スーパーカブ discussion (Intermediate) April 2024

Hi Everyone!

This is the official thread for the book we will be reading as of the 1st of April 2024.

スーパーカブ, Volume 1, (Novel)


Pace :racing_car:

We are going to set the pace at roughly 15 pages per week to begin with, and then we will make adjustments as we go along based on the average level of everyone and how we all feel about the amount of time we have to understand the content, ask questions, get answers to those questions, etc.

Feel free to voice your opinion about this pace as we go along!

UPDATE - A rough pace guide kindly provided by @krghtj that will make sure users are at the same point regardless of the platform/version they are reading.

Week Start and End Dates Chapter(s) Page Count
Week 1 4/1/2024 - 4/7/2024 1-2 13
Week 2 4/8/2024 - 4/14/2024 3-5 15
Week 3 4/15/2024 - 4/21/2024 6-7 13
Week 4 4/22/2024 - 4/28/2024 8-10 16
Week 5 4/29/2024 - 5/5/2024 11-12 15
Week 6 5/6/2024 - 5/12/2024 13-15 18
Week 7 5/13/2024 - 5/19/2024 16-18 14
Week 8 5/20/2023 - 5/26/2024 19-21 16
Week 9 5/27/2024 - 6/2/2024 22-23 12
Week 10 6/3/2024 - 6/9/2024 24-26 17
Week 11 6/10/2024 - 6/16/2024 27-29 16
Week 12 6/17/2024 - 6/23/2024 30-33 16
Week 13 6/24/2024 - 6/30/2024 34-36 16
Week 14 7/1/2024 - 7/7/2024 37-38 14
Week 15 7/8/2024 - 7/14/2024 39-41 16
Week 16 7/15/2024 - 7/21/2024 42-44 12
Week 17 7/22/2024 - 7/28/2024 45 12
Week 18 7/29/2024 - 8/4/2024 46-47 13
Week 19 8/5/2024 - 8/11/2024 48-50 15

General Rules :spiral_notepad:

For a full list of rules, please refer to the book club rules post. However, we would like to reiterate a few things regarding individual books. Please keep the following in mind in this discussion thread.

Keep discussion related to the target series.

You may of course make comparisons between grammar or vocabulary usages between series, but for the most part try to keep discussion related to the unique challenges that each book or series of books presents.

Search the threads for users that have perhaps previously asked the same question as you.

Each book will have its own thread, so if you follow the same pacing as the group, it is likely that a simple search will result in finding someone having asked the same question as you are about to ask. In addition to this, if you jump into a book late, it is expected that you would search the thread history before asking questions about content most participants have already past.

When asking questions, give as much detail as possible.

For example, if you include the page number, who is speaking, which speech balloon (in the case of manga), and explain what you want to know more about, that will be far easier for other users to answer rather than just asking ‘What does てっきり mean?’
Taking a screenshot and highlighting the portion you’re asking about would also be suitable.

Be polite! Not everyone is the same level.

Just because something is easy for you does not mean that it is easy for someone else. Let’s be thankful to those that answer our questions, and thankful also for the opportunity to help others that aren’t quite at the same level as us yet.

Keep questions in line with the pacing.

We know that some of you may want to surge ahead of the group if you are really enjoying a book. However, this can result in confusion if you are asking questions about things that people haven’t read yet. If this applies to you. Make a note of the question you want to ask, wait until the group has caught up, then ask the question

Be mindful of spoilers.

If you are asking a question about something that includes spoilers to the story, please be aware of this and let users know with a ‘SPOILER’ tag at the beginning of your question. Hiding the question by utilizing the Hide Details function of the forums would also be appreciated. Let’s allow everyone to enjoy the experience of reading spoiler free.

Let’s all have fun and create a positive learning environment together! :grin:


Ongoing スーパーカブ :books: :books: :books: :books:

Once we have finished reading the first volume, this thread will act as a legacy thread for the スーパーカブ series as a whole. We will be taking this approach with all other series as well. One thread, one series.

After the main group has finished the first volume, feel free to continue discussing and reading through any further volumes together! Also, feel free to revive dormant threads at any time if you’re reading a book that the book clubs have already read, but that you want to read as well and ask people questions about.


Vocab Deck :writing_hand:

Click here for our - スーパーカブ vocab deck!

Deck now available, please keep in mind that there may be a few missing words, as we are still currently adding them in. We will have all missing words in by Sunday at the latest, ready for our Monday start.

Please read here for info about our vocab decks and their future development.


Okay, hope you’re all set to go! Looking forward to seeing the interesting things that everybody finds as they go through the book! :partying_face:

16 Likes

I hope it is ok to post a link to the corresponding JPDB deck in this thread, for those that are using it in parallel with Bunpro.
The deck looks pretty clean, you just have to delete/suspend the first 70 or so words that have to do with publisher’s legalese, up until ないないの女の子.

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I would love if we could get a “Last line” of the reading section for each period since I’m on the kindle and it can be difficult to figure out what the translation is.

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It is certainly okay to post those decks, but we do recommend going with the Bunpro decks once they are available.

