And too keep the conversations going it is just as important for those who do understand it all to come in and just talk about a line they find interesting because of this and that, or an especially challenging to explain what it is even if it hasn’t been asked yet =)
I find I understand the gist of much, but rarely perfectly (sometimes not at all). I will read through with the guide of the English version first and look up words second, and hopefully read through each chapter numerous times each week to catch more and help learn the new words and phrases =)
I haven’t touched the English version. I would rather be able to translate a conversation but not fully understand why things happen then to see a rough approximation of what is said. The conversation about leaning out the window earlier is a fine example. I could translate it fine but I did not understand the grammar points, once people put up about と being a conditional and あぶない (totally noticed on my own that I meant to write あぶない and not あんまり. This is not wrote after it is very clearly pointed out that im an idiot) possibly meaning too much, everything fell into place.
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This is my approach as my well. Reading over the whole and searching for the gist, before going back and buckling down to look up and understand all the fine points if the grammar.
Just a quick point though, it’s actually あんまり which means too much. あぶない Is dangerous.
On second though, I found reading the second half MUCH faster and easier than the first half, so maybe, if we are to put a page number to it, up to 19 will do (one scene earlier). Any thoughts?
Ohhh ummm yeah, I totally knew that. Brain fart.
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In my country I seem not to be able to buy the book. Can anybody suggest where I can read this manga online ?
The first two chapters are linked in first post, legal distribution =)
As for rest, there is no official, legal version. I doubt it is allowed to link to illegal version. I found it easily through google though.
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We are talking on the forum of a proper U.S business here. We cannot link you to pirate copies of anything, at least without risking our accounts being banned or restricted in some way.
First two chapters are free so you can get them but otherwise you have to import the books. No idea where you are from but you should be able to manage, most others here did.
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So at p17, ふうか talks about different days for taking out combustable rubbish (燃えるゴミ) and non-combustible rubbish (燃えないゴミ).
I’ve always wondered a bit about this, since in Australia, we just have just two categories of waste: recycling and rubbish (which by the way gets sent straight to landfill here), and whether it’s combustible or not seemed to bit of a strange distinction. Anyway, I coincidentally came across this chart on Japanese twitter which helped me understand why they divide it up that way.
(via @zapa https://twitter.com/zapa/status/914253885442686976)
Basically, according to the chart, apart from recycling (green), the vast majority of waste in Japan goes to incinerators (orange and red), limiting the amount of material sent to landfill (presumably the non-recyclable, non-combustible material) to 1% of total waste.
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I’m still a bit confused by it ^^;
What do they sort as which? Norway, according to the chart, only has 2% on the gray, but we don’t make this distinction. We do a whole lot of recycling though; paper, plastic, bio compost and trash are the bins we all have each, as well as stations to deliver, glass, metal, wood, fabric, electronics, dangerous materials and so on.
I’m mostly curious to what they sort as which =)
In our house we have umpteen different bins, with different collectioin days for each, all of which have to go into pre-paid plastic bags. We have a bin for glass, for cans, for PET bottles (which we never use anyway), for paper/newspapers, for burnable rubbish, for non-burnable items, and then there are special places to throw out empty milk cartoons and a few other items.
I loved the description of the rubbish collection days on pages 16 and 17, and learnt something new… 月木 (げつもく) standing in for 月曜日 and 木曜日, Monday and Thursday. And you can do it with other days too, so the weekend is 土日 (どにち). I love it!
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I forgot bottles! We take them to the store and get money for recycling them! =D
Well, the same price is added to the product when we buy it, but still a good way to make people recycle =)
Can you describe to me what items you would put in the burnable, and what items in the non burnable?
I wonder if the burnable is same as our bio compost waste; food items like peels from fruits and vegetables, egg shell, food scraps in general and garden waste (leafs, grass twigs) or if it is something completely different =)
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Burnable is all the kitchen scraps and tissue paper and even till receipts (which don’t go in with paper). The biggest bag is the プラ bag for plastics. Most things that are plaic in Japan have a small プラ sign on them (it’s actually a small ra but I can’t do that on this computer) showing that it goes in that bag.
We have a small bag for non-burnables that would include CDs, tin foil, stuff like that, which doesn’t burn and doesn’t go in with cans etc.
For larger items, furniture, old TVs, etc, you need to buy a special label to get it taken away.
Also on p.16 she talks about a ネット. This is vital. You need the net to keep the crows (からす) out!
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Ah! Then it is a variant of the bio degradable =)
Some papers like tissues are added, and it is mostly food and gardening items that could become compost. Though i don’t think we burn ours (not sure actually)
If we sort right very little gets added to the rubbish, basically the same ones you mentioned =)
For large waste we usually have to take it away our self to a sorting station, and most of it does get sorted rather than put in the general waste container even there =)
Ah! So that’s with the net =)
We keep ours in big plastic containers that can’t be opened by our local animals (we don’t have raccoons, they are probably not racoon safe =P )
Only the plastic is left in a big specialized plastic bag, and we are supposed to clean all items before recycle so they shouldn’t be interested in it =)
Oh, and I forgot, we have another collection day for old clothes too 古着 (ふるぎ).
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Not that I live in Japan or anything, But I did a cultural presentation on ゴミしょり when I was taking Japanese at the college. Anyways, the conclusion that I came to and was supported by our professor was that because Japan has so little actual livable land area (mostly mountains), landfills etc are a luxury. So the Japanese have become very efficient at disposing their waste. Something that I found interesting during my research was that public trash cans were removed to reduce to amount of restricted items being illegally dumped. So because of that people pocket the little pieces of trash and have to wait to toss them at home.
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Oh! I’ve seen so many electronic devices and such with プラ on it (in the Netherlands where I live) and I always thought that was some kind of regulation agency (like the CE mark or the FCC mark). I’d never have guessed it is short for plastic 
Anyway, I read through the first chapter without looking up anything first, and I failed to understand many of the conversations. First, possibly stupid question: in the third panel on page 6 there’s a speech bubble saying よつば… which seems out of place to me. Does someone actually say her name there or is it just a label to introduce her name to the reader?
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The bubble lacks any indication of who it’s coming from, so it’s hard to say. It doesn’t necessarily follow from what her father said immediately before (though it wouldn’t be weird for him to use her name there), but there aren’t any explicit “character introduction” panels for anyone else. It could have been Yotsuba referring to herself in third-person (kids refer to people using third-person forms a lot, so keep that in mind when trying to process sentences), but then the next bubble is just a sound, so that doesn’t make sense. It’s weird, whatever it is.
Unrelated: for a small ラ, try typing ‘xra’. Most IMEs make the character after an ‘x’ small.
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