☕ 夜カフェ 2 ☕ Offshoot Book Club Chapter 7 Discussion Thread

Japanese Language Book Clubs
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夜カフェ 2 Book Club - Chapter 7

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Welcome back! Did you have a good break? If you’ve caught up to this chapter, we’re about halfway into the reading schedule (still some time before we’re halfway into the book, page-wise). But don’t let that discourage you if you’re not quite there yet!

This is an offshoot book club for 夜カフェ which we originally read with the Beginners Book Club. Please follow the links below to guide you to the proper jumping off point if you’re not quite ready for chapter 7, volume 2 yet.

Start date of current chapter: 1st October 2022
Next chapter: Chapter 8
Previous chapter: Chapter 6
Home thread: 夜カフェ 2 Offshoot Book Club Home Thread
Previous Volume: 夜カフェ 1 Home Thread

Vocabulary List

The vocab list is a community effort, so if you contribute to the list or even just point out a potential error/typo, you’re helping your fellow readers out! It goes without saying, but feel free to peruse the list to help make your reading experience easier! You’re not obligated to contribute but any help you provide is truly appreciated. :slight_smile:

Discussion Guidelines

  • Please blur / hide any major events in the current week’s pages (however early they occur), like so: [spoiler]texthere[/spoiler] result: texthere
  • If you’re reading ahead, please refrain from mentioning spoilers in future chapters. If you absolutely must comment something, be sure to add a warning (ex: potential spoiler in chapter 3) before hiding the rest of the spoiler under a spoiler tag.
  • When asking for help, please mention the page number and identify whether your book is a physical copy or ebook, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked
  • Feel free to jump in at any point in the discussion - you’re never too late to the party!
  • Sharing your impressions and predictions of the reading are highly encouraged! It’s fun to see if the story pans out the way some of us think. Just be careful not to give away anything if you’re reading ahead. :wink:

Participation Poll

  • I’m reading along
  • I’ve already read this part
  • I’m from the future and reading way later
  • I’m behind and will catch up later

0 voters

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This felt hard to read because I think we’ve all had some kind of experience where our roommates or the person we’re living sometimes steps on our toes until it becomes too unbearable. It’s great though because this is a great example for real life for young adults to think about how best to solve the problem.

Hanabi just endures the situation until (judging by the next chapter’s title) it gets to be too much and she may handle the situation not as well as she could have if she had just approached Tina earlier when things weren’t so bad. But then it’s also Japanese culture not to be too direct, so if this author is criticizing that common approach, then more power to her! (I get the feeling the author is Aunt Aiko being the 変わった人 that doesn’t conform to the ways of the community just to pretend to be liked).

Any thoughts on what Tina’s deal is? Do you think it’s related to Risa’s issue?

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Story comments

This chapter was so heavy. Just reading Hanabi’s experience as Tina snobbed her, and then finding the slippers trashed.

For me personally, this bullying thing is just a little too much. So I knew I could either read 2-3 pages over many many days to force myself through the chapter. Or I could give myself permission to read until the situation got less heavy, meaning possibly reading ahead.

I picked the latter. So today I did a big push. And I did read past the current chapter, but I won’t say anything about the next chapter until next week.

I do hope Yayako’s bullying will lessen or at least start being dealt with. The thing that really gets me is that as readers we’re just passangers to Hanabi’s pain, and when she doesn’t do anything and no adult around her is helping her either… it makes me feel so helpless. If Hanabi was at least doing something, or her teacher noticed or Aiko did something. Anyone did anything. Even if their attempts fail at stopping it, that would be so much better than no one doing anything and Hanabi just enduring.

And honestly, that might be a reason I’ll stop reading this series. If these kinds of things keep being like this, where we have to follow Hanabi enduring hardship for so dang long before something happens? Yeah, that isn’t enjoyable. Dark entertainment is engaging in its own way, but these story beats are not working for me.

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If I understood correctly, Tina went to visit her mother after school one day but came home sooner than Hanabi expected, and the bad mood started after that?
Sounds like something happened that upset her, maybe an argument, or her mother was not at home when she was meant to be or something like that?

Reply to Miss Dagger

I’m glad that somebody else feels this way!
Although being 12 is quite a long time ago for me, I can still acutely remember what it was like to be that age and not know how to handle situations like this on my own, or how to ask for help.
So its surprisingly difficult to read a story about somebody else in the same situation and not be able to help, even though its fictional!

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I promised I’d write a few N3 grammar points that I noticed cropped up in the chapter, so here goes. I’m sure there are more, but I haven’t finished it yet!

Grammar

見ずに; ずに = without doing - so “without looking”

おくろうとしたが; ようとしたが = was going to but - so “ was going to send it, but…”

緊張ぎみ; ぎみ = a little bit, a touch of - so “a bit stressed”

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