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Read-along Sessions
Come and read from the previous week’s section, join in the chat about this book 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 6 session (in your timezone): Sunday, August 11, 2019 12:30 PM TZ
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I’m reading along
I’m still reading the but I haven’t reached this part yet
Kinda made me feel all melancholic. Just when 恵子 was starting to enjoy 白羽’s weirdness and maybe even relating to it. At the end, being confronted with everyone’ s reaction to his ‘differences’ and wondering if that’s what I will be like when (if? Felt like it was a foregone conclusion to her) they cast her out - ugh. From the way her perspective has been described, it seems clear she doesn’t see the difference between her being different and him being creepy.
Anyway, I have some questions!
:)
Don’t know if this came up before and I missed it, but in this week’s reading, 店長 says っつー(の/んだ) twice. My dictionary doesn’t tell me anything. D: Anyone who knows what’s up with that?
P 66: だったら働くなっつーの。
P 75: その根性で仕事しろっつーんだよ。
「～っつーの」is equivalent to「～と言うの」or「～と言いたいの」
In the examples you mentioned, it’s more ～と言いたいの. “~ is what I’d like to say”. But in nuance, instead of translating it to that, it just feels like expressing a stronger opinion than usual of what others should do. In that sense, it also is similar to んですよ.
Yeah this part was sad. How she thinks that all foreign matter will be sweeped away, and that’s why she should keep on imitating them mindlessly. Well, because of her condition that’s the only option for her, but still.
I’m wondering if maybe we’ll 恵子 will learn of a good excuse/backstory/their will be character growth that kind of explains why 白羽 is the way he is portrayed. I’m very curious.
So… it seems here we have the embedded sentence 私が「コンビ二」 へ向かっていつでも祈り続けている, that then is turned into the direct object by the use of ことを of the rest of the sentence.
However I find both the inner and outer sentences puzzling. The inner one has 私 as the subject, yet it seems more logical from context that the one praying was the 店長 (he kept praying that our MC would arrive to the store at any moment?)
Then the outer sentence has 店長 as the subject, as far as I understand, but I have no idea what it means…
私が「コンビ二」 へ向かっていつでも祈り続けていることを = Me, always praying for the store (this probably means “Me, always being faithful to the store”)
その場にいないときもちゃんと見てくれている。= Sees me even when he’s not here
８人目の店長は、私が「コンビ二」 へ向かっていつでも祈り続けていることを、その場にいないときもちゃんと見てくれている。
The 8th manager always watches over me even when he’s not here, he knows that I’m faithful to the store (I keep praying to it).
That we see things from the main character’s perspective probably affects things, but the way it was portrayed kind of makes it feel a bit insensitive of the others to comment on age of all things. You’d kind of think they’d at least focus on other things if they wanted to complain when they have someone who’s almost the same age as the person they’re complaining about in the room(that’s even something they know about, unlike the other stuff) Other than that, it kind of felt like 白羽 could show up again some capacity since it felt like there were a few things that were touched upon in 恵子’s thoughts but left mostly unexplored otherwise. Or like someone else said, he may also only have been to get her to think those things, but it kind of still feels like that would leave some things unknown.
I read the first 6 pages in a blur because it was so interesting. But then I got stuck on the same sentence as @2OC3aOdKgwSGlxfz. Honestly, even with @mrahhal’s explanation I don’t really understand it.
I don’t understand how 祈る would be used in the way @mrahhal says. Can’t it just literally be that she’s praying/hoping for the store (to succeed, etc.)?
I thought it might mean more like the manager sees her doing whatever you’d translate the 祈り続けている as, but the くれている does make it seem more like what @mrahhal said. According to jisho, one meaning of 見る that I’d never seen before is “to look after” / “to take care of”, so I guess it’s that? But how would the manager be looking after her when he’s not there? I don’t really get it.
I don’t really see how the 見てくれている would be referring to her instead of her actions (the こと), based on the subclause. If it was referring to her, wouldn’t the subclause be something like 「コンビ二」 へ向かっていつでも祈り続けている私を?
"The 8th manager sees (as in notices) that I’m always (praying for /being faithful for/) thinking of the store, even when he’s not there.
As in, he knows she has the store’s best interests in mind even when he’s not around, unlike someone who’ll slack off when the boss isn’t around.
But, well, I do tend to miss nuances and in hindsight obvious grammatical functions.
I can see how you got to your sentence @mrahhal, but the meaning escapes me.
For Keiko, the Konbini is the centre of her world. It gives her everything she needs. So this is a beautiful metaphor - everything she does for the benefit of the Konbini is like an act of worship. The image is of her facing it as if it’s a temple or shrine, praying.
