers get this page, but on the inside cover, there’s a picture of ふくまる and the text
昨日と同じ今日が続くと思っていたにゃ。。。
It seems like the first part of the phrase means along the lines of “today, like yesterday” or “today as yesterday” and 続く means “to continue,” so perhaps the overall meaning is along the lines of “I don’t want to think today will be the same as yesterday.”
Thoughts?
Also, cats (and pets in general are hella expensive). ふくまる’s kitten neighbors cost 270,000-280,000 yen or about $2,500 if you’re American. Pet shelters are not really a thing in Japan either. Maybe major cities have some, but they’re few and far between.
Also, digital readers, do you know if the text is exactly the same? For example, on page 3, かわいい is in kanji for me.
Where are you getting the negative want from? To me it’s “I thought today would be the same as yesterday”
Yep I see that too, 可愛くない, odd considering there’s a かわいい just the panel before.
Yeah that blew my mind when I saw that. I guess I’ve never really bought a cat though so I don’t know what reasonable prices are.
I read it along the lines of “I thought today would be the same as yesterday” (same as @tomwamt). I expect this is him sitting in the pet store enclosure, before chapter one’s events.
I noticed that! I don’t know what they cost here in the US, but that’s quite the price. Well, you don’t want to them to go to a bad home, so if someone’s going to spent that much…
I kind of feel the 「かわいい〜」 is being said in a cutesy young lady voice, and the kanji would take away from the cutesy flow. When referring to our main character cat, she’s probably speaking more uppity (for lack of a better word here), so the kanji fits better. Maybe?
On page 4, on the bottom right there’s a speech bubble that says 「ブッサイク」I couldn’t find an entry on Jisho or Weblio, but based on google images it might mean an unattractive face or to make an unattractive face?
On the same page there’s a panel that ends with 欲しがらにゃい and I can’t figure out what the grammar is here without the cat speak. What is that ら supposed to be?
I was interpreting the cat speak たにゃto originally be たない. I don’t have a lot of experience reading stuff with a cat accent though.
I used to volunteer at a cat shelter and the adopt fee was $50 if there wasn’t a sale (there were almost always sales). Even for a purebred cat, that’s kinda pricey. Especially for a kitten with some sort of respiratory issue (later it says one has boogers) and the kittens I’ve seen in pet stores in Japan are kinda sketchy and don’t usually seem to be in great condition.
I’ve only skimmed the series in its entirety before and I haven’t really read stuff in a cat accent before, but I was taking the inserted にゃs (like when it’s inner thoughts and not cats meowing to people) to be changing な to にゃ or similar. Like I said though, I don’t have much experience.
That’s a great point! It makes a lot of sense too.
It’s a verb: 欲しがる, specifically 欲しがらない
In my experience, にゃ can be used as a sentence final particle, basically a replacement for ね or な. In general the にゃs seems to replace なs. Like above, there’s a にゃい in the 欲しがらない.
Thanks!
Like in the above quotation lol? You’re probably right about it being a sentence ender here.
This word can be used in two situations. One is when you make something that doesn’t look very good, or (for this situation) when someone/something has a not-good looking face.
Likewise にゃんて => なんて. Looks to be fairly consistent for the most part.
Thank you! I’m glad my google image interpretation was not far off.
The original Pixiv release has a nice image for each chapter (at least for the first few). Here’s chapter one’s image:
It amazes me to see the improvement in art in this series between the free Pixiv release and the commercial release. (Same with レンタルおにいちゃん, from chapter two on.)
Looking at the pages of the original looks almost like a storyboard. “I’ll draw simple images in hope of being scouted for a commercial release, then I’ll use that income to redraw it awesome!”
This makes me want to read both versions at the same time, that’s so cute!
I found a difference with the printed version! The 無 reading in the printed one is な instead of にゃ.
Do it! Read a page of the original first to see how many kanji you can recognize (without furigana to distract you), then read the same page in the book.
Here’s the first four chapters, and there’s a link below on the page for the next four, so this link should keep you going for two months of book club =D
Interesting.
It looks like version 1 was released on 2018-02-22, and I have version 4 which was released on 2019-01-01. You can find this information near the end of the book, if you’re curious. (Version numbers may differ between print and digital releases.)
Is the version the big number here or is that just the volume? I can’t check it on my other volumes right now.
I know I bought all of the volumes within the past year, but I can’t remember which ones I bought new from Animate/bookstores or if I bought any copies from BOOKOFF.
Bookmarked! Although I’m good about not reading furigana if I don’t want to because I can just hold the book far away from my face 
This first chapter already hit my feels. The cat’s face at the end was just so heart-melting 
The neko-ben is fun to read, too.
As for the new vocab I picked out:
I had no idea what ハナクソ meant. 嫌がる、 返品 、and期待 are new for me too! Just within these few pages I’ve already made so many notations haha.
The phrase「絶対に嫌がれるぞ」gave me some trouble too. I’ve always had a hard time interpreting passive and that plus 「嫌がる」confused me at first. I had to really think about the meaning
I don’t see a version number, but the 2018-02-22 is the original release number. Maybe yours is a first edition? (I don’t know if they’ve done any updated physical releases.)
Here’s what mine (digital) looks like:
If I may be a bit forward, please read through my recent post on the passive voice in Japanese:
Passive voice used to give me trouble, but since learning that Japanese doesn’t have a passive voice, and learning what’s actually happening, it’s made it a lot easier for me to grasp. It still took encountering it a few times and thinking it through as a “receptive form” to get it down, but that was so much faster and easier than dealing with trying to understand it as an English passive voice grammar construct.
Thanks! I’ll check out the rest of my volumes when I get home tonight.
Thanks for the share! I took a look at well and I appreciate the change in phrasing. Cure Dolly is a little too grating to my pet peeves to watch, so it’s nice to get a summary of what she says.
