それでも歩は寄せてくる | Week 1 Discussion ♟

第01局

Pages 3-10

Start Date: 10th July
Next Week: 第02局

Vocabulary List

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Discussion Guidelines

  • Please blur out major events in the current week’s pages, and any content from later in the book/series, like this: texthere
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  • To you lurkers out there: join the conversation, it’s fun!

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I’ve been reading through this a little bit because my copy came way earlier than anticipated. However, I am painfully unaware of the inner workings of Shogi. A primer is definitely in my future!

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Lishogi is great if you just want to get a introduction to piece movement etc: Learn shogi - by playing! • lishogi.org

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Thanks! This is great!

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Japan has crossed into the 10th of July, and the rest of the world will join them in the many hours that follow.

For all first-time readers, remember: there are no wrong or foolish questions. If there’s something you do not know, and that prevents you from understanding the material, it is an appropriate question to ask. Everything each of us knows about Japanese, we had to learn sometime.

Although it’s customary to include the page number, try also to type out the sentence you’re asking about (if possible). Due to the general lack of page numbers in this manga, this makes it easier to search for, in case someone else has the same question, and didn’t see that it’s already been brought up.

The main thing to avoid is asking a question that has already been asked and answered. Be sure to check the thread by searching for a word or two from what you have a question on, to see if it’s already been covered. If an answer doesn’t make sense, you can ask for more information, but remember also that many concepts need to be encountered multiple times in various contexts before they can be understood. Take in what you can, but be willing to give it time to sink in.

If you stick with learning Japanese long enough, you’ll want to become adept at looking up the answers to your own questions, as this is going to be a vital skill to making substantial progress. For now, let the book club be your number one resource.

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Well, first of all, hi everyone! I’m super excited to be reading this manga with you all. After finishing up the first chapter, I can tell this is going to be another super cute book like the previous club, and I’m definitely looking forward to more of it! I think I’m technically a day ahead here by having started today, but I’ll get my post up anyway, while I for sure have some time to do so!

For those who weren’t in the Takagi-san club, I just want to preface with a couple of warnings. 1st, on any of my posts with the summary dropdown, always assume spoilers are within the drops. I like to use this as opposed to the spoiler blur for the most part because it also serves to hide my rants, which is a good segue for the second warning: I can be long-winded, and I apologise in advance. :stuck_out_tongue: I try to hide my worst tangents inside these dropdowns so nobody is attacked with a wall of text while scrolling through the thread.

Anyway, on to business! This chapter only had 2 bits that tripped me up. The first on:

Pg. 5

「だって私しかいない将棋部入ってるし!!」

“Because I’m the only one who is in the Shogi club!”

だって = “because; but; even; too; after all”
私 = I; me
しかいない = “only” This is the part of the sentence that I have a question about. I think it’s related to theしか ~ ない grammar construct. https://japanesetest4you.com/flashcard/learn-japanese-grammar-39/

The い before ない is what’s throwing me. If I read it as いない (“not in”), then I sorta can stretch pretty far for the meaning to be, “somebody else is not in the club”, and tie the 私 to the 入ってるし part of the sentence to get “I am joining.” The problem I have is, I think Urushi is already a member of the club, so the bit about her “joining” doesn’t really make much sense to me, hence the pretty loose intepretation above.

Edit:
Actually, ignore that concern. After some more thought and reading, 入ってる should also serve perfectly to fine to mean “to be in” as opposed to “joining,” I think. I still would appreciate some insight on the しかいない, though!

将棋部 = “Shogi club”

入ってるし = “to be in” with the し sentence particle that I lazily interpret as being similar to “because.”

I would love some feedback on this interpretation because it’s the main part of the chapter that went over my head a bit.

My alternative translation would be Urushi accusing Ayumu of only joining because she is in the club, but I couldn’t come up with a breakdown that satisfied me enough to posit that as the interpretation. I certainly feel that is the implied meaning, though, even if it’s not a direct statement.

And next:

Pg.11?

Well, the lack of page numbers is also gonna be a fun adventure… :sweat_smile:

The second bit that messed with me is that the only thing I know about Shogi is that it is similar to chess and that Hifumi Togo gets way too into it, (though, she is super adorable while doing so). As a result, that final panel that looked like some kinda move overview map was completely inscrutable to me. I will definitely be checking out the link that @shoginor shared! Thank you for sharing that! I’ll definitely need to learn more about the game.

Side note… is it just a result of the font that the WaniKani forums use that しょう kanji in 将棋 is showing up a bit differently than I am used to seeing? It doesn’t look like what I have been taught in the app, nor what it looks like when it’s in my kanji suggestion list when I type it on my phone.

