妊娠カレンダー🍐🤰🏻 Book club (IBC) ・ Week 7

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Week 7 30 Nov 2024
End page 134
End point (kindle) 1281
End phrase 蜜蜂の羽のようにいつまでも震えていた
Pages 21
Previous week Week 6
Next week Week 8
Home Thread 妊娠カレンダー

Vocabulary

Google sheet (thanks @Phryne )

jpdb vocabulary list

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

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The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.

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Proper Nouns

Name Hiragana reading Notes Kindle location first mentioned
小川 洋子 おがわようこ the author cover
二階堂 にかいどう doctor (psychiatrist for 姉) 22

Discussion questions

  1. What was your favorite new vocab word from this week’s reading?
  2. Did you spot any interesting kanji this week?
  3. Was there any passage that you found particularly intriguing? Did it resonate with you (either positively or negatively)? Was it surprising? Offer any insight or new perspective? Was it just beautifully written?

Participation

Will you be reading along with us this week?

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This week’s sections

アップルパイの訪れ （first half of the reading)
図書館や手紙 (short interlude)
カスタードプリンの訪れ (last part of this week’s reading)

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Summary

I am worried about the nephew who is never there when the narrator visits. But the narrator doesn’t seem to be concerned, even after she has heard the story of the disappearing student. She doesn’t question the reasons given by the 先生 for the absence of the いとこ. Instead she is preoccupied with the 先生’s wellbeing (or rather not-well-being).

I wonder: what is the significance of the bees, tulips and the growing stain which she observes during each of her visits? Will we learn more about those?

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アップルパイ

Me too. The narrator is not having a lot of luck meeting いとこ. That seems more than 不運な偶然 to me…

Speaking of which, there is a particularly vivid section where she imagines the scene of the 飛び込み自殺

What did other people make of 先生’s story of the missing maths student? The police were obviously suspicious of 先生, which does’t seem unwarranted given that we (the reader) have been led by Ogawa to be pretty doubtful about him.

Incidentally, after all the intense questioning (including how many times the student went to the toilet… which might be the police taking their meticulousness too seriously), 先生 seems to have lost his 膨大な日常生活の記録簿. What is this referring to? Is he talking about an actual record book for the dormitory (confiscated by the police??)

There is another poetic Ogawa moment: After 先生 has a coughing fit, the narrator finds the idea of the vanishing student, 先生’s bony back, and いとこ being caught up in the 飛び込み自殺 - all merging in her mind like melted glass…

先生 wants 従姉妹 to go have a look at the room of the missing student. We’ve now found out that the dormitory is otherwise completely deserted, there has been the mysterious disappearance of another student, いとこ is missing, and now our female narrator is being invited upstairs. Anyone else think this is perhaps not a good idea…

But once they get in the room, I don’t have any sense of threat, just this lonely sense of puzzlement.

There’s a phrase that I couldn’t understand

わたしもスキーが好きだと言ったら

“If (when?) I said that I also liked skiing…”

Is sensei reporting that the maths student was innocently asking sensei about how he (sensei) would like skiing, what sort of shoe, how he would hold his stocks etc? Or was sensei thinking this?

The students maths problems - how can something as large as Mt Fuji be reflected in something as small as an eye, how could you move a temple bell with just a little finger etc… Are these supposed to be the actual maths problems? (If so, I wonder if the student was studying physics rather than maths?)

Interesting phrase - sensei has a fixation on the maths student’s fingers,

何度も品種改良され、温室で大切に育てられた生物のようでした

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アップルパイ

It was really quite a striking week’s reading this week that I found hard to put down. It was good starting with an unusual WaniKani vocabulary word out in the wild early on - 飛び込み自殺. Actually, I think 飛び込み on its own got added as a new vocab word to WaniKani in the last week or so.

It was followed by quite an unsettling sentence where our narrator had quite grizzly and detailed images of the deceased lying on the tracks.

If I’d missed the sense of foreboding earlier, it was impossible to miss this week. Continually unsettling and creepy. That description of the dead body on the tracks certainly contributed to this as well.

I’m not sure what to think about this at the moment. Part of me feels like the story has just switched from a focus on the relationship between cousin and narrator, to that between narrator and sensei. The background certainly makes us suspicious about the continuously absent cousin - but he is leading a busy student life, and if he had disappeared from university surely someone would have noticed by now and raised concerns?

However, sensei has becoming distinctly creepy. He was always odd, right from the early descriptions of the cerebellum, and the pineal gland, and the medulla. I don’t like his obsession with the beautiful left finger of the missing student. And we’re not the only ones concerned about him, the other students were more than willing to believe rumours about him and leave the dormitory.

I also don’t like his vagueness about how many students are in the dormitory. I think he may have finally admitted that everyone else left and cousin is the only new resident this year? Maybe that’s later in this week’s reading actually. It’s certainly very quiet around there now.

I was also interested in these. I’ve never heard of such a thing, but I like the idea that beyond the difficult maths problems are the really difficult ones where students have to grapple with applying mathematical solutions to unusual questions like these. They certainly seemed puzzling to sensei, but apparently our maths student was able to tackle them and find equations that expressed the concepts to his satisfaction.

We still don’t know the signficance of the noise from the opening paragraph of the story, but we did get another sound in this section: 義足が鈍い音できしんだ。

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I understood that the police asked 先生 about what he himself did before and after the student went missing. Did I misread?

