キノの旅 Week 12 Discussion

You need to have more faith in fictitious characters! What could prossibly go wrong?

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I can’t believe Kino brings Hermes into the museum. How does she not realize that that’s weird?

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Weird compared to what? :joy:

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Also, didn’t something similar happen in chapter 2 when they both went to the palace? Arguably the place was empty, but still.

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I love how it just works out, since the museum already has handicap ramps.

And then the next day, if I understood it correctly, they needed to use a board to get Hermes on the O.V..

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Already done with this week’s reading!
I really don’t like that Kino doesn’t actually confront any of these characters, she just goes around as an on-looker without even really discussing the logic or morals with the people in these countries (like with the king who executed everyone else, she just kept listening instead of confronting him or giving a counter argument). I find that kind of frustrating to read tbh. Maybe she thinks that they wouldn’t see the flaws in their logic anyway, but I would like to see some discussion!

Some questions.

Q1 before they go into the country

When they see the skeletons and so on, Hermes goes on to tell Kino how she’s gonna be eaten maybe and so on:
そこで可哀相なキノは、捕まって食べられてしまう! そりゃあ、誰だって、なんだって、やっぱり若くて生がいいからさ。まあ、ちょっと筋張ってるけれど、そこだけよく煮れば、キノだって食べられなくはない
I guess this is passive? He’s saying if you only cook her well enough, it’s not unlikely she will be eaten. Or how would you interpret the なくはない?

Q2 the page after or maybe the same

When they see the castle walls:
さらにしばらく走って、高い壁に空いた穴[…]
空 has an お as furigana for me? Is that another typo, like with 尽くす? Are they getting sloppy with those? :thinking:

Q3 on the second day

As they go to the battlefield right after a break:

途中の食事休憩を挟んで、ホヴィーの一行は茶色い荒野を飛んで、国から山を四つ越えたところで停止した
They flew over 4 mountains and then stopped? (I’m really bad at imagining that this is somehow far away, so suddenly there’s four mountains and more hills later on, so I was a bit confused.)
Also, is this the temporal ところ, and not the place 所?

Q4 two or three pages after that

When they start flying (after the priest announces the start of the war)
So, basically the hovercrafts get into two lines, the first one (with the priest) goes and the others follow. But then there’s this line:
「私達も行きます。つかまっていてください」
兵士がキノとエルメスに言うと、列に加わっていないホヴィーは上昇して、上から列を追った。やがて上空のホヴィーは列を追い越した。そしてしばらく飛んで、なだらかな丘を一つ越え、空中で止まった

Why are there suddenly vehicles that aren’t in a line?
And they start flying above the other lines and overtake them?
And only those who are flying higher then go up this hill and stop mid-air, if I’m reading this right?

Q5 a few sentences later

丘を越えたオアシスのそばに
Has this oasis been mentioned before? I was super confused where that suddenly came from.
Also, 丘を越えたオアシス = an oasis that crossed over a hill??

Q6 after the line is drawn and the start announced

兵士がそう言った時、列を組んで飛んできたホヴィーの群が集落に殺到した。縦一列から、きれいに散開した
I might have confused 散開 with 解散 while reading, but does this basically mean that they spread out orderly?

Okay I think that’s it for now with the questions.

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Answers for the only two I’ve gotten up to so far.

A1

https://bunpro.jp/grammar_points/402

(In case you don’t have a Bunpro account)


A2

I noticed this too, and I’m pretty sure it’s a typo. They had the 尽くす typo a second time right around then too.

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Thoughts on your thoughts

Based on last week’s chapter and other things Kino has said, I think Kino models herself and her life based on the prior Kino. Part of that is her remaining an outside observer. The only exception so far was when Kino killed the king in the colosseum. I had actually thought that prior Kino would save current Kino by taking her away, since it seemed like lobotomizing children might be a bridge too far for him, but in the end he seemed prepared to observe and move on (up until current Kino’s dad did his thing). As a result, I think the current Kino tries her best to remain a passive observer, although clearly things can push her past that.

I do think that the prior two chapters were a little more interesting because Kino was more of an active participant in the events. Secretly, I wanted a cult of Kinos living somewhere that were training and sending travelers out into the world.

