Noragami Chapter 73

Holy crap, was there a lot of text in this chapter. Even though I already had the entire thing pre-translated once I got my own raws, it still took me about the normal amount of time to finish if I had been translating as I went. But, it’s done, and a lot of text also means a lot of translation notes, which are below the cut.

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Translation notes below:

Page 2

Yato has made “hoshigaki” (干し柿), which are dried persimmons. They take a considerable amount of time and care to make, consisting of hanging peeled persimmons on strings outside for three weeks. Here’s a video on how they’re made.

Page 4

I have no idea what a Capyper Inari is, either. It’s possibly a Capyper doll dressed as an Inari?

Also, Hiyori calls BS on this chapter’s bait and switch regarding the God’s Greatest Secret.

Page 5

Random note, but converting large numbers from Japanese is a pain in the ass due to them cycling their numeric terms every four decimal places rather than every three like English does. So instead of starting over at “ten + thousand” at 10,000 like English does, Japanese has one more unique number “man” (万) for 10,000 before looping back at 100,000 with “10 + man”. So that puts them one decimal place off from English, but since they loop every 4, it’s not even a consistent number of decimal places it’s off, because “1000-man” is a legit number (and equates to 10 million). Then they increment up to “oku” (億), which is 100 million in English, so long story short, the kidnappers want “10-oku” yen and it was more annoying than it should have been to figure out WTF number that is in English.

Page 7

This panel required crappy handwriting and thankfully that is one of my many talents.

Page 8

I’ve had people complain that my translations sometimes use too many “big words” (to be fair, a lot of that has come from the non-English scanlators who translate off my translation rather than the Japanese and find themselves confronted with words they don’t know, anyway), but it mostly comes from the Japanese itself using obscure terms and me following suit. But in the case of Ebisu’s “audacious” line here, it was merely a case of me not being able to come up with a suitable smaller word, even though Ebisu’s word choice is very simple. The term he uses is “ookiku demashita ne” (大きく出ましたね), which is literally “you’re presenting yourself in a big way”, but it’s generally used in response to someone who makes an outrageous claim or request. The problem is that later in the chapter his line is reinterpreted literally, so I needed him to say something that meant both “to make an outrageous statement” and “to be brave”, and “audacious” was all I could come up with.

Page 10

Now this is an interesting bit of detail that we should go back and see how consistent the series has been with it (anime-original doesn’t count, because I’m pretty sure they broke it). But it sounds like Yato can only teleport to a location he already has an open “connection” to via the phone (or, in the case of Takamagahara, via his shrine). So, someone with more time than me help me out, has Yato EVER teleported to a location he wasn’t currently on the phone with?

Page 11

Since I know someone is going to ask, Hiyori can track down Ebisu due to her half-ayakashi form’s sense of smell.

Also, Kunimi’s lament of lack of vacation time includes the fact that Ebisu’s company doesn’t give weekends off. Japan actually has a word, “karoshi”, for working yourself to death. Japan has a law that you’re not allowed to work more than 100 hours of overtime in a given month, but 100 hours of overtime still equates to working more than 8 hours a day every single day of the week.



Page 13

Ebisu asks the kidnappers to go to an “FX site”, or foreign exchange site. These websites are for making money via currency exchange by converting money into another country’s currency, waiting for that currency’s exchange rate to increase, and then selling it back for a profit.

Page 14

Kunimi’s original master was seriously some kid’s imaginary friend who then disappeared when the kid grew up. Nooo, Bing-Bong!

Page 15

I translated “Nora” out as “Stray” in Takemikazuchi’s line solely because of the cat on his shoulder.

Also, Kunimi laments the country’s “hatsumono bunka” (初物文化), or the cultural affinity for new or fresh things while overlooking things that are lightly used but still in perfectly good condition. It’s why you can get excellent condition used manga for stupidly cheap, and why there’s a high value on “new in box” items that they just keep but don’t use.

Page 21

This is another thing I’ve wondered about and I don’t know if this page is to be taken literally or Rule of Funny: since shinki don’t age, does their hair grow? That would make Aiha cutting off Tsuguha’s hair even worse if it will never grow back. And I couldn’t recall any instance of a shinki being shown in the past with shorter hair than their present form.



Page 22

The word Ebisu uses for “magician” is “majutsushi” (魔術師). This is very close to the word for “sorcerer”, which is “jutsushi” (術師), but since he technically used a different word, so did I.



Page 33

My apologies to Mister T. But Yato’s line delivery and choice of words here were very “alternate dialect”, so I followed suit.

Yukine’s comment at the bottom about shedding a tear was literally “I’m having a mildly upsetting episode, too”. The term was “jimi ni kanashii” (地味に悲しい), and is used to refer to something that’s upsetting but not a big deal, like eating an ice cream cone and part of it falls off, or your favorite sweater is starting to fray.

Page 36

Ebisu, one of your previous incarnations was depicted crying literally 6 pages ago, so it’s not just you.

Page 42

For those unfamiliar with it, Zimbabwe experienced runaway hyperinflation to the point where money printed one day was worthless the next, and resulting in the printing of bills up to denominations of 100 trillion which still couldn’t even buy bus fare.

But Yukine has the right idea, as even though Zimbabwe dollars are useless as currency, the 100 trillion denomination bills are a collector’s item due to being the largest denomination of any currency ever printed, and the 100 trillion notes sell for $50-$80 on collector’s sites, so with 15 of them, Yato could actually earn about $1000 if he sold them.

