This week was super busy at work again, so I ended up doing most of my reading while I was in bed trying to fall asleep. Originally the plan was to read the latest volume of 五花嫁 but I didn’t actually get too far…if I’m looking for something to put me to sleep it has to be a little comfier than that. So I’m back to Flying Witch again; this time finishing up vol. 4 (which I had accidentally skipped).

One of the chapters in this book had another scene where Makoto’s host father tries to explain something in 津軽弁, and I was surprised to find that I could actually understand a lot of it this time — after the scene in the first book where I didn’t understand a single thing he said, I went and looked into the dialect a little — the main difference from standard Japanese is that you add dakuten to a lot of the sounds. There are a few vocabulary changes like わ instead of 私, い instead of 家, and めごい instead of かわいい (all of which were used in this section). That being said, the running joke is that Makoto still has trouble understanding him and I was grateful for the following “translation” into standard Japanese so I could get the whole picture.

I wasn’t going to mention it because I’ve only just started, but I’ve also read a little of ねねね, which is (I guess) about an arranged marriage between a young girl and a man who always wears a kitsune mask. It’s just a short one-off and I picked it up because the art was cute, so I don’t really know what to expect. In any case, the reason I bring it up is because I just noticed Calynxx mentioned 二度寝 in his report and I’d just come across that word myself. One of those weird coincidences that’ll probably help the word stick in my mind!