I was confused that there were no illustrations but I remember there being something about illustrations mentioned at the beginning. And then I realized they put them at the back. 
thanks for the chapter notes. 
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Finally got around to starting the book!
Just finished chapter 1, and just those 20-ish pages took me hours. 
It’s like 10 levels above my comfort zone, so there were a ton of lookups… We’ll see how I fare from here on out. 
I’m enjoying how quickly everything’s happening so far (especially as a slow reader), and clueless 有利 is hilarious! I particularly enjoyed him trying to speak Japanese in a foreign accent (like that would help the situation 
), and thanking the flying skeleton because it was trying so hard. 
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Woohoo! Glad to have you!
This book has been surprisingly on the harder side, I thought. Not necessarily Difficult, granted, but a step up from “adventures of a high schooler” would have you believe. Two big reasons for this, I think: 有利’s super-casual speech and his constant associating of situations with (then) modern-day pop culture references. 
Which is all to say, don’t feel bad if you can get the gist of the sentence and just move on from there without understanding 100%.
有利’s such a good kid, haha.
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Added this to the top post, let me know if there’s any I’ve missed.
Hopefully I’ll be able to do this for every week. 
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Oooh, good idea!
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I feel like you’re putting a bit too much stuff in there. I don’t think anyone would be surprised by 渋谷 or 学ラン
Don’t get yourself burned out!
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This is lovely, I didn’t realise there were that many references thrown around, and I definitely missed a few. Thank you!
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Those actually had explanations in my Korean translation! 
As did the NFL, but I settled for just the American football team. 
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Oh, I didn’t think about Korean.
I guess that someone who knows nothing about Japanese culture would not know about those.
How did they translate 渋谷有利原宿不利? I would assume you need to explain 原宿 as well in that case?
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They included Harajuku in the explanation about Shibuya.
As for the wordplay, it’s written in hangeul (Korean characters) followed by hanja (Chinese characters, often the same as the Japanese):
유리(裕里)도 유리(優梨)도 유리(悠璃)도 아닌, 시부야 ‘유리(有利)’.
Koreans have to learn about 2000 hanja in school (and usually have a hanja version of their own names), so translating jokes isn’t as difficult as it might be in other languages (like English).
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I was talking about the
pun. I don’t know much about Korean grammar, but just putting it in hangeul should not work, right?
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Actually it does! Since 不利 is a word derived from Chinese in both Korean and Japanese, they have similar pronunciations in both languages:
시부야 유리 하라주쿠 불리
Shibuya Yuri Harajuku bulli
The Shibuya/Harajuku thing is exlained when it’s first mentioned, he’s already explained his given name, and 불리(不利) has the same meaning in Korean as Japanese. Hanja is only included with the first appearance of a word, so no other explanation is necessary for this particular play on words.
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Found another one:
He mentions a 師匠 he respects named 勤, which I never would have worked out if the Korean translation didn’t mention he’s a pro baseball player.
This is at the part where he’s explaining why he stepped in to help his former classmate 村田健 - he mentions his favourite actor is 松平健, who shares the same name, and I didn’t get how 伊東勤 fit into it, but according to his wiki page:
愛称は「勤 （きん ）ちゃん 」
Another interesting tidbit from the Korean notes:
1999-2000년경 자판기 범죄가 급증하자, 새로운 자판기 투입구가 보급될 때까지 500엔 동전을 사용하지 못했음.
Around 1999-2000, there was an increase in vending machine crime; 500 yen coins couldn’t be used until new vending machine slots were produced.
Just FYI, the Korean translation was published Dec 2004.
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Wait, are you sure it was the university that was mentioned? I thought he mentioned she went to the high school instead? As far as I know the high school is famous (because it’s super hard to get in, you need to enter from the junior high), but the university is not (at least, I haven’t heard of it).
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You may be right, I think I probably assumed it was the university because he mentioned his brother’s university.
「ちなみにおふくろはフェリス出だ！」
It doesn’t explicity state which he is referring to, so I’ll add the links for the school, too.
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Had to look this up. Apparently it used to be really easy to make a cheap metal disk resembling 500 Yen coins in shape and weight, thus fooling vending machines.
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