君の名は book discussion

Japanese Language Book Clubs
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Preambule on the thread

Hi everyone!
I was just recently tidying up my bookshelf in an attempt to set up a decent reading practice (and finally read all those books purchased years ago with a thought “ow, that looks so interesting, doesn’t matter I don’t get a word out of synopsis! I will definitely be able to read this in a couple of months!” Sweet lies, heh.)
And I found the 君の名は light novel edition which I bought in Nov 2016. 4 years anniversary - good time to read this one! :expressionless:
I was dead sure this novel was read once in one of the WK reading clubs and was surprised to realise it wasn’t. At least my search through the forum and Reading subsection brought me nothing except the book being mentioned here and there.

So well, I started to read it regardless. I have no power to call for the reading group anyway (I mean, I am just dead tired with my current lifestyle, so…no energy left). I will be building a vocabulary Google sheet as I read it and plan to share it here once I am done.

Also sort of a promise to myself to finally read the book before 2020 ends and watch that animovie!
You see, I’ve promised to watch it only after I finish the book, so my husband already silently flips through this page in our local movie app :grimacing:

In case I missed the topic where the 君の名は was actually read, could anyone please guide me there? Building a vocab takes quite some time, so I’d love to save the effort if possible…

UPDATE: as @Belthazar and @NicoleIsEnough clarified, 君の名は indeed has not yet been read in a book club since it came second in the votes within Intermediate book club. So this thread then will be the standalone reading thread. Anyone can join any time, read at your own pace, add questions or answer them as well as share anything you find curious about the book.

ABOUT THE BOOK: published by Kadokawa in 2016, it exists in several versions including the one issued by Kadokawa Tsubasa Bunko (i.e. for younger readers, with furigana). You may want to find this one to make it an easier reading. Sample pages can be found here: Tsubasa Bunko ed at BookLive
I started the book when I was lv25 and it is pretty difficult. But since I have no schedule pressing me, it is much easier to read :slight_smile:

VOCABULARIES: Koohi has the word list here, as advised by @eefara. I am building the vocab list as well while I crawl through the book, it can be found Here

So let’s enjoy some reading :stuck_out_tongue:

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I don’t know about a book club, but I know that koohi has a vocab list (need account to see it, I believe).

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Thank you! I’ve never used the koohi website, so tried it right away. It seems to me that it is much similar to floflo, which also has a word list from 君の名は. I am using that one, in fact. It helps a lot, but still there is a number of words not recognized by floflo and also a handful of words that are not recognized correctly (i.e. only a part of word taken and translated, which does not make sense).
I am not quite used to this as this is the 1st time I had to use floflo so maybe I miss sth here as well…

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Floflo and Koohi are the same site! The owner is shifting everything to koohi, which is why it looks so similar.

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Where do you guys get your original light novels from? Do you import them from amazon.jp?
I’m living in europe and the sources from where to buy are “not that crystal clear” ^^

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Those that I have as paper books were bought in Japan or in Thailand during my lucky trips to either of these countries. Any of my friends travelling there are also requested to bring whatever book marked as bestseller in BookOff as a souvenir :stuck_out_tongue:
Alternatively my friends often use CDJapan to order real books since amazon-jp bans sending anything to Russia (no clue why).

And well, most books I have are just digital versions bought in one of the e-stores. I use BookLive, for example.
Also this thread here may help: https://community.wanikani.com/t/resources-for-starting-to-read-japanese-content/31644

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It was nominated, but basically always came second in voting.

I have the book, but I’m currently busy reading other books…

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Okay, so it’s as I thought - the best way would be to visit the country.
Also thanks for the reference, I will dive deeper into the topic from there on :slight_smile:

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Amazon.jp is good, but if you are just by individual books the shipping costs is going to proportionally be enormous compared to what you actually pay for the books. I wouldn’t suggest buying from Amazon Japan unless you’re order is going to be fairly hefty since their international shipping is like a flat rate of 1000 yen + each per item cost.

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Unfortunately, that book is famous for finishing in second place in almost every poll of the Intermediate Book Club :joy_cat:
So, sorry for the bad news, but looks like you will be the one to pave the way…

I can totally understand that you don’t want to run a full-fledged book club, but maybe you should consider setting up at least one thread for it. Maybe some others might want to tag along anyways ^^ Plus, you get a nice place where you can drop off any questions you may have, and I’m sure there will be people around who are willing to help you out with them.

EDIT: Oh I must have been very unfocused yesterday - I was sure we were discussing this in some book club thread… But you have this thread already! :woman_facepalming:
Would be nice if you could keep us posted when you are planning to start / whether you started already, and maybe when you start a new chapter or something?

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Unfortunately FloFlo (and probably Koohi as well) suffer from quite a bunch of misparses (Japanese seems to be very hard for machines, so you should be even more proud of being able to read it!). To avoid learning nonsensical words, I’d recommend to use it rather in parallel to reading the book, not so much for learning ahead (sad as it is :woman_shrugging:).

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Sure I will! Just changed the topic a bit to make it easier to find if anyone else wishes to join.

I am now at about 2/3 of the second chapter, or page 33 out of 252 (in my paper version), my pace is sth around 10 pages per week. Progress can also be seen in the vocab spreadsheet that is updated as I go through the chapters.

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Oh, speaking of which: You may want to add this thread to the

(There is a “Misc. Unscheduled” section waiting for you)

Nice! I have some other stuff to read atm, but I’m thinking of catching up to you next month or so - wanted to get this book off of my reading pile for ages now…

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Ha, I would like to read this book, but not until next year. I too already own a copy which has been gathering dust on my bookshelf for a couple of years. I loved the movie.

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With a pace of 10 pages per week, this book will run until April or something, so that should give you plenty of time to catch up! :muscle:

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I’ve come across a passage in the book which I cannot decipher properly. Each independent piece is alright, but they don’t stick together no matter how I try. Perhaps smb could give me a hint.

Text and some photos

This is the passage: 夜の神社から流れてくる大和笛の音は、例えば
都会のヒトなんかからしたらちょっとしたホラーなんじゃないかなと私は思う。

I get it as that Yamato flute sounds freaky as if that was a horror movie, but I can’t connect it to the 都会のヒト as this seems to mean “townsperson”?

Also attaching a photo of the phrase breakdown. TBH these types of phrases are the thing that confuses me the most about Japanese…

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The passage

If you take out なんか, you can see that から attaches to 都会のヒト. I think 都会 refers specifically to a big city. I found in Jisho, that Xからすると means ‘from the point of view of X’. In this case it just uses a different conditional. So my interpretation would be:

I think that the sound of the Yamato flute floating down from the Shinto shrine might sound like something from a horror movie to a person from the big city.

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Thank you, I had around the same feeling about this part, but was unable still to put it together.
As far as I understand the text this explanation fits in :blush:

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I’ve added this book club to the Master List of Book Clubs (and we scratched its nomination from the Intermediate Club list) so that people who are interested can find it more easily. Please feel free to adjust if you think there’s a better location for it!

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Thank you so much! I’ve been thinking about doing that some ay, but always prioritised an attempt to catch up with my reading schedule instead…

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