Yeah, the title bothers me too
**
Prologue – Transported During Coffee Time.
AN: Hello everybody. This is like a trip to another world… but there’s nothing like Gang! – With a sword and a Bang! – With magic…
**
Matsuda Kouta always regarded himself as a [normal human being].
Kouta himself – which we should take note of – aspired to the things which were common in his age when he was young. [I want to be a pilot!][I want to be an actress!][I will… I don’t know yet, but I will become someone famous!]. Those were the words children, and Kouta, said when he was young. Therefore he ruled out that he must be a normal human being.
His father owned a medium sized trading company, and he was born from his mother, who worked as a part-time cashier in the nearby super-market. He had medium physique, medium shoulders and a light tan face.
He didn’t stand out in sports and it looked like he had no noteworthy talent. He never said something like [Hahaha… maybe this is a trial for me] for he usually didn’t get sick.
No… maybe regular people are just too prone to being sick…
Anyways, Kouta never went through any of those ordeals.
He excelled than most of his peers in studies, but it wasn’t like he had better brains than them, or had a secret technique to get ahead, but rather he says that effort just pays off in the end.
His classmates always tells him [You don’t even have to study], but Kouta laughs it off and on the other hand, he puts more effort into studying.
Thoughts like
It’s for me to get into a good college…
Never entered his head. It was simply because he knew they couldn’t catch up to him if he put more effort that them.
[Effort won’t betray you].
Kouta always kept this principle, and with this, he passed all his subject in a famous college.
His classmates in high-school always called out to him [Hey, wanna stop by the game centre?], but he just replied with a laugh and proceeded to make more effort in studying.
Things like
It’s for the betterment of my future
Never entered his mind.
The everyday average is regularly updated, so big companies like the Tokyo Stock Exchange, are always looking for new workforce. It seemed like he could apply with ease with the current economic condition of the country. With that he graduated college and applied and got accepted that famous company.
The company held more emphasis on the performance of their employees. Thought they were strict in their norms, they say that the knowledge and attitudes acquired by employees in their student days were also important to their [Industry]. Rather than treating honesty and humility as [Foolish], the company admired it and said that it was perfect for winning the trust of their clients.
Kouta improved his sales performance with his client’s words of [If Matsudai-san says so…]. Eventually he succeeded in winning the trust of his boss. His [Me] became [I], after gaining trust and confidence within the company, and after three years, he was finally moved to the main office.
(TLN: the [Me] is 僕 and his [I] is 私 which pertains the amount of respect a person has within a certain group (@panda: dunno about the explanation. Edit if necessary))
Matsudai Kouta was a regular human being.
Others evaluated him as [Small but Competent], and [His self-evaluation is too low].
He strongly believed that he was in the range of someone [normal] within society.
……He strongly believed…supposedly.
[…I’ll ask once again]
Having a European accent, the room was like from a magical school. The floor was filled with magic circles. A girl with long blonde hair reaching waist, was standing there asking him.
[……]
In one hand, Kouta held a paper bag and in the other, he was holding a paper cup filled with coffee from a famous coffee shop with a mermaid symbol near his workplace. The pretty little girl walked towards Kouta (who was in a suit and tie) with a big attitude.
[Are you… the {Hero}?]
Taken back by the girl’s words, Kouta took a sip of his coffee
Ahh… it’s hot and the blend is perfect…
He asked himself whether if this was just a dream.
[Umm… I don’t know about that…]
Reacting to Kouta who kept drinking his coffee, the girl retorted.
[…No]
Listening to her words, Kouta thought that it was appropriate to introduce himself first.
[I’m Matsudai Kouta from the Joetsu Bank. I don’t know much about heroes, and I think it would be too scrumptious to assume that I’m a hero…]
At those words, he stopped talking.
[…. At the very least, I’m just a [Normal] bank employee.]
This is a story of a [Normal] bank employee summoned to another world, into the Flame Kingdom. With his Luck that could win lotteries, his sincere personality and great humility, future Historians would ask [Which part of this is normal?].
The story of Matsudai Kouta, 26 years old is about to begin!
(DAE: well, I cut out a lot of unnecessary parts here. Simply for the reason that the grammar was so bad when I translated it…)
**
Hello there, Daikyun here. This is just a trial run for this project. I picked it up because the story was quite interesting when I was reading the raws…
We’ll be translating only until Chapter 5 of this LN, unless you guys like us to continue.
At this rate, it would be 1 chapter every 2 weeks since I have TEORA as my main project. In line with this, we really need translators (and editors) or people who want to go into translating (MTL is perfectly fine.) As always thanks for reading.
Daikyun Translations 
You’re back! Haha got 1st
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Please continue!!!! The two translator from before just drop it with notice TT!!!!