The main reason for this is that the tool that we are building will be capable of detecting all various usages of grammar, along with the expected readings that certain vocab will have based on what comes before or after them. Also, seeing as though it is our own tool, we can constantly update it to recognize new structures. Basically, the more we use it, the smarter it will become.

It appears that the JPDB ones are all auto generated, so contain a significant amount of mistakes in both readings and recognizing sayings.

As far as where our decks start, we plan that they will all be from the beginning of chapter 1, or the prologue for books that have one. We will not be including the anti-piracy warnings etc as vocab.

7 Likes

Sounds great, and thank you for the fair warning about inaccuracies. JPDB’s decks are certainly autogenerated by the developer’s toolchain, not curated manually.

4 Likes

I have a lot of questions about this tool but I guess I’ll wait for the official release post as perhaps they’ll be answered then. The JPDB parser is actually fairly solid, as far as these things go, but the kind of mistakes it makes are also the kind of mistakes I’d imagine any other parser would make, based on my limited knowledge. One of the main limitations of the JPDB parser is that it uses JMDict entries to parse text but naturally some things don’t have entries and then some idiomatic usages that do have entries become pretty tricky to avoid misparses with. The JPDB parser was also constantly manually updated and changed to try and improve detection of readings based on context etc (based on my memory of the things the dev has said) although development is effectively non-existent now. I’m getting ahead of myself here though - I’ll wait for the release.

Regardless of any issues to do with vocab misparses, if you can get the grammar parser working smoothly then I’m pretty excited to try it out. I’d love to see data on the frequency of grammar structures.

3 Likes

You’re right, it’s certainly not bad, people wouldn’t use it if it was. The tool we are working on will also have its fair share of weaknesses when it first comes out, especially as we build up our own database of vocabulary and grammar, etc, rather than relying on anything external. I’ve already done a bit of a draft for when we announce it, and included some examples of the weaknesses that you are likely familiar with. However, most of them are not things that can’t be fixed.

But yeah, another chat for another day and another thread :sweat_smile:

3 Likes

I will see if there is some way we can work out something similar. For the first week at least, I might just see how the group goes with the pace before we decide firmly on how many pages we are doing per day. Once that is done, I can do a projection log including the last line of each day of reading.

4 Likes

I think it would be nice if the vocab deck could be divided in said weeks, so we don’t get overwhelmed with the whole thing at once and we know how many words we need to study for each one.

4 Likes

Hi! Will there be an “easy” way to use an ebook version of the text instead of the real book ? 5 pages in a book format = ? pages in ebook ?

2 Likes

Depending on what ebook reader you are using, you can usually display the real book page number rather than the location that sometimes displays by default. As ereader screens are often smaller than an actual book, you’ll just have to count the pages. 7 or 8 ‘swipes’ on an ebook might be equal to 5 actual pages.

Here’s how to display pages on a kindle - Guide

2 Likes

The Intermediate book club on WaniKani reads 15 pages per week. The Advanced book club reads 30-50 pages per week. Having just read a couple of pages, I think 35 pages per week may be a little too much…

5 Likes

Click here for our - スーパーカブ vocab deck!

Deck now available, please keep in mind that there may be a few missing words, as we are still currently adding them in. We will have all missing words in by Sunday at the latest, ready for our Monday start.

Please read here for info about our vocab decks and their future development.

7 Likes

I better understand the ecosystem around the book:

  • the novel
  • the audio version of the book (via Audible)
  • the anime
  • the webtoon (comic.webnewtype.com)
    Quite impressive! (and a sure way to get used to the story itself)

Thanks for the vocab deck! I’ve just started using it. Astonishing work!

4 Likes

So today is launch day, I’m in Japan, where are the you guys? I’m wondering when the majority might be online. I went through the vocab deck and manual marked words I knew as mastered which brought me to 53% studied. So probably a good choice of book club level for me. I think I could do another pass and set more words to at least seasoned but that was pretty time consuming. I read the pages and made some notes, I think in the future I’ll look at a digital set up. Those 5 pages were not an easy read mainly down to vocab and slow reading speed but then that’s why I’m here.

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Feel free to start discussing the book now everyone! Please just keep in mind the general rules for posting at the top of this thread.

We will aim for a pace of 15 ~ pages per week (pages with dialogue), and then make adjustments if need be. If you read all 15 pages the first day, please be conscious of posting anything that may be spoliers for others! :checkered_flag:

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I think we have a fair share of people all around the world. I am in Australia at the moment but am usually in Japan. Aus is 1 hour ahead of Japan.

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Thank you for this! I read the first 2 chapters this weekend and was worried that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the original pace of 35 pages per week. 15 pages per week is a lot more manageable!

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Norway here!

20% studied for me. A bit over my level, but that’s OK. Armed with my Kindle with easy lookups I can read anything! I do see that looking up almost every word means that I lose track of the story. I hope that if I re-read the chapters a couple of times I’ll get more into it. For now I’m enjoying the challenge!

5 Likes

Thank you, I was also a bit concerned at 5 pages a day and 15 is perfect! Really enjoying the book.

Thank you for the deck as well that’s very handy! I love keeping my vocab study in Bunpro

6 Likes