golyplot wrote:Last night, I watched the final episode of K-On!, in which the characters go to a travel agency to decide where to visit after they graduate. I was shocked that travel agencies are still a thing in Japan (or was in 2010 when it came out anyway). I thought they were all killed by the internet in the 2000s.
Doesn't look at all shocking from Russia, given the popularity of package tours and all-inclusive resorts among families and older travellers. Granted, in Russia travel agencies also justify their existence by taking on some of the paperwork for obtaining tourist visas, since for us the range of available visa-free destinations is much smaller than for people from developed countries . Japanese citizens don't have this problem, but they also have a bigger share of retirees among international travellers, not to mention people who simply don't feel like planning their whole trip from scratch.
golyplot wrote:Also in ep108 of Noriko this morning, (I think) she talked about being humble and responding to praise of her English skills with "e mada mada desu", but strangely, she pronounced the "su" in desu. I know there are some dialects that do it, but I don't recall her doing it before. Anyone know why? Maybe my memory is just bad.
I wouldn't worry too much about it, vowel reduction isn't really something most Japanese speakers are consciously aware of, so there's bound to be some variance even in a single individual's speech.
Also some comments on Yotsubato ch19:
golyplot wrote:Does anyone know why they repeatedly used kuu in this episode rather than taberu? It showed up when the dad said he's eaten goats before, and again when they talk about eating lunch.
It's just a really casual, some would even say "vulgar" way of saying "to eat". There are some similarities to the German "fressen" in how it's used.
golyplot wrote:There was another point where English and Japanese appear to be very different, making it impossible for me to tell who's supposed to have said what. There's three dialog bits in this panel, but the order seems to have been swapped in the translation, changing the message. Or was the Japanese supposed to be read right to left, regardless of the placement of the characters? It seems weird that they would put To-chan's dialog next to Yotsuba and vice versa. Either way it's very confusing. Can anyone shed some light on this?
The images don't show on my end, but I'm assuming you're talking about the bit with the elephant's trunk?[Edit: They became visible right after I posted my response] I think the interpretation that makes the most sense is that all three of the lines are actually by Yotsuba, although I can't be certain without seeing the original fonts in the manga.