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This novel with a super different area of traditional reincarnation history and nothing but its, it’s worth reading it! More than to see the continuation but the synopsis gives much envy I find !!! Thank you for translating this novel anyway
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Guy who made requests for this back on the novel updates forum. Glad you guys are giving it a shot. I hope you guys do a good job and don’t drop it and all. If the TL magically disappears for the third time in a row I’d really think this one is cursed.
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Hmmm, this is very interesting. Thanks. 😄
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I love how he just nonchalantly takes a sip of his coffee in the midst of all this going down, lol.
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is this the LN or the WN translation? just out of curiosity…
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Thanks for the chapter.
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Apart from the title, the Vol 1 LN cover bothers me as well, there is no possible way a human can twist their foot in that manner (at least not comfortably or nonchalantly) >_<
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“…he was holding a paper cup filled with coffee from a famous coffee shop with a mermaid symbol near his workplace.”
“…the blend is perfect…”
I find these two statements to be mutually exclusive. 😝
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Thanks for the chapter.
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Thanks for your work.
Please continue to translate the novel.
I didn’t have a problem with the title until you said it , and now I can’t stop laughing!!!
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Thank you for the translation as well! I’ve been reading this series as well and many of the concepts/terms are probably inaccessible to many translators. That is probably what is holding this series back. Keep up the good work!
For those who are curious, and perhaps adding onto what has been shown in the novel series so far to-date, this series includes a lot of business structures and financial methods from the modern world as well as those from medieval times. This is markedly different from less practical concepts of economics in Spice and Wolf, for example Examples include allusions to Bretton Woods, currency issues (competitive devaluations, QE, etc) promissory notes, PPPs, hostile takeovers, liquidation & foreclosures, to more general aspects like urban planning and subsidised/tax exempt areas (think Canary Wharf in London), and gambling control.
Suffice to say, for the economic/finance/business minded, this series will not disappoint.
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… Wow. Just wow
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Maybe the synopsis was bad but… stock prices in the medieval ages? Currency collapse when everything is based off the value of a metal? Government bonds in this age? I guess they have a few modern day concepts, but those look REALLY out of place to me in a medieval world. I didn’t see much of Spice and Wolf past the anime but they at least seemed pretty consistent with their era.
I’ve read this up to the first bit of chapter 2 and I couldn’t take the exposition through dialogue anymore. Maybe it gets better later on but it’s certainly not good at the beginning.
Also apparently they made a printing press some millenium ago making books cheap, but the tech level is still at using horses for transportation? Is there an explanation for this? The printing press is arguably the single most impactful invention in the history of mankind, It allowed the universal spread of knowledge, so everyone’s now contributing intellctually – everyone has access to every idea the past had, knowledge and experiences are passed on to everyone, and any new ideas at this point would all be building on that and developing that knowledge further rather than running around in circles. They should be the equivalent of our year 2400, yet I’m still seeing stuff about horses and not even a near 100% literacy rate…?
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Woah, slow down there. Their economy is shattered, you can’t expect the masses to buy books when they don’t even have enough to eat. (Unless edible paper is available).. Plus, it’s an isekai LN. Anything goes
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Putting aside how an economy could remain shattered for a millenium, I’m aware that WN/LNs aren’t known for their quality. But the guy above made it sound like this was high quality.
I watched two seasons of the anime for Spice and Wolf and thought it was very nicely done in its consistency and depth (even though it wasn’t all that deep in the subject but deeper than what most people would think about), and when he made a comparison like that I expected something at least of that quality. So I decided to try reading it.
I was disappointed at the queen who decided to passively accept that their entire economy is in the hands of a third party organization and with no loyalty to their kingdom.
I was disappointed at the prime minister who is portrayed to be cold, calculating, and competent, who then displayed some rather stupid logic of a male staying in a huge palace being an issue (are there no guards at night? No male servants? Chefs? A palace is huge, what are they doing with all that space?) and then simply decided that all problems will be magically solved if the hero leaves the capital and leaving huge loose ends rather than just killing him and being done with it, or even ascertaining his abilties (he’s a summoned hero, the previous summoning was used to kill something that the combined armies of the human nations couldn’t, you don’t think maybe he might be good at combat even if he states otherwise?).
I was disappointed at the pacing of the author, who felt the need to have a huge info dump of every single nation he could think of in this world (what was it like 10?) at the very beginning despite almost all of them having no relevance currently.
I was disappointed at the stupidly naive world, where two sisters, one who is born of a concubine aren’t fighting for the throne is considered a ‘paradise’, and no existence of noble factions to try and push one onto the throne over the other. But no, rather than feeding the citizens, bringing prosperity to the nation, advancing technologically, or defending against encroaching neighbours, the number one worry of this kingdom is if the royal brats get along with each other.
