Everybody should feel free to post and ask questions–it’s what makes book clubs fun! But please do not post until you are familiar with Spoiler Courtesy! (even tho, to be fair, there is no real story in that book and not much to spoil).
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.
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
When asking for help, please mention the page number or a the very least the chapter number, 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.
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!
Proper Nouns
Name
Reading
Notes
あわこ
Main character
ねねか
A little girl from the same neighborhood
かご中
かごなか
Ayako’s colleague. Her head is a bird cage
Discussion Questions
What was you favorite story this week ?
Would you use the hat of chapter 3 ?
Participation
Will you be reading along with us this week?
I’m reading along
I have finished this part
I’m still reading the book but I haven’t reached this part yet
I’m reading this book after the club has finished
I’m no longer reading the book
0voters
If you’ve already read this book but are still going to join the discussion, please select “I have finished this part.”
Don’t forget to set this thread to Watching in order to stay abreast of discussion!
I like the mood of these stories! Even though the one about the Buddha’s birthday was kind of hard to read (lots of compound kanji), I liked the resolution a lot.
I think in the fourth story, the map to the honey bread shop was said to be from the cat in the first story, so I’m interested to see if more of these stories are interrelated or have recurring characters.
Grammar point: adjective-らしく - in the manner that is typical of that person
Caught up with the 3 chapters for this week. I’m so enamored with this manga… it’s just so wildly imaginative!
My favorite chapter this time was the タマちゃん one; I laughed so hard multiple times and I was thrilled to find out the name of my favorite character so far is かご中さん. Also, I was glad I looked up タマ and found that it’s a stereotypical name for a cat, which makes the 4th panel on p24 even better.
I feel like I’m a little out of my league on the vocab with this one, but I feel good about how I’m following along with the grammar. Can’t wait until next week!
I managed to get through this week’s reading, although I definitely had to look up more words than I would like. I don’t quite have the vocabulary yet to read this fluently, but I feel like the level is right for my grammar.
I’ve started to recognize a few grammar points I recently studied on Bunpro, which is always really nice — it’s fun to encounter them “in the wild.”
I was wondering about the ending of this sentence: ちょっとよりみちしてこっか.
Is this a contraction of something like 行こうか?
Story
The stories continue to be really interesting. The タマちゃん one was especially hilarious — for example, the fact that we never learn how タマちゃん eats because they don’t like being watched, and that they turn into a hard-boiled egg after taking a hot bath
I kinda liked not quite knowing some of the words but having at least a guess about how to read em for the 6th chapter!!
The 4th one was my favorite, I love how the kid is like “I know the perfect spot for this microscopic purchase!!” and the idea of an advertisement for a shop opening on a flower petal!
かご中さん’s name is incredible. I guess a lot of Japanese media does this with character names, huh… 炭治郎 (charcoal cure guy) from 鬼滅の刃, 日向 and 影山 as a pair from ハイキュー, 夜神月 from デスノート…
Yeah, there was a real sense of adventure in the story about the honey bread shop, and I really loved that.
I do wish I could get to the point where I don’t feel the need to look up every unknown word, but I have this systematic side of me that insists on looking everything up and putting it into spreadsheets…
hah, I feel you. I watch a little language-learning youtube occasionally and was struck by one of these polyglots saying he just looks up a word he wants to know and then forgets it, looks it up and forgets it. i sometimes feel really dumb looking up a word i’m pretty sure i know the meaning of (ハチミツ, for instance) or looking up a word i just looked up a couple weeks or days or hours ago, but it sounds like this polyglot is just happy to let the word drift in over time?
and like, idk yesterday some friedns and i had a little moment where they were trying to think up an english word that means ambition or going after what you want, but has a negative connotation. i suggested avarice but they were looking for hubris, neither of which is quite what they described. but is that fine? yes absolutely.
What I’ve been doing is retyping the text into a google doc (I have a Japanese - romanji setting on the keyboard) and then looking up words I don’t know in jisho. I also use the shirabe jisho app that lets me draw the kanji to try and identify it. I’ve found that writing it out helps me figure out the flow of the sentences better.
I like that every story is just four pages too - helps the work feel more bite-size.
For me, vertical text is quite a bit harder to read than horizontal text, so I can definitely see how copying it into a google doc would help.
Also, in story 3 (眠気防止帽子), the hat guy speaking in katakana was surprisingly difficult to read - especially the words that mix kanji with katakana endings. So rewriting that part would probably make it easier too.
Chapters 4 and 5 were a lot of fun. I don’t think I realized this book would be a series of short, surreal adventures, but nearly all of them are really charming.
Chapter 6 sort of had me scratching my head. Lots of unfamiliar kanji, and my understanding of it was it seemed very close to a real, believable ritual.
I’ve been using the spreadsheet to look up words that I don’t know, which is right often enough that it’s worth the time for me. I’m also at the point where I only try to memorize a word if I see it a few times, which feels like a sustainable approach. Reading gets more fun every week as the sentences make more sense. But I’m sure there are different approaches that work best for other people.
