Google sheet: セーラー服と機関銃 vocabulary sheet Please read the guidelines on the first page before adding any words.
Discussion Guidelines
Spoiler Courtesy
Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.
Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
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Proper Nouns
Name
Hiragana reading
Notes
Kindle location first mentioned
赤川次郎
あかがわじろう
the author
cover
尾田医師
おだいし
Doctor Oda
24
目高組
めだかぐみ
Medaka clan
86
Izumi’s family
星泉
ほしいずみ
main character, Izumi
170
酒井好子
さかいよしこ
aunt Yoshiko
172
星貴志
ほしたかし
main character’s father, Takashi
179
酒井呈一
さかいていいち
Uncle (Yoshiko’s husband)
201
知子
ともこ
Tomoko (?Izumi’s mother)
211
マユミ
-
mysterious woman in Izumi’s apartment
348
土田恒美
つちだつねみ
Tsunemi, real name of the woman pretending to be Mayumi
1,827
岡崎真由美
おかざきまゆみ
The real name of Mayumi, friend of Izumi’s father, photographer.
2,549
Classmates
奥沢哲夫
おくざわてつお
Classmate of Izumi, Tetsuo (son of an executive, smart dresser, family expect him home for dinner on time)
251
渡辺周平
わたなべしゅうへい
Classmate of Izumi, Shuhei (stocky, bowlegged, loves Judo)
251
竹内智生
たけうちともお
Classmate of Izumi, Tomo. (Smart, heading for Tokyo university, wears glasses)
261
和子
かずこ
classmate,
433
Schoolteachers
三浦久子
みうらひさこ
Miss Miura, teacher
357
保科校長
ほしなこうちょう
Headteacher Hoshina
368
Yakuza
健次
けんじ
Kenji, Medaka gang member, short, unbalanced (brought the doctor in the car in the prologue), chews gum
555
英樹
ひでき
Hideki, Medaka gang member, skinny and unhealthy looking, wears thick glasses
556
武
たけし
Takeshi, Medaka gang member, stocky and overweight
558
佐久間
さくま
Sakuma, Medaka second in command, unusually tall (‘beanpole’), in 50s
558
浜口
はまぐち
Hamaguchi, local Yakuza chief
1,034
関根
せきね
Sekine, head of the Matsunoki clan
2,141
元
げん
Gen, Yakuza henchman in the Matsunoki clan
2,306
剛
つよし
Tsuyoshi, yakuza henchman in the Matsunoki clan
2,306
萩原
はぎわら
Hagiwara, messenger from a ‘big fish’
3,211
Other characters
黒木
くろき
detective, head of the S section
870
浜口物産
はまぐちぶっさん
Hamaguchi trading company
936
野田代議士
のだだいぎし
Representative Noda, politician, waiting for Hamaguchi
1,064
岩田
いわた
Night watchman at Izumi’s apartment block
1665
関根正明
せきねまさあき
Son of Sekine, the head of the Matsunoki clan
2,073
円谷重治
つぶらやしげはる
Shigeharu, left name on business card at Izumi’s apartment
2,665
マクシム
-
Maxim’s [I presume this is a reference to the famous Parisian restaurant]
2,480
三大寺一
さんだいじはじめ
Hajime, ‘big boss’, kidnapper of Izumi, nicknamed ‘the fat man’, and ‘Doc’
3326
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Resources
Membership
Will you be reading with us?
Yes
Yes, but I might start late
Maybe
No
0voters
Which version will you be reading?
eBook
Paperback
0voters
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I’m planning to read the kindle version, so unsure how to sort out page numbers for weekly selections. The book has long sections rather than convenient short chapters, so it doesn’t have easy breakpoints.
Any suggestions?
Thanks for making the thread! Can you post the link in the IBC home thread? Then it will get visibility and people will join the discussion to help choosing the schedule
I guess we could just decide in percent depending on how many weeks we want the club to run + a ramping period. The current pick is 16 weeks, before that it has been 16, 17, 14 weeks so somewhere around that.
Then check for each end of the week where does that lead you, if there is a section ending a bit after or a bit before?then choose that as a stop point, otherwise just a sentence around that percentage.
When you have the list of all the week assignments percent / last sentence, maybe if someone has the physical edition they can assist with the actual page numbers.
I can probably do that, but won’t have the physical copy for a few weeks. Also if anybody plans to read the Aozora full furigana physical book the page numbers in that will be different, because of the illustrations.
