Just continuing my daily checkin to say hi everyone and that I’ve finished my pages today.
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Just finished chapter 3. Checking on the club forum everyday. So far, it’s been a pleasure reading along.
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Also jumped ahead to finish Ch. 3! These last few pages didn’t have anything too difficult so figured I’d just push forward hehe
As for today’s reading, for a second I forgot that these guys were neighbors and I was like… yotsuba really is just running wild all over town 
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I really appreciate all the discussion happening in this thread. It’s made it a lot easier to get through the material, much of which is beyond my current level of grammar or general language knowledge.
Unfortunately, it’s looking like I’ll need to drop out and use this thread as a reference at a later time. We’ve passed the number of pages available on the online preview Pikanchion shared, and I’m having difficulty getting my hands on a copy of the book despite being within driving distance of two Kinokuniya locations.
But more importantly, my brother passed away earlier this week after a three-and-a-half year battle with cancer. That combined with preparing myself to move over a thousand miles away — it’s just too much.
Hopefully I can catch you all on a future book club. Will this thread still allow new questions after April? If not, no worries, I have a friend who should be able to help me.
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This thread will remain active even after the book club is over, feel free to come back whenever you like!
Talk all the time that you need. Sometimes life happens day by day uneventfully, sometimes it feels like 20 years worth of major events happen in what feels like the space of a heartbeat and we get mentally and emotionally hammered.
Hope you’ve got all the support around you that you need!
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@Lederhosen42 I’m so sorry for your loss!
Cutting it a bit late but I did manage to finish Chapter 3 today. It took me 5 vocab lookups and then an embarassingly long minute before I realized “ばーちゃんち” meant “おばあちゃんちのうち”.
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Hi just a check in, I had some downtime this weekend (so I read a little ahead…on chapter 5). I’m really surprised at how easier it’s become to read. Sure I still miss some words/nuance but I don’t feel the need to drill in anymore. It’s like those first few chapters really push your JP muscles to their limit (current limit anyway lol). Learning a lot around the cultural interactions/dialect rather than grammar helped acclimate me too.
Also massive shout out to all who’ve been posting! Your commentary and questions/answers are probably 95 % of how I got to this point!
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Wow, Already about halfway through! I’m enjoying the book and appreciate all of the discussion!
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Just caught up on last week’s reading and finished chapter 3. Fun stuff, this might be my favorite so far.
Spoiler for chapter 3
Just to make sure I got it: at the end Asagi is basically lying to Yotsuba that air conditioners are good for the planet because they’re making it cooler, right? 
In terms of the Japanese being used I was able to get most of it (with help of the vocab deck, of course!), I only wasn’t sure about the two instances in which もん was being used, but Gacee already provided some useful context for that.
Ah I just remembered one thing, on page 100 Asagi says ほらいたでしょ, I wasn’t completely sure about that. Is it ほら+いた+でしょ, so something like “Huh, I’m sure she was there…”?
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Some notes for the vocab deck:
- The chapter titles for the next chapter are listed as the last entries of the previous chapter
- The entries for 敵（てき）and 忙しい（いそが）are linked to entries with different readings
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Page 9
The note I have scribbled down in my copy (from the WK Yotsuba bookclub years ago) is that…
Xってそりゃ = what do you mean X
With それは expressing surprise.
Again, not my information, just the notes I took down years ago… the おまえ here is the not-at-all-polite version of ‘you’.
どこ - where
って - casual quotation particle
そりゃ - what do you mean
おまえ - you
= what do you mean ‘where’.
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The page numbers in this thread are really confusing. Perhaps there was a new edition of the book or something. Mine was printed in 2016, and there is no text at all on page 4.
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It can express surprise. Here’s a definition for the term -
［感］相手の注意を促したり、驚いたりしたときに発する語。掛け声や囃 (はや) し詞 (ことば) としても用いられる。それ。そら。「—、そっちへ向かったぞ」「—、進め」
Basically the start part is how it’s been used here ‘Encouraging your conversation partner’s attention’.
The dad’s saying ‘C’mon Yotsuba… You know why we’re here’. This comes back later in one of the following chapters when you find out that —
spoiler
Yotsuba forgot completely/wasn’t listening in the first place that she was moving to a new house.
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Yes sorry it’s confusing. These are the page numbers from the online sample (I didn’t receive the real books by then), there is an offset of two pages on the numbers between this online version and the real book (don’t ask me why…)
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Yes, exactly, she says, “come on, there was one, right (do you remember now?)”, and next line “with me and Fuuka, one more (sister)”
Yep!
idk if it's spoiler
I love how good she is at dealing with children, easily the best of all these characters
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Read up to page 122 today, 6 vocab lookups.
One thing I'm not too clear about on page 119:
Fuuka’s mom says to her: やっといて
I infer she’s telling Fuuka to go deliver the letter to the Koiwai residence, but how exactly does that phrase break down?
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At some point I fell behind so I caught up and finished chapter 3 now ^^;
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This is just a contraction of やっておいて, that is やる (to do, familiar) + ておく (JLPT N4) | Bunpro + てください (JLPT N5) | Bunpro
ておく article has a note about the possibility of being shortened to とく
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Glad to hear this is the case for you! Once you read a few chapters of the material you are reading, you kinda get used to the author’s style as well as learn enough vocab to keep up for sure. That’s why making the jump into reading is so important, it makes you realise you are better than you thought and you can actually put your knowledge to use!
これかれも頑張ってください!
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I got started a bit late, but poking my head in here now to say that I’m caught up through this week’s reading. Honestly I wasn’t very interested in よつばと before we started. Reading it now, though, it’s super entertaining! I sat down today to read a few pages into chapter 4 and ended up reading through the whole chapter in one go. (And on that note, it feels good to notice my reading speed increasing as I go.) I don’t have any questions that weren’t already answered by skimming through the thread, so have a good week, people!
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