Reading Report: 29 January 2023
This (half?)week was regularly productive, but more importantly it marks the completion of my first book of the year. I've closed the book on あ゛, having learned quite a bit about Japanese orthography and expression history. Other than that, I filled some of the days following あ゛ with Yotsuba and Volume 2 of 甘々と稲妻.
あ゛教科書が教えない日本語: 36 pages (total: 298) I finished this book. While it wasn't my favourite non-fiction book, it had a lot of interesting insights that I'm glad to have experienced. During the last reading sessions, these points made by the author stood out to me.
Rainbows can be said to have 7 colours, but even saying that everyone recognises that there are more than 7 in there, existing between the borders of each of the main colours. In the same way, 母音 can be said to have 5 sounds, but actually there are in-between sounds. In that way, 五十音図 is not absolute. It only assists in representing the rainbow of sounds available in Japanese.
If everyone makes a mistake, it's not a mistake. Language shifts due to a variety of reasons, but one reason is that simple. People will misspeak, they'll do it in predictable ways, and those errors will calcify as correct language. 琴線に触れる being used to mean 逆鱗に触れる when its original meaning couldn't be further from the intention, for example.
The final note of the book is that Japanese is constantly going to change and shift, that the Japanese we speak today is not like our grandfathers' Japanese. The Japanese spoken in 200 years will almost certainly be unrecognisable to us. For that reason, recording our history, teaching our history, and preserving culture through classes such as 国語 is valuable. The いろは歌 may not hold much practical value these days, but it represents a form of Japanese that still has cultural value. It's worth learning and remembering for that reason alone.
よつばと！ Vol 12
The last of my yotsubas (except 15 but I can't skip volumes ;;). This volume was really beautiful and had some great moments. The paint chapters were really cute but the moment towards the end of ヘルメット where yotsudad decides not to clean up yotsuba's last footprint and says きねん really touched me. Sentimental stuff like that is so lovely. The Halloween chapter was really cute as well. I liked when Fuuka and Shimau were discussing what is and isn't a valid Halloween monster based on the criteria they established.
The camping double-chapter is probably the big one. The moment where Yotsuba is laying in her sleeping bag without her dad, she stares up at the roof of the tent, and then just feels alone was so relatable to me.
甘々と稲妻 Vol 2
I read this in tiny parts for like 2 months so the first half is a bit of a blur. So instead I'll just focus on the latter half of the volume. The second half has a gyoza party which is really cute and includes one of Kohei's old friends and Kotori's school friend. The last chapter has a 夏越の大祓 festival. Tsumugi goes missing and her dad gets really worried. When he finally finds her he yells at her to listen to him and not run around without him. She starts crying and they head back to the restaurant. Kotori cooks them some rice but it burns and they decide to turn the burned rice into 五平餅 (ごへいもち) which are like savoury fried mochi sticks. Finally there was a post-story mini chapter where one of the boys from Tsumugi's preschool is trying to befriend her. Each time he offers to do something with her she rebuffs him and he feels like all hope is lost, but then she invites him to her party anyway, and it turns out it's because she recognised each of his offers as genuine and felt like they had grown closer even though they didn't spend any time together.
Finally, regarding real life stuff.
Tomorrow I'll be departing for my (relatively) long trip to Japan. I have an e-reader crammed with Manga to read on the plane. I plan to finally read Chainsaw Man Vol 13 and Vol 8 of Dandadan, but I'll also be starting a few new series if I find the time as well.
Today I hit my breaking point about the average quality of English translations of Manga within the genre I mostly work (eromanga). My brain has been pre-occupied with a cloud of thoughts on the topic and I'd really like to write something to try to raise the concern in as professional a manner as I possibly can. My goal definitely isn't to name and shame or point at myself and say, "But look, I'm a good one!" I just really care about the industry and want to convince people to pay a little bit more attention to the quality of their own and other translations. So yeah, that'll be something I workshop for the next month or so. Look forward to it.