Welcome to the 午后のあくび Book Club!
Join the beginner book club here!
Every day is a little bit strange. Every day is wonderful. Here in Shiratama-cho, strange things come to life like fireflies.
View the nomination post here!
Where to purchase
BookWaker
AmazonJP
CDJapan
Ebook Japan
Schedule
To be discussed
Vocabulary
To be created.
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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags
Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).
Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:
Example
This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.
The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.
This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.
Posting Advice
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When asking for help, please mention the page number (or “chapter X page N”), and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked. As the threads get longer, it becomes more convenient to use the Search function, which is located in the upper right corner of the forum. It is the magnifying glass which is near your profile picture! The best way to search is usually to type part of the sentence you are confused about, and select “in this topic”. This will show you all posts within the current thread which has that string of text.
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Be sure to join the conversation! It’s fun, and it’s what keeps these book clubs lively! There’s no such thing as a stupid question! We are all learning here, and if the question has crossed your mind, there’s a very good chance it has crossed somebody else’s also! Asking and answering questions is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, so never hesitate to do so!
Page numbers
Page numbers are printed on all pages, physical and digital. It might help to also specify the chapter (they are all four pages long).
Proper Nouns
There are not that many recurring characters. Almost all the stories have Ayako meeting a one-shot character.
| Name |
Reading |
Notes |
| あやこ |
|
Main character |
| ねね |
|
A little girl from the same neighborhood |
| かご中 |
かごなか |
Ayako’s colleague. Her head is a bird cage |
Membership
Will you be reading with us?
Which version will you be reading?
Don’t forget to set this thread to Watching in order to be notified when weekly threads get posted!
8 Likes
reserved space just in case…
1 Like
Schedule
The book contains 36 chapters of four pages each. Scanning through the pages, all chapters appears to be of similar “weight”, except for:
You can read the first chapter here to get a sense of the amount of text per chapter. It’s all without furigana by the way.
There is also a 7-pages オマケ at the end, called “Panna and Cotta - のんびりな一日”, which we may of may not read.
I thought the book was short, but I admit this is actually a bit more reading that I though.
As usually, we can vote a fast / medium / slow schedule. And possibly adjust later if needed.
EDIT: added 2 month schedule if we want to be slightly faster. I underestimate the speed the BBC is used to. I remember during Hitori Bocchi, at some I just fell behind hard.
Faster schedule
| Week |
start date |
chapters |
pages with text |
| 1 |
mar 28 |
1-3 |
12 |
| 2 |
apr 04 |
4-7 |
12 |
| 3 |
apr 11 |
8-11 |
16 |
| 4 |
apr 18 |
12-17 |
20 |
| 5 |
apr 25 |
18-22 |
20 |
| 6 |
may 02 |
23-28 |
24 |
| 7 |
may 09 |
29-33 |
20 |
| 8 |
may 16 |
34-omake |
19 |
Fast schedule
| Week |
start date |
chapters |
pages with text |
| 1 |
mar 28 |
1-3 |
12 |
| 2 |
apr 4 |
4-6 |
12 |
| 3 |
apr 11 |
7-10 |
16 |
| 4 |
apr 18 |
11-15 |
16 |
| 5 |
apr 25 |
16-19 |
16 |
| 6 |
may 2 |
20-24 |
20 |
| 7 |
may 9 |
25-29 |
20 |
| 8 |
may 16 |
30-34 |
) |
Medium schedule
| Week |
start date |
chapters |
pages with text |
| 1 |
mar 28 |
1-2 |
8 |
| 2 |
apr 04 |
3-5 |
12 |
| 3 |
apr 11 |
6-8 |
12 |
| 4 |
apr 18 |
9-11 |
12 |
| 5 |
apr 25 |
12-16 |
12 |
| 6 |
may 02 |
17-20 |
16 |
| 7 |
may 09 |
21-24 |
16 |
| 8 |
may 16 |
25-28 |
16 |
| 9 |
may 23 |
29-32 |
16 |
| 10 |
may 30 |
33-36 |
16 |
| 11 |
jun 06 |
omake |
7 |
Slower schedule
| Column 1 |
Column 2 |
Column 3 |
Column 4 |
| 1 |
mar 28 |
1-2 |
8 |
| 2 |
apr 04 |
3-5 |
12 |
| 3 |
apr 11 |
6-8 |
12 |
| 4 |
apr 18 |
9-11 |
12 |
| 5 |
apr 25 |
12-15 |
12 |
| 6 |
may 02 |
16-18 |
12 |
| 7 |
may 09 |
19-21 |
12 |
| 8 |
may 16 |
22-24 |
12 |
| 9 |
may 23 |
25-28 |
16 |
| 10 |
may 30 |
29-32 |
16 |
| 11 |
jun 06 |
33-36 |
16 |
| 12 |
jun 13 |
omake |
7 |
The difference between schedules is not that high. I did try to take the “short chapters” into account. The omake week might also be cut of merged with the last week.
I will open the poll a bit later in case we want to discuss it a bit first. 
8 Likes
Fast schedule looks great to me. It has a nice curve, and if anything it’s slower than the two previous BBC clubs (which were both harder and had more pages!). Seems more like a “medium” schedule.
6 Likes
any of these look fine to me, and I like that it’s a bunch of short chapters
I’d probably prefer medium or fast
1 Like
I’m considering buying an eBook version, but on BookWalker it’s marked as “Japan only” and I live in Europe.
Has anyone got advice on how to purchase the eBook outside Japan?
1 Like
I was able to purchase the ebook on Bookwalker and I’m in the US, I used my Google and PayPal accounts. I’m not seeing “Japan only” on mine though so I don’t know if it’s just a Europe thing.
3 Likes
Yes, it may be because I am in Europe. Here you can see the 日本限定
Screenshot from BookWalker
Anybody else from Europe that managed to purchase a book on BookWalker?
Edit: I just found out that this seems to affect only Denmark.
The following message is displayed:
“For various reasons, it is temporarily not possible to purchase titles from our web store when accessing BOOK☆WALKER from Denmark after 2 April 2025 (JST).”
So it looks like this might be a Denmark-specific issue rather than a general Europe restriction.
2 Likes
Alright, let’s start voting. I added another, slightly faster schedule. It’s true that BBC can be much faster than I thought. But hey, maybe we can say it’s a cosy read with a chill schedule !
See the post above for the details.
- Faster: 8 weeks
- Fast: 9 weeks
- Medium: 11 weeks
- Slower: 12 weeks
I also ordered the french translation, just to help me keep pace if needed. As far as I know, it’s the only translation that exist.
I also need to prepare the vocab sheet. Do we usually just create an empty sheet ? Or do we use mokuro ? (I have bought the digital version and extracted the images already). I admit I almost never used the vocab sheet in the book clubs.
4 Likes
If you put up a blank sheet I’ll probably use it. For Hirayasumi I had to do a lot of lookups, and it was helpful to put them all somewhere (and maybe other readers benefited from it). Just a thought!
3 Likes
