Oh so I had them all right, nice 
chose くが because of the “cool” haircut and chose the narrator because he was close to しま on the cover and also the first one
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Oof, finally made it. That was long, and unfortunately it hasn’t really hooked me yet, so it also felt a little tedious.
This week
Yeah…I was even a bit disappointed by Hatano when he turned down an offer from another company and then again when he met Kougami again on the day of the discussion and just sprouted plattitudes. Who on Earth wants to work for a toxic shithole like that?
Yeah, that paragraph threw me, too. First off, it was so completely beyond my comprehension level that I ended up deepling most of it, and then when I finally understood it, I was just like…whyyyyyy? Half a page about some random singer when the main characters have hardly gotten any character development yet? That guy had better turn out one of them in disguise.
At first I thought that the scene where she and Hatano talk about how the moon is pretty because it has a dark side and then the moonlight falls on her face was some deep foreshadowing that she has a dark side…but then I remember that the title of the book already told us that all 6 of them are lying anyway and it didn’t feel that deep anymore.
Apart from the fact that this was so dense it felt like this week alone had more words than most books I’ve read with the IBC, it also was longer than 46 pages for me. I use a smaller font than the usual standard size given on Bookwalker and Natively, so with other books I’ve read, the weekly page count has always been slightly lower. So when I read “46 pages”, I thought “ok, 42-43 pages, might be doable”, but then it turned out to be nearly 50.
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A little late but I’m joining this book club! I remember seeing the poster for the movie.
I’m really enjoying it so far! Pretty smooth to read, and it feels like a topic that’s closer to me than most books we’ve read here because I work in Japan and also am familiar with the 就活 process for 新卒. I didn’t go through it myself, just know about it through researching when changing jobs/through people who went through it.
I really enjoyed the characterization and felt like these are all people I’ve come across at work at some point.
I noticed there’s a number of vocabulary that I see at work being used outside of talking about 就活, like 腑に落ちない, 終焉, and 芳しくない. I wonder if that’s on purpose.
Also how tiny is the text in the print book?? For only being 300-ish pages Kindle is predicting the entire book will take be around 16 hours.
The one thing I found confusing is since the first narrator is retelling events, sometimes he jumps around in the timeline.
Im on mobile and can’t use the reply function well but this is a reply
About the drug using celebrity section, I think that’s just more foreshadowing for what will come up about the students later.
The narrator thought “Damn I know he caused a traffic accident before but it was so unexpected that he’d do drugs… and now he’s canceled. Just goes to show even someone who seems like a pure idol can be two-faced,” which must be similar to what will be thought of some of these 就活生 when their lies come out. And their hypocrisy?
I can ramble for a long time but about how the Japanese 就活 and 新卒 system works because I think it’s interesting but I’ll try to hold off on some until a slower week. But below are some of my thoughts related to that and the reading.
Spearlinks, Japanese 就活
First off, like others said the way they changed the group discussion is such a red flag lol. If they pull something like that, there’s no way the work environment is any good. I get that Spearlinks is the fastest growing IT company, but it’s still a growing company and it isn’t necessary going to be the best for your career in the future. I knew something was up when they were showing off the employees playing darts.
Traditionally in Japan if you get into a good college that’s considered your “golden ticket” into a good company. However, if you change jobs it no longer helps in the same way, and often you downgrade when changing jobs. But this has changed a bit. That’s why it’s so vital to pick the best company right out of college.
Another reason why I don’t like Spearlinks: There’s no way their 新卒 system is very good. (Although it sounds from the final part of the chapter that it turned out okay) For a company of Spearlinks size, you’d expect that they’d have a month of just basic training about business manners etc before being added to a team, and then every 1-2 years would do job rotation to learn different skills. But if they’re only letting in one person and this is their first one I feel like they’d let them fall by the wayside.
I have much more to say but I want to keep reading so I will end things for now!
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Welcome!
It looks like your drop downs aren’t working because the [details] bit is touching the text inbetween, if you put in a line break between each square bracket and the text then it should work fine. Spoiler tags are fine in the absence of that anyway.
It’s just touching 300 pages in Tankobon, but the text is definitely quite densely packed compared to other books I’ve read recently.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts about the 就活 system in future sections! I have not so much of a direct link to the system yet, but it’s something I’m interested in still.
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Interesting point! That explains better why the narrator didn’t want to give up his maybe-spot for a you-got-the-job offer.
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