I was disappointed at the author yet again, who felt the first info dump wasn’t enough, but this time he had to dump useless info on the technological progress of the world a thousand years ago, or the history of a road, and through dialogue at that, plus reference back to our time for obvious things (does he think we don’t know kids learn to read and write in primary education?).
I was disappointed at the author’s logic that a hermit, defined as a person who is living in solitude i.e. without any people around, would like to spend their days being surrounded by brats and teaching them basic arithmatic for some vegetables. More logic: the reason not to establish a small town for trade along a high way is because ‘outsiders’ might slip in, as if preventing illegal immigrants or spies is a top priority for a country in this age. Also apparently the author thinks it would be inconcievable for a town sitting beside the MAIN highway throughout the entire kingdom to be importing food from other cities rather than growing it themselves (because even cities themselves don’t get food from the surrounding villages who bring it there to sell, and are forced to farm in the immediate vicinity of the city, messing with its growth, in order to feed the city’s entire population, because when we think of cities we think of it being filled to the brim with farmers – plus let’s also ignore the fact that volume increases a lot faster than surface area /sarcasm).
Overall I think this novel could be better. I didn’t manage to get very far in it, so maybe it’s actually as good as that guy says later on? But personally, I usually go into new WN/LNs with low expectations; I got my expectations up after reading that comment, and unfortunately it didn’t meet those expectations.
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It gets good later on (I think).. Since it’s in the top charts for LN in Kadokawa(?) Publishing
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Maybe I should clarify what I said above. I agree there are clear loopholes, but hey, even Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings do too.
I was commenting on the series published in the LN to date, so some of the content would probably be further on in the story. There’s talk of currency because they started to adopt promissory notes (paper money) in the city instead of currency backed by precious metals. The MC was a banker (not sure which area though) so the story goes that he wanted to make commerce more convenient in the area. Sovereign bond is a very old concept – per wikipedia. The info-dumping is slightly awkward, but understandable, since most people would know what a road is (duh?) but may not be familiar with how it affects an economy (e.g. increased logistical efficiencies etc)
As for the printing press, it was made much cheaper since the industrial revolution, but even then, I would imagine it would be quite expensive generally. The general populace would not have been able to afford to buy a whole library of books. Education hundreds of years back was reserved to the rich and powerful, and the clergy of course. Even now, in the 21st century, we have yet to achieve a 100% literacy rate globally, so I’d think it to be taking it too far to request the same from a medieval setting.
On to politics, I am fairly certain that for most of history, nobles were mostly concerned about their wealth and their power instead of the people or technological development for that matter. (e.g. our own world history) In order to ascend to the throne, it would depend on the circumstances. If you’re a candidate with no backing, it’s unlikely that you’ll have the resources to take it. (You’d have no army to fight with for one)
As to the geography and other matters, from what I understand, the place where the MC goes to is at the edges of the country and by the sea. There’re no pre-existing maritime infrastructure. That would be what drives the story later on. This is also where the practical concepts come in. PPPs are quite common in infrastructure projects (roads; bridges; ports; etc) The boardroom-battle-esque plot comes from the MC’s plans to establish his area as a hub for trade with another kingdom across the sea. This led to an attempt by one of the investors to ‘take over’ the project by acquiring shares (if memory serves me right). Liquidation & foreclosure comes from a related episode as well.
I’m not quite sure what the above commenter meant by not being able to get food from the surrounding villages, but from what I remember, since the place where the MC goes to is near the sea and is surrounded by barren land with high salinity, production of (their) conventional crops was impossible. Even if farming was possible, I don’t think anyone would believe that having farms surrounding your city is a brilliant idea, given that it would hinder the city’s expansion. Of course, if the MC was trying to go for an agribusiness state, then having as many farms as possible may be the way to go. But since the MC came from a banking background, and would not be expected to have agribusiness expertise, I would imagine that aiming for a commercial/mercantile city would be more common-sensical.
Spice & Wolf is a good story. It’s just that I feel it dwells too much on textbook economics. I guess this is what most people are familiar with since it’s taught in school, and many people would juxtapose it directly into the story. But sometimes, business practice simply doesn’t make much sense economically, but is nonetheless effective in practice for non-tangible reasons like reputation, politics, etc. The story may be suspect at times, but I do sincerely commend the author for applying the more practical concepts (relatively) accurately.
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Hmm, would you like to be our consultant on this LN? At least you got economic concepts right.
P.S You sure do like writing long essays on this topic. Might come in handy 🙂
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Thanks
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Idk what to think other than the ‘usual’ mc who think he’s ordinary again….:)
But well, this seems interesting!
Thanks for taking the effort of translating this
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