変な家 🏠 🔍 (IBC)・Week 5

Japanese Language Book Clubs
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変な家 :house: :mag:
Intermediate Book Club
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Week 5 31 August 2024
End page 127
End % 42.5
End phrase
Next starting heading 第三章
Pages 24
Starting location 673
Location count 204
Last week Week 4
Next week Week 6

Vocabulary

Please read the guidelines on the first page before adding any words.

Discussion Guidelines

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!

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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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).
  3. 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, 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!

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
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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!

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Thoughts on this week (spoilers)

Wow, lots of new details and mysteries this week. At least now we know that the explanation for Kyouichi’s disappearance after visiting the Saitama house but his wife supposedly not following up or having any idea where he was going was just made up so its inconsistencies make sense.

I do feel like it’s very up in the air how the victims would be lured to the house let alone convinced to have a nice relaxing bath… Until now I’d thought that the left hand being removed would be as proof to whoever requested them to kill the victim that they had done the deed. But it really seems like trying to target specific people would be exceedingly difficult with their method.

Also, one thing I thought about the Tokyo house is that it’s somewhat odd that the second door out of Aくん’s bedroom that opens onto the bedroom ends up directly facing the window. That seems like it would increase the odds of him being spotted if he did ever leave his room.

Another thing about trying to keep Aくん and the baby separated and just keeping Aくん’s identity hidden is that I have no idea what on earth the logistics would be for them moving houses, especially if not only keeping the bodies undiscovered, but also keeping Aくん’s existence hidden was of utmost importance.

There’s also plenty to speculate about 綾乃’s disappearance, the cousin and the parents, but it looks like next week’s reading should add more material to speculate about such things.

Also this whole method of meeting that 栗原 set up at the end seemed rather odd to me… especially as the author is happy to meet with 柚希 at a cafe even though there are others around at such a venue (which seems like a better idea if one’s safety is a concern).

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Just to check, is there no character name list for this book club?

My Thoughts

So the thing I mentioned about Japanese parents often sleeping with their infants came up!

Dang, she just came clear and dropped her whole backstory in that cafe lol.
So, her whole story before was a lie. But now it makes sense why she said originally she thinks she’s been in the Tokyo house, I think I’m her fake story that didn’t fit in anywhere.

Someone brought up the idea that this might be occult related, which would make sense with the author’s background, and I’m thinking that would make sense. The sister could’ve been sent away because at age 12 her parents found out she was… something or other when she killed her cousin and then she passed that onto the first kid.

Also I was starting to feel it takes up extra time to have the most protagonist go back and forth between the two glad they’re meeting face-to-face, also then we can get more insight on people’s trustworthiness.

On another note: I am flying through these readings lol. I’m worried about mixing up what happened in what chapter, so what I’m doing is in the notes app on my phone I noted each remaining week and when the reading ends, and I’m going to write up my comments ahead of time (like a batch) then send them here each week.

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It’s in one of the tabs of the vocab spreadsheet, which is linked on each weekly post (:

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Oh thank you! I tried opening it on my phone but I only saw the first two tabs, when I’m back on my computer later I’ll check it out :+1:

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Reply

Spill something on them?

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Ayano

All theories I could come up with go in a similar direction. It’ll be fun to see if this checks out or if it’s a red herring. Very tempted to read ahead.

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Two years into my studies I’m still not convinced that this entire language isn’t a convoluted prank.

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Finally took some time yesterday and today to sit down and catch up on weeks 3-5 lol. I really liked this week’s portion, especially the reveal of Ayano’s backstory.
I’m also enjoying reading everyone’s theories, though I have nothing to add myself since I simply like seeing where the story takes me without speculating too much.

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It’s often 経緯(けいい), but can be read as 経緯(いきさつ). WaniKani also teaches two readings. I don’t know about the rest.

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Well, I have officially finished the book. I like following along in the readings with you guys but I couldn’t help myself…

I’ll post my weekly thoughts I wrote up as I was reading as we go, otherwise I’ll just try to answer questions!

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As we learn more and more about past events I tried to set up a chronology sheet in the vocabulary file (‘Chronology’ in 変な家 🏠🔍 - Google Sheets)

Please feel free to complete. I am not sure about some dates.

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I happened to have just learned that vocab on WK two days ago, so encountering it in the wild felt extra rewarding haha

Also, I think the ending percentage for this week might be off. On my kindle copy, the end of chapter 2 was 45%.

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Summary

The reveal about the true identity of 柚希 does mean that she wouldn’t have been aware of any mark present on 恭一’s wrist. I still think it’s some kind of cult thing.

Also the narrator is a terrible investigator. Instead of catching her in a lie by asking something unassuming like “how long were you and 恭一 married?” he just tells her about the unwed thing outright. Luckily she just confessed immediately.

I didn’t think that the “rental space” thing was too odd, it’s probably some kind of coworking place with a lot of people around. It’s safer than meeting at 栗原’s house but also calmer and more spacious than a random café if you want to go through documents. Seems like a smart choice.

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Summary

Yeah I don’t find the rental space odd (at least for now). I feel like these and coworking type spaces are pretty common in bigger cities.

I am interested in everyones theories about cults/vampires/etc, all of which I never would’ve thought of. I’m not sure of how I feel about the concept, but…

VAGUE rumors about people's feelings on the ending lol

again, idk any details, but I’ve heard lots of people felt disappointed by the ending, so I guess I’m setting my expectations low and just enjoying the ride

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VAGUE rumors about people's feelings on the ending

Yeah I refrained from mentioning that in previous discussions because it felt a bit too spoilery in a meta way, but I also have had that in mind from the start. That could mean anything though.

Best case scenario for me would be that people are disappointed that it’s not supernatural, because as I mentioned last week I personally would find it a bit cheap if it was revealed that it was vampires or something like that instead of coming up with a more grounded answer.

But frankly at this point halfway through the book I also don’t really know where we’re headed: normally in this type of mystery stories the big suspense is to figure out whodunnit (but here we do know that, at least in a general way) or how they did it (which we don’t completely know, but it also doesn’t feel like the main drive of the story since we have a bunch of plausible explanations already) or how they’re going to get caught (Columbo-style, but that also doesn’t really apply here).

Instead the main thrust of the story so far seems to be the why they’re doing it, but frankly who cares? Whether they’re cultists or vampires or yakuza or cannibals or aliens, does it really change anything? We barely know anything about these murderers so it’s hard to care a lot about their motives for murdering people.

It’s also a bit frustrating that the narrator is just some journalist with very little ability to do proper investigations. It just feels unserious. The police should have gotten involved by this point. We have stories of imprisoned, undeclared children, 12yo kids being sent to a foster family in mysterious circumstances, suspicious deaths…

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VAGUE rumors about people's feelings on the ending (no spoilers)

I’ve completed the book and I really liked the ending. I’m not sure why people would not like it. Maybe they were expecting the story to go in one direction, and were disappointed when it went in another. If you want to read a story about time travelling zombies (as a purely hypothetical example), then read a book about time travelling zombies. Don’t complain that the book in front of you doesn’t have them.

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also not spoilers but just in case

That’s good to hear! I’ve been enjoying the book enough that I don’t really mind what I’ve heard about the ending but I’m glad not everyone felt that way haha. Have you read the second book? From what I’ve heard, it’s multiple smaller stories instead of one storyline, which I could see working better with the blueprint format. I’m interested in reading that next, but hadn’t heard anyone really talking about it.

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I can’t believe that you spoiled that the katabuchis are time traveling zombies…

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I haven’t read the second book, but its definitely on my ‘to read’ list