８人目の店長は、[above sentence]を、その場にいないときもちゃんと見てくれている。
Keiko appreciates the fact that her boss sees her devotion to the Konbini, even when he is not physically present (but sees her when he reviews the security camera footage).
This is one of those things in Japanese that can be used in abundance to mean all sorts of directionality I guess. “Me, praying towards the store”? Something like that.
I don’t understand how 祈る would be used in the way @mrahhal says. Can’t it just literally be that she’s praying/hoping for the store (to succeed, etc.)?
You’re very right, I just thought it sounded better in English like that. “Praying for the store”, it can be taken literally. Also, “faithful” doesn’t convey the same intensity of action. Maybe “devoted”.
I don’t really see how the 見てくれている would be referring to her instead of her actions
You’re also right. But I thought it didn’t matter in this particular case, it’s from the POV of Keiko and she’s expressing her gratitude/happiness. Her actions is her (will always mess up whenever we translate to English), but yeah literally it’s her actions. And yeah 見てくれる feels much more than a bland “watching my actions”, which is why I used “watches over”. (and of course, he’s watching over her actions through the cameras even when he’s not there, is what Keiko was referring to)
Read this quickly again because it was interesting.
I’m actually not sure what to think about this part. Maybe since reading takes a long time compared to say English I forget little details along the way but I kinda feel like even though she is the narrator I don’t know all that much about how she feels about things. Or maybe she just doesn’t?
I thought that since 白羽さん was disrupting the balance of the コンビニ and messing everything up she would be annoyed or dislike him, but I didn’t get the impression she felt anything beyond maybe being a little bothered. And she even seemed to kinda like him/find him interesting at a certain point. I don’t know if the fact that she seems to relate to him is sad or concerning.
The other 店員 were quite inconsiderate with the things they said, so I wonder if that’s the reason she feels they are similar. In that case that is just sad.
I think my favorite part was when he is going on with his weird sexist rant and she just cuts him off. But even then I feel like she was literally only concerned about being late.
I don’t know, maybe she disagrees with him at some point but I didn’t see it?
I think 恵子 thinks very differently from the average person. She is not overly concerned with social behavior, and does not understand what makes it necessary/important for most people around her.
I believe she does have feelings. She likes her family - she recognizes their love for her, relies on her sister for help and modulates her behavior so as not to cause her grief. (for example when she chose conversation topics based on her sister’s past reactions) She has displayed both curiosity and distraction.
I think what 恵子 does not display is that natural empathy most of us are born with, that allow us to emulate and understand societal behaviors around us. Rather than intuitively understanding it, she has to consciously recognize and emulate it.
So far her thoughts have been very logical, I think. Rather than reacting intuitively (spontaneously, emotionally…), she reaches logical conclusions based on what she knows and acts accordingly.
Sometimes that seemed to mean she modulates her behavior to be more… Socially acceptable to her coworkers/friends etc.
In 白羽’s case, getting angry is unproductive, illogical. The goal is to teach him to be a good employee. In her role as 店員, that is what she does.
I rather thought her curiosity towards him was very interesting. He doesn’t fit what she has learned about expected behavior. He doesn’t fit in. I don’t think it’s strange that she might relate to that.
I also really liked that part. ‘it’s not the joumon period anymore, and anyway we’re at work, your personal problems don’t matter’ I definitely think she was mostly concerned with work - but also, misogyny doesn’t make sense in this day and age, so of course she can’t understand it and disagrees with it.
Well, I didn’t actually read them all at once
I usually only read 1-3 pages in one go and take little breaks in between, or stop for a while when I come across a sentence I don’t understand right off the bat and I know I have to reread/investigate further.
So even with it being interesting I don’t think I’m likely to read more than 5 pages in one go either.
I actually think that tiredness you speak about is my main reason for not reading a lot more these days. Even though I’m starting to understand more and read “faster” in little bursts, my brain still goes to mush after a few pages even if I’m not having a lot of trouble and even if it is interesting(and of course when I’m not understanding much that happens a lot faster). I’ve been in that exact same place with English before so it seems that it is unavoidable and the only thing to do is to keep reading until it gets better
Am I supposed to understand the conversion between the 店長 and 泉さん on page 69? Starting with あ、泉さんちょっと表出れる and ending with 一段増やしたいんだけど. I really have no idea what they’re talking about or even if it’s one or more than one conversation. More indicators of who’s doing the talking sure would help…
Also, is it me, or are some of these pages a lot harder than previous weeks?
Just when 恵子 was starting to enjoy 白羽’s weirdness and maybe even relating to it. At the end, being confronted with everyone’ s reaction to his ‘differences’ and wondering if that’s what I will be like when (if? Felt like it was a foregone conclusion to her) they cast her out - ugh. 
From the way her perspective has been described, it seems clear she doesn’t see the difference between her being different and him being creepy.
