From page 66 to 72
Another great story about what you are and what you want to be, how to change and become someone better!
- 特集記事・とくしゅうきじ special feature article
Su and the young Chika are talking about a 500 yen note. Chika finding it exciting and Su saying “懐かしい”. I had to check the Wikipedia page on Japanese banknotes to learn that the 500 yen banknote was replaced “after 1982” by coins. I guess that there still are some notes of 500 yen in circulation but that they are very rare.
I like learning new facts through books 🙂
Not long ago, I saw a French banknote of 50 francs in a museum. It had the photo of Saint-Exupéry on it with the Little Prince on his planet and the drawing of the elephant in the boa. I also thought it was 懐かしい… 😳
- 優越感・ゆうえつかん superiority complex, sense of superiority
This structure is worth noting because I didn’t understand it right away:
若さをうらやましがられるのは嬉しい
To the adjective うらやましい that you would use to describe your own feeling, is attached the ending “がる” replacing the final “い” of the adjective. That is used to describe the same feeling but experienced by someone else (if I am not mistaken, anyone who would like to correct me is welcome!). The “がる” form acts like a verb. Here, we have this verb うらやましがる in the passive form うらやましがられる.
If we try to translate each step, it would be:
- うらやましい adjective: Something (subject) is provoking a feeling of envy.
- うらやましがる verb: to envy something or someone (object).
- うらやましがれる verb, passive form: something (subject) is being envied.
BUT, in our sentence, the particle used is not が but を. The passive form should be formed with が but it is okay to use the を particle instead. I am not quite sure of the difference but I think it doesn’t change much the whole meaning.
The whole sentence would then mean: having your youth being envied (by older people) makes you happy.
I am not sure that I understand correctly the last box. I think that 空気・くうき means “mood”, “situation” here. It would then mean “the mood where you can’t say or shouldn’t say that you are satisfied with yourself or your actual life”. And this mood is “flowing” in the “world”. Is she saying that being unsatisfied with one’s life is trendy? Which would explain why she keeps wondering how to change and how to become someone better when she actually seems to be satisfied with her present life…
Sometimes, even when I understand every word, the whole sentence still does not make sense. 😢
About
I’m learning Japanese, Korean and Chinese to read detective novels in these languages. I post about my reading progress and language study here. Best way to get in touch is on Mastodon 🙂
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