Q1 before they go into the country

I think this is potential rather than passive in this case. The なくはない is a double negative (二重否定), and is used to state the positive (can be eaten) in a less firm way. My interpretation was that he was saying that although she’s a little sinewy, even Kino could probably be eaten if she were simmered.

Here’s a Maggie Sensei article about some double negatives:
http://maggiesensei.com/2015/09/09/double-negative-ないない-nainai/

Q2 the page after or maybe the same

I’m pretty sure that’s a typo.

Q3 on the second day

This is the ~たところ grammar form, which means ~ just happened. So they stopped right after they passed over 4 mountains.

Q4 two or three pages after that

Before the priest talks, the text says that only the vehicles equipped with persuaders got into a line (or two lines, one for each country). The other vehicles appear to be for observation only, so they flew up higher and went past the military vehicles to where they could get a vantage of the battleground (village).

Q5 a few sentences later

This is saying that the village is near an oasis past the hill. It had just come into view after the observational vehicles passed over the hill (なだらかな丘を一つ越こえ).

Q6 after the line is drawn and the start announced

Yes. :slightly_smiling_face:

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As catbus said, it’s an oasis past the hill; it’s because in Japanese adnominal/qualifying clauses that attach to nouns are not necessarily relative to the nouns they modify (i.e., they don’t fill any gaps in the modifying clause).

So it’s “an oasis of past the hill”, if you will. It’s just a more extreme case of things such as 雨がふっている音 “the sound of rain falling”. Notice that you cannot form a proper sentence with “*rain falls sound” or “*sound falls rain” or even “*rain falls by/for/etc. sound”.

By the way, it’s interesting to note that you can find stuff like 丘を越えたオアシス if you look around, which can come about either because people write agrammatical sentences, or because the author decided to go all classical-lyrical on you.

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That moment when you look up the Japanese word because you can’t remember how to say it in English.

I totally forgot the word “cremation”. :see_no_evil:

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@Myria @seanblue @catbus
By the way, regarding the typos, I tried to look up if people were complaining about it online.
I couldn’t find anything in that regard, but instead I found some interesting info about this chapter.
Apparently, in terms of writing order, it is the “pilot” of the Kino series and includes stuff that never come up ever again, such as the passcard or Kino being a 4 dan gunslinger. That last one kinda surprised me, since it’s mentioned in the previous chapter that Kino is a black belt gunslinger… but I guess the number of dan is never mentioned again?

Anyway, I’ll keep looking a bit, just in case.

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If I had a sentient motorcycle I would try and bring it everywhere.

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Q2 It’s definitely a typo, I have あ in my version.

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Just having everything go smoothly without any weird stuff happening for the first few pages was a nice change of pace, even if it didn’t last very long. Kind of makes me think that it could be neat if the twist of some chapter in the series were to be that Kino goes to a place that seems weird but actually has totally normal explanations for everything.

Related to the stuff we just read, I’m kind of hoping that Kino at least reacts to it in some way next week. Also, I kind of guessed that the “war” would result in other people being killed from how much it was emphasised that no soldiers would die, instead of just saying that no people would die…well, that, and it was also kind of expected after how all the other chapters have gone :sweat_smile:

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To click or not to click… :thinking:

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I’m probably only halfway through the reading for the week so far but I see the word of the chapter is 大変. I did a search through the book and it shows up 13 times total, 7 of which are in this chapter and 5 of which are within about 2 pages (as marked in my ebook which seems to have slightly more pages than the physical edition).

I’ve noticed this in pretty much every chapter so far with certain words being repeated enough times in a chapter that it seems weird. I guess it could be a writing style thing or maybe an effort to keep the vocabulary down for the younger target audience but it just seems lazy to me.

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太陽が拳一個分傾いた。
How is 分 pronounced here? ぶん?

Yeah, it’s ぶん. Here it means “in proportion to; just as much as​” (took that from jisho) and that always reads ぶん as far as I know.

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I was also bothered a bit at some point by the repetitive use of ほんの少し at some points. At least now I have the term internalised to some extent. ^^

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I don’t remember any other examples off the top of my head but I noticed this a few times in the book so far within shorter sections of individual chapters. It wouldn’t bother me at all if a word was repeated in one sentence or in several sentences back to back where the repetition is clearly intentional but these are spread out a bit more.

I probably shouldn’t be expecting much from the writing in a light novel or complaining too much about style but this type of thing bothers me in English too.

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