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I am excited to be reading this with all of you! The first chapter was already a lot of fun :grin:

pg 5

This is how I interpreted it.
Maybe whats confusing you is the (わたし), as that is not the subject of the sentence.
(わたし)しかいない将棋部(しょうぎぶ) = The Shougi Club with only me in it
The person that does the (はい)る is Ayumu, but he is not explicitly stated as the subject.
Maybe it makes more sense if you just imagine a (あゆむ)が after the だって:

「だって (あゆむ) 私しかいない将棋部入ってるし!!」

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Which web browser are you using for the forums? Do you have Japanese set as a language? Perhaps it’s defaulting to a Chinese font. (Just a random guess.) For example, this is what Chromium’s default was for me:

Screenshot_20210709_135619

From there, one can remove Chinese (if desired) and add Japanese. Should be the exact same for Chrome and the newer Edge.

Firefox should have something similar.

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Pg. 5

Well, that’s a textbook case of second-guessing myself and ending up with the wrong result (my first instinct was that Ayumu was the implied subject of the sentence, but decided that maybe I was being hasty and settled on 私 as the subject). Should have just followed my initial instinct, then. :stuck_out_tongue:

しかいない still has me somewhat uneasy regardless of which way this is intepreted. Is the “somebody else is not in” (better English fit would be, “nobody else is in,” but I’m being very literal on purpose to make sure I intepreted this correctly) the right thought process then?

@ChristopherFritz, when I’m on PC, I use Edge nowadays (since Microsoft finally managed to put together a browser that’s worth a damn). On my phone, generally just clicking straight from the e-mail notification to get to the forums. I assume it’s a subset of Chrome given that I use Android. I’ll check my settings. Thank you!

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I think there was a discussion about this in I believe the grammar question thread recently.
Edit: If found the discussion about it: Short Grammar Questions (Part 1) - #7599 by Leebo

Since しか ~ない has that negation, I think of it more as “other than”.
So 私しか = other than me
いない = negative of いる = to not be
私しかいない将棋部 = The Shougi-club with no one other than me in it.

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This in unrelated to Ayumu and is back to the font thing

So what is interesting is it seems WaniKani somehow has its own little app for the forums specifically that my phone wants to use. I am not really sure where it came from, but it’s what was opening by default when I clicked the forums. That app doesn’t appear to have any settings I can adjust. My Chrome browser is set to Japanese, though, and doesn’t have the same font issue. Ultimately, it really isn’t a big deal. The kanji looks pretty close to the same, just marginally simplified, so it wasn’t enough to not have any idea what it was saying. Just caught my interest. :sweat_smile:

Anyway, I’ll quit hijacking the thread now!

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Still the font thing

The separate forum app probably means that at some point you installed the forum as a progressive web app. This means that you can access it like an app but it’s still the same contents as the website. I’m not sure how you control those sorts of settings for progressive web apps, but if you delete it, the forum should go back to opening in your browser.

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Hey, this is my first book club and I am glad the book arrived in time (Amazon JP is amazing!).

Can somebody tell me what the んあつ⁉ on page 6 is supposed to mean?

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More font stuff

Oh I deleted it already. I just don’t recall having installed the app to begin with. :sweat_smile:

@Fennas

I think it’s んあっ, with a small つ, and it’s just a noise of shock/surprise like うわぁ would be. Could be indicative of なに getting cut short if there is any deeper meaning beyond just a throttled sound.

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Ah thanks, that would make sense in the context.

I did not expect a small つ to be at the end of an expression and also I thought that it should be な instead of んあ.

As it stands right after かわいいんで the reaction as a cut short “nani” makes sense.

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You will see the small つ at the end of expressions a decent bit if this manga is anything like Takagi-san (which is by the same author) in terms of writing style. I can’t speak too, too much about other materials, but I’ve seen it in some games and stuff here and there too, all used in a sinilar way – cutting an expression short.

It being んあ instead of な is what makes me think it might be a sound as opposed to なに, to be honest, I just posited that as a potential explanation, but don’t really know if that’s the intent. A shocked, throttled sound or なに cut short both work, either way. Urushi made the sound the page before, also, so I assume we will be seeing it quite often, regardless. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Here’s how it came out in one of the anime promo videos:

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Wow, this is so cute.

Thanks

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took me like 10 minutes of frantic googling to realize that したかった is just the past form of する+たい/したい on page 5, and not some weird combination of the past forms of する and 勝つ.
gets me every time.

got a question for page 9

pretty sure the first panel means he will commit/swear himself (心に誓う) to the confession if he wins.

the assumption below is wrong keep reading the comment chain.
second panel:
しかし、恥ずかしい思いをさせてしまったのも事実…
however, embarassing thought made do also true…
as in, she made him think embarassing things. i assume that’s the case because of させる right?

is that correct? do i understand correctly that because she made him think embarassing thoughts, he wants her to let him win in the next page (to embarass her back? shes obviously way better at the game), which then gives him the chance to confess?

pretty nice first chapter overall, i like his pokerface but with the added view into his thoughts.

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This line goes in the other direction. He’s the one who did the causing. (The next page is him trying to make amends for it.)

First-time readers, welcome to the land of few pronouns =D

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