ファタモルガーナの館 // The House in Fata Morgana: Door 2 (Visual Novel Informal Club)

Yeah that makes sense. I should also add that this deck specifically is about learning to handwrite kanji (from memory, using only English prompts) so obviously any kanji I add can potentially increase the review load significantly since I’m not just working on pure recognition. So for this reason I tend to be more selective and I tend to only add entries once they’ve come up a few times already.

The actual deck is published here by the way: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/610839770

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Oh that’s cool, thanks! As of now at least I’ve totally written off (heh) handwriting to focus on everything else, but given how much I’ve just gotten into learning Japanese as a hobby in general I’ve wondered if sometime, probably years from now, I’d ever get the urge to start on it. I just don’t even like having to handwrite in English very much now that I can type so it was easy to leave out before.

A whole lot of things about how I learn Japanese aren’t how I’d necessarily recommend to people anyway haha, and this part of it is definitely a function of where I am right now; in the past I stuck to only the things in the same way I came across them. Honestly I think I get a boost from learning weird obscure things being fun and tend to do better on things like that or overly specific words that aren’t going to help me very often.

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Yeah I definitely just do it because I enjoy handwriting in general, it’s certainly not the best use of my study time…

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Ah, it is indeed not in kanji :stuck_out_tongue:

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庭には一輪の薔薇もなく、漆喰の壁な塵芥により黒ずみ、廊下には蜘蛛の巣が、外壁は蔦という蔦に覆われ、見るも無残。

Ok bro you know kanji, we got it. Cool it!

I hope that the fact that the 獣 speaks in Minecraft doesn’t mean that the 女中 is going to narrate the entire chapter…

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Don’t worry, this chapter has some good dialogues inside of it too, but if memory serves me well, even the dialogue bits in this chapter will be sonkeigo-heavy ^^

I took a swing to get to the name of the new owner of the establishment, i was sure his name would be ベスチア, but it’s べステア instead, oh well xddd, probably taking a break now, i’m 7 hours 38 minutes into the game since starting, my longest single-source Japanese read since 2020 already

The first part of this door had a lot of rosy language I simply decided to ignore after not being able to read a single kanji, so didn’t do much mining for words, I did add 薄暗い and 辿り着く to my level list of kanji though ^^

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It is kinda interesting how much language knowledge some visual novels expect, because it’s pretty common for them to do absolutely no furigana like this. But the more I read normal adult novels, I’m finding that it’s really the norm for any word they deem a little unusual to get furigana in many of them (and sometimes random common words that make no sense to label, haha). Surely many books would be giving you stuff like しっくい and つた at least.

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The standards for kanji/furigana are really mysterious sometimes. I was reading that IBC light novel the other day and for some reason 誰 had furigana at some point even though it was not furigana heavy overall.

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Gardening tips and tricks

Gardening lesson with immortal 女中 and her pet Lovecraftian horror beast.

Good for her.

I’m curious to see how the various doors tie (or don’t) into each other. Initially I assumed that every door would be a stand-alone episode but there have been many references to door 1 already, although so far input very superficial.

That intro narration was brutal for me, but I did discover the kanji 焉 which looks very funny to me. It’s like a 正 crashing into a 鳥.

Now that the “dialogues” pick up it’s easier to follow.

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Yeah “unfortunately” with this VN it seems like it’s a pattern, new door = new setting, new intro, new context, which is the hardest part of every reading material, and now we get to do it multiple times! You really have to push through it in the beginning. Remember to enjoy the scenery and the beautiful new kanji though :smiley:

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It’s more work for sure but for what it’s worth I really like how the maid’s narration is written. It seems like really nice writing from what I’ve managed to work out in Japanese writing styles in my limited experience up to now.

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迷い人は訝しみながらもーーベステアを人だと思い直したのです。

This use of を surprised me. I’m not entirely sure I understand the nuance. It’s it “he started to think of him as a human”?

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Yeah basically, the person who wandered in, despite some doubt, re-evaluated ベステア as being a human being.

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嫐り殺し

So a woman between two men is “sport with, ridicule, tease”. Mmmh

供物

I thought the woman would be the fiancée of the merchant, did not expect white haired girl to make a comeback!

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Did they mention an “Albufeira wetland” or did I misunderstood what they said?

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Haha yes I noticed that one too.

Summary

Indeed. The line + context was
お母さん……怒っているかな。
ううん、きっと悲しんでる。
アルブフェーラの湿地体より広く、日の沈む海より深く。
私がそうさせてる。 でも……。
I have no idea what it’s referring to.

Good with some progress, keep on going, I’m waiting for you at door 4!

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Albufeira is a sort of lagoon in Portuguese, and there’s a place near Lisbon that’s called “Lagoa da Albufeira” and has similar vistas to what we see in the backgrounds, so it stood out to me.

Here’s a picture from a few years ago:

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Nice! My impression is that Fata Morgana is “in Europe”. Like you found that in the first door only the UK was making sense (and with their first names too). Portugal could make sense here, and another country makes sense for door 3. I haven’t seen enough of door 4 to tell yet.

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