I’d also help but like pm215, I won’t have my hands on a physical copy for 2-3 weeks. My local kinokuniya has to order it from a supplier before they can finish selling it to me. It’s also not guaranteed they’ll be able to get it so I may end up going digital anyway!
Thanks, that is a good plan. I’ll put together a provisional plan. The kindle edition has “pages” as well as percent, so I can put both, but I don’t imagine the pages will correspond necessarily to a physical edition that people might have.
There are 333 “pages” in the kindle edition - so about 21 pages on average/week if 16 weeks. Would be 22 weeks if we restricted to 15 pages on average per week. I’m assuming that the faster pace would be ok, but what do people think?
Hm good question, I don’t know if 22 weeks is too long, but the book has 378 real pages against the current pick 288 real pages (according to Natively) so it kind of has to run for longer I guess. I’ll let the more experienced IBC members answer that one!
The IBC home thread says it aims at an average of 15 pages a week, so averaging 21 would definitely be a pretty big increase over that. I think the last book of this length the club did seems to be コーヒーが冷めないうちに, which was run in 17 weeks for 350 or so pages. Assuming the bunko paperback page count for this book rather than the kindle “page” count, that does suggest to me we should probably aim for more than 17 weeks (maybe 20?). We can always start the schedule at a more relaxed pace and speed up at the end if people are in favour of that once they have a feel for the difficulty level.
Oh, that one’s on me as I did not pay attention during nominations - usually we aim for books that are not longer than (300-)350 pages
I agree with pm that 21 pages on average would be too much, so if you could try for ~15 pages as an initial schedule, that would be good. Probably you can speed up a little towards the end - maybe run a poll after ~10 weeks or so? By that time most people have probably either settled in to the reading style or stopped reading the book…
As far as I remember you read directly from Bookwalker? That’s the hard way, almost as hard as reading from paperback, I know there’s a bit of a dictionary in Bookwalker but not as good at Yomichan and so easy lookups or whole translated sentences that you can paste in DeepL, which is what I do almost for every word reading from the epub version, that’s why it’s easier for me. Don’t be so hard on yourself
Buy on Kobo Rakuten instead of Bookwalker. Then it’s possible to get the epub from that, you need to do some internet searching on how, it’s a bit of a gray area as it involves removing a DRM
I’d recommend having a play with kindle. You can use kindle app on your computer or phone (don’t need an actual kindle, though I think they are really helpful). App is free and if you register an account with amazon jp you can download a sample of the book to see how it works for you. [will need a Japanese physical address when you register - but can just borrow one from a random place in Japan since you are only buying an ebook. Use a different password from any other amazon account you have.
Really easy word look ups and can look up translation of sentences/paragraphs etc
I use amazon, so maybe I am wrong… But doesn’t Bookwalker have its own dictionary? Is the dictionary that bad?
I really don’t like the dictionary the kindle app uses on my tablet, so I copy the word and look it up in a different dictionary app. It takes only 3 clicks. If the dictionary is the only issue, that should fix it.
Granted, I never used DeepL so no clue how that affects lookups
one problem is that some automatic dictionaries won’t recognise conjugated verbs - eg in their て form. Don’t know if book walker has that problem.
There are two Japanese dictionaries on Kindle - the JP-JP and JP-En one. I mostly use the JP-EN one to look up readings and then use my favourite Nihongo app/dictionary to look up words.
Worth being aware that there is a copy paste limit on kindle that it is possible to reach if you use it a lot. But you can work around by selecting text to look up online/on wiktionary/share, and the copy the text from the next screen…
It depends on the device you are using. On iOS, Bookwalker uses the device’s dictionaries (大辞林, among others, which is really good) but on Android you are stuck with Google Translate if I understand correctly.
There are a select few it doesn’t understand (e.g. げ on adjectives, I think) but for verbs it usually understands all the conjugations (at least I don’t remember any glitches there). Sometimes it mistakes ます-stem verbs for the corresponding noun, but one can usually derive the meaning without issues. Also, it seems to be improved over time, e.g. some time ago it did not understand さ on adjectives but now it seems to get along fine with it iirc.
I’ll probably join in on this one as I previously tried and failed to get into novels with the LN 本好きの下剋上 book club. They were going for a 30 pages/week pace, which was a lot for me at the time, so I’d definitely vote for closer to the 15/week page count.
