Hajimete no Gal - Ch. 197 - Our First Bath

[Esper]

They can bang and keep the series going. Look at Uzaki-chan.

 

[carleontz]

Thank you for the translation. Hope not another bait

 

[jubuttib]

Don't disrespect Rent a Girlfriend like that, this story is going nowhere, Rent a Girlfriend at least makes the main character worse and worse over time.

Why do these two series exist? Are they too unappealing even for Axe-kun to touch? Are these the apocalypse surviving cockroach of the manga world?

 

[Tobesmgobes17]

Trying to remember why I'm still here

 

[RollOmega]

They can bang and keep the series going. Look at Uzaki-chan.

Well, Uzaki was unique in that the sex scene was really only 50% about the actual sex, while the other 50% was about finally paying off the dragon joke.

 

[FullCherries]

Which one is likely to happen before the end of the world? Junichi finally losing his virginity or Reiji allowing Kazu to date his Chizuru? Anyone care to place their bets?

 

[Lex79]

Let's see how he will be cockblocked this time.

 

[Kaito57]

If there was any justified time to think with your d*ck, it would be now, boy !!

 

[Tom4Scott4]

.

 

[Zhou]

No way we won't get cockblocked, but I can't imagine anything. Maybe bath is too hot?

 

[Darklight99]

Hey, ten times more development than "Rent-a-Girlfriend". But I probably won't be the only one saying it.

I'll be honest, I know it's trendy to shit on RaG right now, but this is even worse.

 

[ramdanrivanto]

197 chapter, still no brutal sex. Wtf!!!

 

[codetaku]

Unfortunately, that isn’t really possible due to the nature of Japanese itself.
All the chapter titles follow the format 「はじめての〇〇」 (hajimete no [something]), which literally means “first time of [something].” There’s no subject, so it can refer to anyone, or to no one in particular.

What’s interesting is that the Japanese word for “first time” 「はじめて」 (hajimete) doesn’t carry the same euphemistic or romantic weight as “first time” can carry in English, like... “our first time” can easily suggest a sexual experience. In japanese it's totally neutral. It can mean a first kiss, first bath, first fight, anything, but you can’t use it to subtly imply sex.

To express losing virginity in Japanese, the phrase is 「初体験」 (hatsutaiken), which literally means “first experience.”
But unlike English, this word directly and explicitly refers to having sex for the first time.

You're right about it not automatically having the same implication in Japanese, but you're not right about the impossibility of the grammatical structure.

If the author wanted "our first time" to be the title, it'd simply be "hajimete no jikan". This is likely a bit meaningless to most Japanese people unless they're already thinking about sex (or maybe they would get it by default but just don't use it often since there's a more popular phrase, I'm not actually sure, not native Japanese), but hajimete really just means "first", it is not redundant to use jikan here like you're implying it would be.

And I looked up to see the frequency of this expression in practice, and lo and behold, there's actually an idol master doujin by that title. So at least one doujinshi author understood the implication of "hajimete no jikan", which, again, is the exact way to write "first time".

If the author actually does this after you have delivered this misleading explanation, I will laugh quite a bit. I don't expect it to happen (because again, I admit a very uncommon expression in Japanese) but damn it'd be funny.

 

[Venante]

You're right about it not automatically having the same implication in Japanese, but you're not right about the impossibility of the grammatical structure.

If the author wanted "our first time" to be the title, it'd simply be "hajimete no jikan". This is likely a bit meaningless to most Japanese people unless they're already thinking about sex (or maybe they would get it by default but just don't use it often since there's a more popular phrase, I'm not actually sure, not native Japanese), but hajimete really just means "first", it is not redundant to use jikan here like you're implying it would be.

And I looked up to see the frequency of this expression in practice, and lo and behold, there's actually an idol master doujin by that title. So at least one doujinshi author understood the implication of "hajimete no jikan", which, again, is the exact way to write "first time".

If the author actually does this after you have delivered this misleading explanation, I will laugh quite a bit. I don't expect it to happen (because again, I admit a very uncommon expression in Japanese) but damn it'd be funny.

You wrote:

“If the author actually does this after you have delivered this misleading explanation, I will laugh quite a bit.”

Frankly, that’s an unnecessarily rude way to express disagreement, and it misses the point.

Your counterexample, “hajimete no jikan,” (The time of the first experience) is grammatically valid, yes, but it’s not idiomatic, not commonly used, and only functions in highly specific contexts where the writer deliberately leans into ambiguity or poetic phrasing. Citing a single doujinshi title as evidence is cherry-picking at best. If anything, it proves that such phrasing is a stylistic outlier, not representative of how Japanese typically conveys that kind of meaning. It could be used to avoid breaking the chapter title format but it’s an awkward and unnatural phrasing. It doesn’t carry the emotional or euphemistic weight of “our first time” in English, and for most native readers, it would come across as vague at best, and confusing at worst.

 

[DPChaos]

Honestly, with how much sexy harem protag bullshit Junichi has been put through, it wouldn't even surprise me if he did not get as excited as he did.

So good for you, Yame!

 

[huntercheco]

No way we won't get cockblocked, but I can't imagine anything. Maybe bath is too hot?

My bet is bath salts will backfire, they will irritate their skin or something