妊娠カレンダー🍐🤰🏻 Book club (IBC) ・ Week 9

Intermediate book club

Week 9 14 Dec 2024
End page 172
End point (kindle) 1635
End phrase わたしは長い時間見つめていた。
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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

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.

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
ジュジュ the narrator’s dog 1420

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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  • I’m reading at IBC primer pace
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3 Likes

I haven’t read/listened to any of them (to avoid spoilers), but this story was published in the New Yorker in English translation in ~2004

There was a New Yorker podcast (I think reading the story then discussing it, from about 45’) in 2022

There are some blogs that discuss the story

4 Likes

There is a scene in the second half of this week’s reading that I found hard to picture.

This might be helpful

It comes from this long document
小学給食料理業務の一日の流れ

It looks very interesting - also completely different from anything I’ve ever seen in a school cafeteria in this part of the world (though I confess, it has been a very long time since I saw the insides of one…)

https://www.city.nagoya.jp/kyoiku/cmsfiles/contents/0000080/80468/R02nagare.pdf

6 Likes

It is another page or so further on, but I’ve found a better break point for this week.
If anyone has the physical page number, please let me know

3 Likes

Thanks, that is a better break point. The break point is page 172 in the physical version. Next week takes us to page 191.

This week’s reading

This was a real change of pace after the ending of the last story. All quite gentle and peaceful, I felt like I could be watching a Ghibli movie. Sitting on the engawa, patting the dog, watching the removal truck drive away…

The school cafeteria sounds fascinating. I was a bit surprised at the size of the operation. When I think of a primary school, it’s usually an organisation with about 200 children. This one seemed to be feeding over a thousand people if I read correctly. Loved the detail about the machine preparing the prawns.

My favourite image this week was of the prawns dropping obediently into the oil like they were under hypnosis!

4 Likes

Wow, I’m definitely going to read through the translation afterwards! Thanks.

This week's reading

Okay, now that we’ve gotten through the first two stories I am wondering where this one will head. Certainly there will be something weird with this religious man? Is the main character going to develop some feelings with him?

6 Likes

Since I was so far behind after my vacation, I decided to skip Dormitory for now and plunge right into this one.

This week

Off to a good start. I liked the slow beginning, filled with athmospheric impressions of the feeling of moving into an empty, old house and starting to make it yours. The scene where the narrator first meets mystery man felt wonderfully off and creepy, too.

I think the point is that he’s not religious, or at least he’s not the going-door-to-door-with pamphlets kind of religious the narrator expected when he suddenly showed up uninvited on her doorstep and asked her a weirdly personal question. But I agree, something has to be up with him. My mind instantly went “is there romance in the air?”, too, probably because the narrator’s fiance is so conspicously absent I can’t help but wonder if there’s something wrong with her current relationship.

6 Likes
Cafeteria

Thanks for this. I’m glad I saw the picture just before reading the second half of this week. Otherwise, my mind would probably have conjured up some completely misleading pictures after reading about 鳥かご going round and round.

4 Likes

If anyone is interested in seeing the inside of a 給食室, the first video below is interesting viewing and relevant to the reading this week (and a bit of next week).

The place is enormous and prepares lunches on an industrial scale. There is a voiceover that makes for some interesting (but a bit challenging) listening practice

Whereas this video has a much smaller scale 給食室 - maybe closer to the one in the story. It is fascinating watching if you are interested in cooking, and the Japanese subtitles make for good reading practice!

4 Likes