コンビニ人間 Home Thread (Intermediate Book Club)

Googling around tells me that both can be used for places, though I have no idea which is more common. For example, 和倉町 is わくらまち.

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I just tried to get the free audible trial real quick just to know that, but it’s only available to new members… I’m curious, but not enough to pay 1500 yen to find out…

I’ve never gotten an Audible trial, so I’ll try to grab a copy this week. I think this would be a good book to listen to later for some listening practice anyway.

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I like how everyone’s guess is slightly different. :laughing: I was surprised they didn’t put furigana on it the first time since it didn’t seem to be obvious.

But then again maybe the author/readers don’t really care what the “correct” reading is (or maybe it’s obvious if you’re familiar with place names). Kind of like how in はたらく魔王さま! there was a made up cafe with ateji referencing Doutor (thanks @Naphthalene) which confused me because it was written with slightly different kanji twice on the same page. That one may have been lazy proofreading/writing though. It was a light novel after all.

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Place names, in general, are going to be a mess. I feel I’ve seen ちょう way more than まち, but that doesn’t even mean anything. (Could be a local thing/dumb luck).
I remember Leebo shared a website that listed the popularity of different readings for a given word, but I don’t know if something similar exists for individual kanji.

Actually, it seems even natives don’t know: 町の読み方って…「マチ」と「チョウ」どっち? | TABI LABO
Basically, the history of the place determines which one it is. Good luck guessing.

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I was guessing にっしょく but it would be good to have a consensus. In a worst case scenario, I know my local public library has a copy of the translation…

The English version went with ひいろまち. I guess they have access to more direct resources than us.
By the way, looking around google maps, I could only find ひいろ and ひしき for 日色 in place names, however it can be read にっしょく as a family name…

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I checked it in the audible book, it’s いろちょうえきまえてん.

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Wait, I was right? Lucky!
I’m kinda surprised it doesn’t agree with the English version though.

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OK, I’ll do that now then. Since I will probably never manage to catch up to the book club, that will be my only contribution then :wink:
But I did at least manage to finish week 1 yesterday…

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Does this say three free audible books for the first month during the free trial? Of course, I’d have to do a Prime free trial and then an Audible free trial to get that, which may not be worth it (or even possible).

https://www.amazon.co.jp/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?__mk_ja_JP=カタカナ&url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=audible

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Seems so! Guess this is the time for me then. Hard to pass up 3 free audio books.

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Shame I can’t get free prime shipping to the US.

Is that not a thing in the US? I feel like I’m missing something. :thinking:

Or is it because you’d make a Japanese account? As long as you remember to cancel your subscription afterwards that shouldn’t be much a problem though.

I have an Amazon Japan account. I’m assuming that there’s no way they’d do free international shipping. At 500 yen/month for Prime, I’d easily save several times that amount back with a single shipment. (I expect to spend over 5,000 yen on shipping next order since I’m planning to buy 14 books/manga.)

My head is in the clouds today but here it is, Week 4 thread!

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Look for books available as kindle downloads. Use the app, not the device, and at the login/register page choose the Japanese store.

For hard copy, do check your local amazon store (I sometimes find Japanese books there). Use Forwarding service connecting overseas customers and Japanese online stores [tenso.com] as a cheaper way to get things shipped abroad.

btw, when an ebook is available, it’s a huge help. It’s really great to be able to look things up just by selecting. The Kindle app lets me look things up in Japanese-Japanese dictionary and in Japanese-English dictionary.

Also, I sometimes convert the kindle book to epub and read it with Apple’s Books.app, which has better ability to look things up even when they are conjugated. If anyone wants to know how to do this, let me know.

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Accidentally forgot where this week’s ending was and kept reading? It doesn’t matter because the Week 5 thread is up!

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@Sylph I added the week 5 thread to the OP and streamlined the links a bit so it’s easier to edit the post.

@Everyone I added a section to the OP for readings for proper nouns in the book and filled out the ones that came to mind. Feel free to add more if you want.

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