A new iteration of the timeshare presentations from the 80s (minus the nap)
Edit to previous theory: sleeping and renovating cult.
catching up, week 15 一度だけ現れた部屋 part one
This is a pretty fun chapter, I’m glad to see them actually physically setting foot in a house finally At first I had the wild idea that the dizziness in 入間’s memory was caused by some kind of secret mechanism that caused an entire room to spin around and reveal a secret door, but actually it was just an earthquake. Oh well. I was also glad to see them finally investigating one of those conveniently placed closets that have been littering every floor plan in the book so far
Week 19
Interesting week, wasn’t expecting things to get a bit more dark there. We’re nearing the end of the book and getting more resolutions, I’m really interested how certain specific chapters still tie into everything.
Reading was pretty smooth this week, blazed through it!
Also less than a 100 pages left! This will be the longest novel I’ve read in japanese until now.
Week 17
That’s also the #1 thing that stuck out to me. Kurihara is now unemployed, that misunderstood genius. Clearly he needs a job designing limb-less houses for the cult.
Apart from that, it felt mildly interesting to see the map view of the houses. We already figured out that they had to be close together because of the repeated mentions of some prefectures, but it was nice to have an overview.
miraculously I am still keeping up with the weekly readings 
Week 19 栗原の推理 336-357
Well well well. Philandering 松江 mom did in fact commit suicide after all. I did not expect that. it is a sadder twist because it seems more plausible. And then 松江 burned the evidence of her affair… Two things that were creepy was 笠原 dad fooling around with the 松江 wife while talking to his daughter, and the daughter 千恵 mentioning that her dad told her “secret” stuff while on the paper-cup telephone. Like what secret stuff? the fact that he’s fooling around while talking to her? ew…
Me too @Sisthra it’s the longest book i’ve ever read in Japanese. Woo!
I feel like this could be a villain origin story for 栗原 in a future book by 雨穴
I forgot to mention the word I enjoyed learning from Week 19!
It is 色男（いろおとこ） which the jisho.org says is “lady-killer, handsome man, sexy man” The term emphasizes the popularity of the man among women (as opposed to just physical appearance)
The term is used on page 346 to describe 笠原氏：「父は、年の割には男前でね。性格は軽薄だけど、時々、チラッと見せる優しさがあったりして、いわゆる色男だったのよ。」
According to this article about historically significant colors in Japan, the term 色男 came from the world of Kabuki theater. For love scenes（濡れ場）, the young men had white painted faces to show them as fair-skinned (attractive). So the 色 of 色男 refers to the color white.
This photo (from this article) possibly depicts one of the pale-skinned Kabuki lady-killers in a love scene, but I am not completely sure as I have never attended a Kabuki performance:
Week 20
More resolutions and tying up loose ends, I have to say that I can’t quite see the 聖母様 shape in some houses, maybe if you squint reaaally hard.
Everyone is an illegitimate child in this book!
Also I don’t know how much that stuff with blood types being used to immediately know if a child is illegitimate holds true, I looked it up and a kid can easily have a completely different blood type than both parents simply because of expressing recessive genes that it got from both parents.
Maybe it was something that was believed/not quite understood at the time Negishi was born?
(I’m still at week 14, but planning to catch up next week!)
Yeah I feel like that whole theory is a little far fetched.
Slightly offtopic but look what arrived in the mail today!! I’ve just recently found a good website where to order physical books with reasonable shipping and am still not over how small and compact sized japanese books are ahah.
After this book club is finished would someone be interested to read other books from the same author? (After a lengthy pause to avoid burnout, maybe).
Whew! Just finished in time for the following week! Will this be the first book club book I don’t fall behind on 
Week 20 栗原の推理 – 358-374
Oh! I know this one from my studies. It’s true under some circumstances, you would not be able to tell by blood type alone whether the child was a product of an affair. But two “O” parents (universal donors with no A or B antigens → OO) would not produce anything but “O” children.
Basically if you’re going to have an affair and don’t want to end up doing expensive home renovations, you need to find a guy with the same blood type as your husband.
The other thing that occurred to me in this week’s reading was the dubious cult practice of putting all these people who have had past affairs into a single room to “sleep” together. Creating a temptation that seems almost deliberate? Maybe to drum up even more business for the cult?
I read this recently as my only exposure to the author’s work. Based on comments in the strange bookclubs, this one is a standalone story. The repetitive nature of the storytelling and the not so convoluted sentences made it smooth to read. Toward the middle, several new characters are introduced which made it confusing. I would defintely recommend it as the next one for the club.
I would be interested! I have 変な絵 and 変な地図. I like these books a lot for the level of difficulty and relatively compelling mystery. I won’t be able to join until the new year, but I can try to catch up if the club starts earlier.
Edit: there is no end to the things 雨穴 finds strange!
I’m still catching up, but would also definitely be interested in reading the spin-offs.
Week 18
My thought exactly. I still don’t understand why Irima’s parents didn’t just permanently attach the metal part to the door, so that you can just pull it open with a magnet any time. I can’t think of anything more close off than this fixture where you have to empty out an entire cupboard so that you can get to a hidden switch.
Week 19, first half
It actually seems less plausible to me, and closer to the kind of crackpot guessing games we’re used to from Kurihara. I read this entire section with my eyebrows raised to my hairline after reading that “Devout Christians never commit murder” is his only argument for why it couldn’t have been 松江 Sr and “the wife just felt like setting herself on fire” was the only alternative he could come up with. I still think the theory I posted after Chapter 8 makes more sense given the timeline of the footsteps 松江 Jr. heard, but whaaaaaatever. Guess we’re in the part of the story where things don’t have to make sense anymore, now. Thanks, Kurihara.
If I understood that part correctly, she actually said that she felt close enough to her father to tell him secrets. Not that the scenario where her father and his mistress listen to her stories of teenage crushes or whatever and then make fun of them in bed is less creepy or anything.