魔女の宅急便 (Kiki’s Delivery Service) Discussion Thread: Chapter 7

Hi all, I’m back in the land of the living, at least temporarily :joy:
I was almost going to skip Ch 7 and rejoin you in Ch 8, but I got through 10 pages last night thanks to the vocab list - thank you so much @seanblue - and I will try and power on with it.
Apologies in advance for any confusingly late questions or answers!

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Chapter 8’s discussion thread ^^

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Blue p139 / red p154
I concur with the gist of your first translation

I read this as “I heard you were a witch, but you don’t know anything. Do you think that all girls the same (age) as you play by doing that kind of thing?” (e.g. giving someone a frog as a gift - I guess implying that Kiki/other witches would do that sort of thing.)

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These confused me too! But I think it describes the conversation immediately preceding it. Kiki has made some scornful remark asking why would it count as おそろい when the boy doesn’t even know who the gift came from (I guess because usually wearing matching outfits/accessories is a conscious, deliberate choice made by friends/romantic partners), and normally that sort of remark would provoke a reaction. But it goes straight through, the girl replies, “yes, but I know”, and rather than engaging with Kiki, stares at nothing in particular - most likely daydreaming of アイ君。
Speaking from experience, I can vouch for this as authentic lovesick girl behaviour. :joy:

I understood this to mean “It seemed as if she was saying that being embarrassed felt good”

I think the phrase 自分と同じ年の just modifies the subject この女の子, rather than この being attached directly to 自分. I suspect you could also write it 自分と同じ年のこの女の子 but I have no idea whether it makes much difference to the meaning or not. Maybe the former sounds more natural.

As to the meaning - I don’t really get why Kiki feels such a physical pang of shock that this girl of her own age, who seemed so adult-like, appears to enjoy being embarrassed. Does she feel that the girl is over-acting? There is clearly a degree of one-upmanship going on!

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I have a question about the poem Kiki wrote when she was younger. (red book p161)
I can see that the first line is a pun on the word くつ, with くつくつと笑う meaning laughing while trying to stifle the laugh, so I’m guessing there is also some pun involved in the second line, but does anyone know what sort of laughter is meant by かぶるかぶると笑う?

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Red book p163

I know Lucasdesu said something about this, but I thought Jiji was asking “Are you saying I’m in the way?” and Kiki replies “Yes, you’re a nuisance”
I’m pretty sure my cat and I have similar conversations on occasion, if not for the same reasons as Kiki & Jiji. :smile:

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Red book p164
I did have a laugh at the two of them, when, after Kiki suggests that reading the poem constitutes study, Jiji says he’ll be studying too, so she should read it out properly. :joy:
I empathise with the feeling of “I shouldn’t, I know I shouldn’t, oh what the heck let’s do this”

I’m not sure if you’ve surmised this, but the bolded portion means for some reason (or another).
Here’s my pathetic effort to explain it literally,
どうした what happened
わけ reason
And か makes “the reason why it happened” uncertain.

In any event, @seanblue and @jstrout are on the right track using the context to make sense of the girl’s apology: she was putting on airs to seem like she was more worldly, adult-like, etc., when in reality she wasn’t. I think the point of the chapter was to show how Kiki allowed a personal rivalry to challenge her personal beliefs.

I actually asked a friend about this a while ago, he told me that he had no idea, except that it a was probably a play on words to personify the hat. Beyond that, he couldn’t really understand the word choice. The best logic I could think of is how some animal sounds are not really the sounds they make, but the actions they do (e.g., rabbits go ピョンピョン “hop-hop”)

I think you’re on to something as that をじゃまにする can mean to be a bother. The only thing that made me think otherwise was that in previous points in quoted dialogue (specifically in the last line ending the quote) a question mark is included in contrast to statements that don’t include periods. I amend my initial interpretation and defer to “Am I bothering you (by being here)?” because it makes a little more sense based on Jiji’s confusion about why Kiki’s motives.

