Pages 8-9 and following ones, I’d hoped to show off JAXA’s neutral bouyancy training pool (named “Weightlessness Environment Test System”, or WETS for short, which has to be someone having a joke) which is almost certainly the inspiration for this one. Unfortunately, it was heavily damaged during the Great East Japan Earthquake back in 2011, and so it was decomissioned shortly afterwards. That said, this pool’s 22-metre diameter gives it almost twice the volume of WETS, which was only 16 metres wide (but almost the same depth).
Page 25, I honestly would like to know how baby Asumi just… went out and bought a grip strength training thingy completely without her father’s knowledge.
Struggled a bit with this panel. I could guess what she was trying to say from the context but couldn’t make the words fit! I don’t think it helped that I had the word おしっこ in my head and some of those letters were there. In the end I realised that it was from もよおす ーー＞ もよおしちゃったら - “to feel (cal of nature)”
Has anyone tried space photography? The pictures in this week’s reading look very impressive! I met a group of people doing this when I visited Devils Tower in Wyoming.
Apparently to get really good pictures you can buy a device that rotates your camera at the same speed the sky rotates, allowing you to get long exposures without the stars swirling in the picture.
Not seriously enough that I can recall ever having done so, though my brother did manage to take this photo of the aurora we had here in Sydney a couple of weeks ago:
Page 37, the H4 rocket mentioned in the first panel is a fictional projection of Japan’s launch vehicles - the current model in the real world is still the H3. (Remember we saw an H-IIB at the school a couple of volumes ago - that was the previous model in the series.)
In the second panel of the same page, the 小笠原 islands are officially part of Toyko Prefecture - the ferry (the only way to reach the island) takes twenty-four hours to get there. Unless there’s a faster ferry in the Twin Spica world, they spent a day shipping all the kids to the island, gave them just long enough to watch the launch and not a second longer, then spent another day shipping them back again. In the real world, JAXA maintains only a tracking facility on the island; JAXA’s modern-day launch facility is on Tanegashima.
Page 45, it mildly amuses me that the ferry’s called さざなみ, considering the conversation that came up in the new vocab items thread here.
Page 75, the fifth moon of Saturn being referenced in the first panel is named Calypso, so does anyone else’s copy have the same typo that mine does? Or is it just that ソ and ン just look much more similar in this font than I’d expect?
That said, while we’re on this page, I’ve got a question about Suzuki’s t-shirt that perhaps someone could answer: the “Autumn” is an obvious reference to his given name, but what’s the 10-11 mean? I pondered if it was a date - October 11th - but though Sports Day will fall on the 11th in 2027, I’m fairly sure we’re still in 2024 in this chapter. (Ringo’s “Rin5” t-shirt is fun, though.)
Page 85, the words that Lion-san is singing to himself in the third panel happen to be a line from “Spica”, by Spitz. I don’t know if that’s actually what he’s singing, but I want it to be, just from the name of the song. It’s certainly old enough to have been around when this manga was being written.
The song in the final panel of page 87 is Jingle Bells, naturally enough.
Yeah, mine too. That’s definitely a typo. The ン has a thicker brush stroke at the left hand side of the bottom line that distinguishes it from a ソ. Some good katakana reading practice in this chapter!
I wonder if this happens to anyone else? I read the 幻 character in one panel, then completely misread 幼 as 幻 a couple of panels later. Like the first kanji was still stuck in my head. Then sat there staring at the sentence trying to work out what 幻なじみ would mean before it clicked what I’d done wrong…
My first thought was that the date might be Shuu’s birthday, so I checked the Twin Spica Illustration Book I have, but it turns out his birthday is April 14th! So I guess he must have been born in the Southern Hemisphere or his name makes no sense!
October 11th is one character’s birthday, though: Kiriu. But I don’t know what the significance of Shuu wearing a shirt with Kiriu’s birthday on it would be, other than maybe Kiriu indirectly being the reason for Asumi’s tears when she runs into Shuu in this scene??? Or since Shuu’s name means “Autumn” he’s the one who wears the shirt with the birthday of the character born in autumn?
However, some space-related events have taken place on this date too, including:
1958: NASA launches Pioneer 1, its first space probe (although it failed to achieve it’s goal of entering lunar orbit)
1968: NASA launches Apollo 7, the first successful crewed Apollo mission
1984: Kathryn Sullivan became the first American woman to walk in space
2000: Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space is awarded the Greatest Woman Achiever of the Century by the International Women of the Year Association
2000: NASA launches the 100th Space Shuttle mission, STS-92
The Apollo 7 sticks out as having particular significance, so maybe that’s why Shuu has a shirt with that date on it?
I also considered it being another goroawase situation, like Ringo’s shirt, but I couldn’t figure out anything compelling. (Could 10’s じゅう reading be considered similar enough to しゅう? But then what to do with the 11???)
Oh. Now the kids’s grumbling that they are not allowed to stay overnight makes sense.
Lots of interesting developments in these last chapters. So…Marika seems to be some sort of clone (?) of an older sister (?) who died. The look-alike of Asumi’s childhood friend, is he a ghost? Or a complete stranger? Or the real childhood friend, if his death was vastly exaggerated? In any case, I like that he’s anti-space, it might add a little tension. We haven’t had much tension since Sado left. Oh, and Shuu is rich, apparently.
Page 102 - おふくろの味 didn’t make much sense to me (owl flavour?!) but turns out it’s a set phrase - mom’s home cooking, taste of home cooking.
Yaginuma pulling at the heart strings again this week. I was familiar with 初詣で but I don’t think I appreciated how important family is at new year in Japan.
Yah, お袋 is a colloquial euphemism for one’s own mother. I’m a little amused by how similar it is to the English “old bag”, though I imagine the Japanese one is at least 90% less perjorative.
But then what to do with the 11???)