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アップルパイ

A little after that 先生 says

噂とは理不尽なものなのです。それにしても、わたしのあの膨大な日常生活の記録簿はどこへいってしまったのでしょう。

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kanji: 膿 膿む an interesting though logical kanji (when your body part starts to ‘grow’ something…)

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That’s an interesting observation. At least it doesn’t mean “organ farming” - or maybe that is where this story is going…

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図書館や手紙

I found this interlude very interesting to read. It gives us some interesting insights, but also more questions

It seemed as if there was no record in the newspapers of the missing 寮学生
What do other people make of that?
Did 先生 make up the story (but if so, why?), or was it somehow covered up (by the university teaching father??) or is there something even weirder going on?

I thought that 従姉妹’s response to her husband’s letter was intriguing. She seems to have been hypnotised by the mystery of the dormitory, and just stuffs the letter into the too-hard basket (back of a drawer). (Or is this a clue to her personality? From personal experience, some young neurodiverse people (and maybe neurotypicals too) find the prospect of big change so daunting that they just become paralysed and unable to act. Maybe that’s why she had been in a cocoon before the whole dormitory story started.) I’m not sure what is going to happen to her relationship…

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カスタードプリンの訪れ

An interesting transformation in 先生 becomes evident in this section - from a flexible and agile figure with a disquieting interest in the bodies (and fingers) of the dormitory students - to a crippled and wasted figure whose heart and lungs are being squeezed ever tighter in an apparently terminal 変形. (The culprit is his 脊柱側湾症 (せきちゅうそくわんしょう - an interesting word that doesn’t appear in the chapter, but seems apt).

（I wondered if there was a link between the changes going on in 先生’s 肋骨 and the dormitory. Earlier in the chapter, I had thought that 先生 had referred to the dormitory undergoing a 変形. But actually on checking, he had referred to a 変性 - which looks like a much rarer and more unusual word. So, my link idea was shot down, but there is an interesting connection to the first story - 姉’s body undergoes a 変形 there)

But if 先生 is not the disabled villain that some of us suspected him to be, then… what has happened to いとこ, and what happened to the maths student??

Striking image in this section (I often find that Ogawa very powerfully uses the weather to heighten the mood), as the narrator counts rain drops sliding down the window as she listens to him relating in a matter of fact way his prognosis.

Incidentally, an interesting word:

I knew はちみつ, but this story is full of 蜜蜂

（I was confused about how to tell these apart until I realised that the former is bee honey, the latter a honey bee)

the final image is brilliant

わたしの胸は凍りついたまま、蜜蜂の羽のようにいつまでも震えていた。

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カスタードプリンの訪れ

I also felt this way in this part. Of course, there’s the creepyness and sense of foreboding everyone is mentioning, but I somehow just felt… the loneliness, or the sadness. Somehow, this makes sense when sensei just drop’s the bomb to the narrator that he is dying - very sudden, very beautiful written - it cause somehow a complete shift in attention and feelings inside me. I really admire her writing in this story.

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In this case, 言ったら is being used to mean when/after, not if. Personally I really like this usage!
Reference : Japanese Conditional Form たら

I hope I used the reply function right lol

Brief thoughts:

Okay after this section I’m on the same page with everyone about this leading to something more serious than I originally expecting… I was thinking based on the first short story the author wouldn’t jump to murder, but I’m wondering if things will be more so suggested and then left to our imagination again. I am hoping for answers, and am looking forward to the next reading!

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アップルパイ

I interpreted this as the police department’s fat book of investigative records about every detail of life in the dormitory during those five days, but I can’t be sure.

That one is a “when”–when sensei told the math student that he (sensei) also likes skiing, the math student asked all sorts of questions about how he manages it–how he puts on the ski, how he holds a ski pole, etc. It seems like sensei didn’t mind this guileless curiosity, and may even have appreciated it.

Speaking of which, I forgot to mention this in relation to last week’s section, but I had another thought about the bodies stuff. I once saw an interesting educational presentation from a sideshow performer. She explained that one important aspect of sideshow was the way that the gaze goes both directions–visitors look at the performers who were born with special bodies, and those performers look back at the visitors. Sensei’s careful observation of other people’s bodies mirrors the way that other people are curious about his body. When I think of it this way, it doesn’t seem creepy–he just interacts with the world the same way that the world interacts with him.

All that said, I don’t love that いとこ isn’t here again…

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図書館

My guess is that she didn’t find an announcement about the disappearance because she only searched the newspapers from one day, and the announcement may have happened on a different day? It’s interesting that she knocked herself out searching through a mountain of papers for this one day, but never tried again.

手紙

My ebook says 身体を緞えておいて下さい. Is 緞 really the right kanji? Have I missed a miniscule stroke? Jisho.org and Weblio are both giving me curtain-related nouns for 緞.

カスタードプリン

I’m still waiting (hoping) for a clear reason for the use of the word 変性. Up until now, I’ve only ever seen it used in the context of chemical compounds.

Oddly, I’ve stopped worrying about the nephew. I think his school would have noticed if he’d up and disappeared? I guess I’m just assuming that’s not the direction Ogawa is going to go. Or maybe also I’m taking cues from the narrator.

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Mmm, I wonder if it is a misprint?
I read it as 身体を鍛えて, which I think makes more sense
(My kindle has the same kanji as yours and I don’t know what that would mean)

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It’s a weird Kanji choice (because I see that too) :thinking:

Kanjipedia definitions only mention silk/wool textiles. And I checked Wiktionary for Chinese, and it’s only used that way too.

厚地の絹織物。また、毛織物。

If it’s intentional, probably 鍛える but with fine silk-like quality.