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That’s what I think too. Little girl Kiki probably thought it was funny that shoes can make a laughing sound that could be interpreted as “shoes shoes” if you looked at the くつ individually instead of as くつくつ. So she probably thought it would be clever to copy that concept over to the hat by repeating a word related to the hat. Though I’m surprised she didn’t make the fake word ぼうしぼうし instead of かぶるかぶる.

There is a word ぶるぶる, meaning “trembling (with fear, anger, etc.); shivering (with cold); shaking; quivering​”, but that could just be a coincidence.

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Hoorah, I finally made it to the end of the chapter!
My 2c/2円 worth of opinion on the last part of it:
「とたんにどうしたわけか負けられないっていう気持になっちゃって。」
All of a sudden, I had the strong feeling that I didn’t want to be shown up.

I think in the Western context this is really a complete storm in a teacup, but possibly in the Japanese context where it’s more important to maintain face, and showing negative emotions is not well regarded, it was more of a big deal.

So the moral of this chapter is… always be nice, children, even when confronted with people who can spend more money on clothing than you can. :wink:

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I’m finally reading on again… Just a «little» late :wink:
But wow what a difference a year makes!

If I remember correctly the no furigana versjon didn’t include images? I also added two from the Swedish version :slight_smile:

Japanese Book




Swedish Book


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I started adding in some of the pictures, but I don’t remember from which chapter. It’s interesting that you have a different set of pictures though, specifically for the translation!

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Repeat Club Discussion (Week 12) Starts Here!

Chapter 7 Part 1

V1: Pages 151 - 163
V2: Pages 136 - 147
BookWalker: ?

Last line:
「散歩でもしたら?おともだちのねこじゃらしが、ほら、土手にいっぱいあるわよ」
とくりかえしました。

12 September 2020

Please briefly check whether questions have already been answered above before posting them, but otherwise don’t hesitate.

  • I’m reading along
  • I’m still reading but haven’t reached this part yet
  • I’m dropping this book
  • I’m a superhero who’s read it before but is here for chatting :books:

0 voters

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My impression about the very beginning of the chapter is similiar to @seanblue’s from 2 years ago:

:stuck_out_tongue:

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For the first time, this week there are more people behind than reading this week’s chapter. I wonder if it’s time to take a break so that some people can catch up.

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This might sound a bit cruel but in previous bookclubs we’ve discovered that taking a break often sounds like a good idea but does not really help for some reason :woman_shrugging: So I’m not convinced it might help here either.

Plus, a few of the people who are behind are in principle capable of reading along quite fine (I’d say at least valkow, Kumirei and myself, and maybe some others as well but I don’t know them well enough), so I suspect other reasons (maybe life got in the way, or personal decisions) to be the root cause here, which cannot always be fixed by a short break.
(E.g. in my case I’m currently prioritizing some other reading for personal reasons, I’m planning to catch up in 2-3 weeks.)

Instead, maybe we could ask those who are trailing behind whether there is something that could be done to support them?

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Oh, I was wondering if it was tested before. Interesting to know it was.

Well, there was this discussion in 多読 thread that for some the problem is not the speed, but “a heavily fragmented experience” (also @NicoleIsEnough quote). Because it’s not that they cannot keep up with this particular book, they just started reading too many different ones.

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Yes, the last time we did it was in the “Mysterious town behind the Mist” book club. I just happened to find the post that describes the effect of the break:

(There was of course more discussion further up in case somebody is interested.)

Yes, right. (That’s part of the reason why I am behind: I want to defragment my reading.)

With my question I was aiming more at those who are genuinely trailing behind (maybe even while just reading this one book). If they had an idea for something that might help them improve their reading experience, maybe it would be worthwhile trying it out?

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Thanks for finding the example of the break effects! :blush:
digs into discussion & statistics

Mm, I understand. And of course I am also open for suggestions/helping/improving, if there will be any ideas.

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I JUST caught up and evened it out!

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