Please use spoiler tags for major events in the current chapter(s) and any content in future chapters.
When asking for help, please mention the chapter and page number. Also mention what version of the book you are reading.
Don’t be afraid of asking questions, even if they seem embarrassing at first. All of us are here to learn.
To you lurkers out there: Join the conversation, it’s fun!
Read-along Sessions
Come and read from the previous week’s section, join in the chat about this book (also the previous book, possible future books, WK reviews, all things Japan-related, what else you did on the weekend, etc) or just lurk and listen. Readers of all speeds and abilities welcome - we are here to help each other out. Reading sessions will be held every Sunday at 9:30pm JST.
Week 5 session (in your timezone): Sunday, November 10, 2019 12:30 PM TZ
Participants
Mark your participation status by voting in this poll.
I’m reading along
I have finished this part
I’m still reading the book but I haven’t reached this part yet
This is the scene where Sakurai and 雄一 are talking after her strange dream. My first confusion is about いつも女のほうが; I’m not sure what it refers to; the sentence after it seems to say something along the lines of “Because it is (early?) to receive this kind of things”, which seems quite vague. Receiving what exactly… ?
My second question is about カップでないもの; I’m not sure what it means. Things that don’t come in cups? =@.@=
This is in the scene where Eriko-san is explaining Sakurai about the hardships of becoming a woman.
What exactly is いっぺん絶望? jisho lists various possible いっぺん but none seems to fit very well.
At 29%
彼のしつこさに比例してえり子さんも店の人々も冷淡になっていったので、
So, 比例 means “proportion”, and it happens to be a する-verb, but what on earth would “to proportion” mean? From what I can gather from a J-J dictionary it seems to be something like “comparing two things in order to find their proportion”, but I am not sure how that fits in this sentence…
At 30%
私は祖母が死にひとりになってから半年もの間田辺家で雄一と、
I’m not really sure what that もの is doing in the middle of 半年間…
This is the part where Sakurai and 雄一 are talking about how people seem to keep dying around them. I think I get the sentence (“In the whole vastness of space, there are probably not other two people like us. It’s an amazing coincidence that we have become close friends.”) But what’s with the 死ぬわ 死ぬわ at the end?
いつも女のほうが… It’s always the woman who gets these things first. (I took this to mean she was the first to realise they both had the same dream).
カップでないもの = something that is not a cup
28%
いっぺん I think this means once. If you never once despair in your life, then… (that was a way too long sentence)
29%
比例して It’s comparing the stalker with Eriko and the others at the shop. They became 冷淡 in proportion to his しつこさ。
30%
It’s providing emphasis. As much as half a year.
Can’t answer the last one as I’ve not read that far yet
I am not sure, but there is a tendency towards repeating things for emphasis, so this is what I think is happening here. Everyone around them just dies, that sort of feeling.
I think the sentence before that has more the nuance that 'it’d be amazing if the fact that (we met and) became friends was just a coincidence.
I’m really just feeling my way through this book though.
The part after the cut between kitchen 1 and 2 felt a bit like a punch.
what’s with the 死ぬわ 死ぬわ at the end?
I think it’s part of that idea about how they seem to attract death ''you’re going to die, you’re going to die!" where they are not referring to anyone in particular, just to anyone who lives close to them.
It was. T-T I had to reread that sentence twice when I finally sat down to finish this week’s reading today.
As for 33%, that fits well enough, too. Tbh I gave up on finding the perfect English for whatever it is I’m reading in Japanese pretty soon after I started reading, since it didn’t make me, ah, happy.
I’m hoping exposure will make things click eventually, as long as I get that flicker of understanding.
I also agree that it feels way smoother and better when you can just go through a japanese text without trying to find the exact translation but by intuitively understanding the concepts behind the words, like we do in our native languages. Sadly that isn’t happening to me very often with this book =._.=
