かがみの孤城 Week 1

Time for some detective work!

Hints we have! The chapter is titled 5月. I think we can safely assume it is May at this time in the story.

Then there’s some further hints: 東条 starts school a bit late. It seemed to be described as a very short time, so possibly only a few days. Enough to be noticable, but not really enough to factor hugely into the time span.
The first 2 weeks after 東条 joined the class were fine, and こころ got along well with 萌. (P. 22 both)

Furthermore, when she meets the teacher at 心の教室 there’s this part: 入学したばかり。それなのに、最初の4月しか、あそこに行っていないのだから。(p. 16)
So we know she only attended school for a month her first year.

Finally, (or really firstly), on page 11 (right at the start!), こころ is musing about all the things she normally didn’t experience on a weekday. 去年、までは。

So we know it has been pretty much exactly one year since she stopped attending school.

Page numbers from the tankobon

Sorry if this already got answered. I had fun in any case. :grin::female_detective:

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Boooi what a spoiler did they put in there :rofl:

(I‘m talking about the mirror thing). On second thought, it’s probably already obvious from the title and the cover art and possibly also the abstract, but I tend to 100% ignore those things because I want to discover the story as it unfolds.

Just mentioning it in case there are others like me :sweat_smile:

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Ah, cool, thank you!
Do I need to pretend to be in Japan in order to buy at audiobook.jp? Or is there anything else I need to pay attention to when signing up?

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On one hand, everything in there (for the part I understood) is in the book details/summary on sites where you can buy the e-book.

On the other hand, I agree with you completely about wanting to avoid spoilers on things. I avoid trailers on certain things for that very reason.

I don’t recall about having a Japanese address. But make certain that you’re not signing up for a monthly subscription. Or at least remove your credit card after purchase just to be safe.

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It worked!
I had some trouble with the credit card payment because my first one didn’t work, but the second one did.
They didn’t care about an address whatsoever.

Thank you!

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Glad to hear it worked out.

Just to be sure, are you certain you didn’t inadvertently sign up for a monthly subscription? I only ask because I did just that the first time I bought from them, and luckily found out in time right before the first payment a month later would have been.

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Yes, I’m pretty sure I didn’t subscribe. I just checked, and in my account there is a button to register for all-you-can-listen registration, which, I suppose, means I haven’t registered yet.

Thanks for reminding me!

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You’re right, that audiobook is very well done!

My god, this language is so beautiful!

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Finally finished the chapter…

I don’t think anyone’s answered all of @VikingSchism’s questions yet:

6%

I struggled with this one as well…it’s pretty hard to unpack the grammar:

東条さんの家は、 → topic = toujou’s house
こころの家とほぼ同じ間取りの家が → more or less the same floorplan as kokoros but
東条さんの家仕様になっている → made like toujou’s
という印象だった。 → gave the impresson

仕様 means way/means/method and になる is “to become”. I found this example on nihongomaster which helped piece things together:

全てを考慮してもやはり勝てない 仕様 になっています
All things considered, it’s set up so it isn’t possible to win.

so basically I think it’s a way of saying that something is set up/designed to be a particular way.
in this context, 東条さんの家仕様になっているという印象だった is saying that toujou’s house gave the impression that it was the original, and kokoro’s was a copy of it.

7%

pretty much agree with what @Shadowlauch said, except for this bit:

身を屈めて自分 refers to kokoro here, and the whole clause is the object of 覗く - the bully was peeking at kokoro who was bending over (屈める can also mean bending your knees/squatting, which makes more sense to me).

8%

I know @Shadowlauch already answered this one but I’m gonna do the breakdown anyway for my own sake because I got a bit confused well.

東条さんが本当は → toujou san was really
**** 先生たちから → by the teachers
**** 自分に会ってくるよう、に話を聞いてくるように → to meet me, to talk to me
と言われている かもしれない → maybe was told to
ことについては → with regards to

that’s a hell of a sentence :sweat_drops:

―そう言われてるのにもかかわらず → despite being told that
彼女がそうしないでいる可能性 → the possibility that she wasn’t
については → with regards to
考えないようにする → she chose not think about

this makes the 6% one look so easy…

whaddup! been a while yeah (I didn’t read haruhi though :stuck_out_tongue: ). I basically lost all motivation to do japanese over lockdown, but I’m picking stuff up again :upside_down_face:

good work :grin:

I’d kinda worked out that it was at least 6 months, but I hadn’t narrowed it down that much

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That makes a lot more sense. The 自分 irked me a bit but I could not put my finger on it!

Yeah that sentence took me a while to unpack, but also super satisfying once you understand it

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Not even the beginning? I’m probably mixing stuff up again… At least the general feeling was correct! :stuck_out_tongue:

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Out of curiosity, how do folks incorporate audiobooks into their reading/studying? I’m probably not at the point where I could just listen and comprehend to the degree I’d want to, even if I read along physically. I was thinking of reading the chapter once at my own pace for comprehension then listening while reading along if I can muster the time and patience to essentially read the same thing twice. I’m always looking for ways to improve my listening skills though.

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I don’t have anything worked out yet for utilizing the audio book in a useful way.

I know that at my (so-so) level of known words and (not so good) listening ability, if I listen to a section before reading it, I will miss a lot from the audio. But if I listen to it after reading (including looking up unknown words and grammar), I catch a lot more.

I’m still missing a decent amount from the audio book, especially since I’m not memorizing all the words I look up. But even then, I do find that sometimes things that were unclear in reading feel a bit clearer after I listen to that portion from the audio book. (Main example for chapter one is transitioning into and out of all the flashbacks.)

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My listening skill is pretty bad. It’s always been the slowest when learning a new language.
I use audiobooks for listening immersion, letting it run and trying to pick up words and parts of sentences etc. I find it encouraging to notice how I recognize more than a couple of weeks ago, while still too little to actually really understands what’s going on. But I need that experience of little improvements for my motivation.
Besides, as I’d written above - it’s just a really beautiful language, read beautifully, and a pleasure to listen to.

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I need some help breaking down part of the following sentence:
色とりどりのバッグをハンドルのところにかけたベビーカーがベンチのそばに並んでいるのを見ると、「ああ、午前中もあとちょっとだ」と思う。

Specifically, the 「ああ、午前中もあとちょっとだ」- I can’t figure out the あとちょっと - is it a little after morning/a.m. (Vormittag. Why oh why doesn’t English have a word for that?!), will the a.m. be over in a little while, or is it something else entirely?

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It’s this one! :+1:

I guess after-morning-pre-noon is too wordy? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Look, I’m German. Massive compound words is what we do. But yes, that is too wordy! :upside_down_face:

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Is there a grammar rule or something for it or is this just a phrase that I’ll have to memorise as is?

ETA: Ah, I think I’ve figured out my misunderstanding. We don’t need a particle after あと because it ends with a copula, and ちょっと is an adverb (or something like that) to that copula. Did I get that right?

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it’s also not a question i think, you formulated it a bit like one. seeing that is her cue to know the vormittag is almost over, it seems like her routine at this point.

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Oh, sorry about the confusion.
No, I didn’t think it was a question. I was asking a question about the little phrase within the sentence.

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