コンビニエンスストア様: Bonus Week for コンビニ人間

コンビニ人間 Repeat Club

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Kindle | Bookwalker | Amazon Print-on-Demand | English Translation

Welcome to the コンビニエンスストア様 book club!

コンビニエンスストア様 is Sayaka Murata’s love letter to the コンビニ where she herself continued to work for 17 years while she pursued her writing career. For those on the fence about joining, the letter is only 7 pages and is available for free at each of the above-linked sources.

  • I’m reading along
  • I’ll catch up soon
  • I won’t be joining this bonus week
  • I have no intention of catching up or the club has already finished, but I’m using the forums as reference

0 voters

Vocab Sheet

Anybody should feel free to add to the vocab sheet. Read the guidelines on the first sheet- even if a word is not yet included you can use the spreadsheet as a tool to get help.

Discussion Questions

  1. How do you think 村田’s experience working in a コンビニ influenced コンビニ人間? To what extent is コンビニ人間 autobiographical?

  2. How does 村田’s letter reframe your thoughts on コンビニ人間?

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I read it a week ago when it was mentioned in a previous topic.
It will be weird to read something from her that is not revolved around コンビニ. (I mean with the offshoot book club.)

To what extent is コンビニ人間 autobiographical?

I haven’t read any interviews or stuff like that with her, but I’d like to know the answer to this question a well.

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In an interview with The Guardian, Murata-sensei details her time working at a konbini and her personal history, much of which mirrors Keiko’s own struggles. While not directly autobiographical, Murata-sensei has definitely instilled much of herself into コンビニ人間.

Note: Spoilers for 地球星人/Earthlings, so just skip the paragraphs where it gets brought up if you want to avoid them.

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Thanks for linking this interview! It was an interesting read.
She had to stop working at the konbini because of an obsessive fan. :confused: I don’t envy her.

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I tried to read it, but I found it a bit harder. So, I won’t be reading it after all.
Have fun!

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@Tonina Unless you plan on returning to it sometime later, you can always just check the English translation :slightly_smiling_face:

@Mithrillion, happy cake day!

Thoughts

I think my favorite part of this letter was the unconventional usage of the “sex” word :wink: I adore the idea of using it in a less, uh, fleshy, more metaphorical sense.

This quote isn’t anything new, but I still love it being stated that clearly:
貴方はヒトではない、と皆は言いますが、貴方と出会うまで、ヒトではないのは私のほうでした。少なくとも、上手に人間ができる人間ではありませんでした。貴方の側にいることで、初めて、私は人間になったのです。

And I know this is morbid humor, but I still chuckled on this:
私は、「こんな話を聞かせてごめんね。言った人を殺してこようか?」と聞きました。

Partly I enjoy this piece so much is because I’m sometimes visualizing my relationship with Japanese in a similar way. :flushed: (It was way before I’ve read コンビニエンスストア様, it wasn’t my influence.)
At first I wasn’t allowing myself to care too much about my Japanese studies, because I knew the chances of using it for career are close to none, and I never was very fast or efficient at learning languages.
But I became much happier person since I allowed myself to treat my studies more seriously, even if it sometimes reaches an absurd, exaggerated, grandiose level.
I even have love songs which help me visualize my relationship :stuck_out_tongue: It isn’t only about language, but also things related to it - both “serious” things like history & culture and “frivolous” manga/games popculture aspect. I can get very serious about motivational anime quotes. :sparkling_heart:

So, even if it is something I build for myself before reading this letter, I was genuinely happy seeing somebody describing a relationship with a inanimate thing in a way I could relate to.
This was more or less a theme of コンビニ人間 itself, too, but this letter makes it way more explicit and I love it.

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Thank you!

That’s interesting what you wrote about. I never really thought about hobbies this way. I never restricted myself from any of them, just sometimes get more hyped / more bored and my focus swifts.

What I thought when I was reading it that I really want to go back to our office (last seen in May 2020 when I went to get a post package delivered there), because I really like being there (it’s a really comfy office with a beautiful view in the city center), and I can’t really imagine switching to another company despite getting offers with higher salary. Is this love? :sweat_smile:

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