Hi everyone. I've come to ask for help again.
So, I'm working on
this and there are a few points in
the afterword that I either don't understand or am not sure to understand.
Paragraph 1, last line:
QUOTE
あとは使うのみだけどもやっぱりビックリするほどには早くならないなあ。
When he says 使う, I guess he's talking about his brush (based on what he wrote above). So it would be something like "All I have left to do now is practice [use my brush], but I guess I won't become surprisingly fast at it [drawing, I guess]." or am I wrong (because it feels odd to me)?
Paragraph 2, penultimate line:
QUOTE
他にももっと書いてみたいけども、例大祭に出られるくらいの功夫がないと踏み込んではいけない気もする。
I understand the fisrt part of the sentence, but I have trouble with the second part. First of all, I don't know how I should translate 功夫. "Kung-fu" doesn't make much sense to me, and "scheming, plan..." makes only little more sense in my opinion, I've also read it could mean "training" (derived from the fact that kung-fu requires intense training), which makes some sense but seems too far-fetched, so I'm still not really sure of how to translate it. My best attempt's something like "I want to draw more of them [Touhou doujins], but I have the feeling I shouldn't step into it unless I have enough training to publish in a Reitaisai."
Thanks in advance for your help.