時をかける少女: Week 11 Discussion (Chapters 18 and 19)

Chapter 18 wasn’t too bad in terms of grammar. I think it packed in a lot of big words and plot though.
And whoever made the comment previously about chapter titles spoiling the plot, chapter 19 doesn’t get any better.

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Imagine how it was for me, looking ahead at all the chapter titles before even starting the book to make the schedule…

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I did check the schedule, but forgot about it. That’s an added bonus of reading over such a long span of time, I guess :stuck_out_tongue:

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Wow. Someone really need to work on that chapter titles. Geez, if you can’t come up with anything good just go with numbers. You can’t really go bad with numbers.

As for the plot (18&19)

For now I’m just going to accept all the time travel stuff as is, because if I start to analyze it my brain will start to hurt. I’m looking forward to some more explanations.

Also, when does he fall in love with Kazuko. Was it before or after he “accidentally” gave her the superpowers? :thinking:
How long is he in the past? Doesn’t he try to make his time travel medicine before?

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I actually felt this was the most interesting part of the book so far, at least in terms of making me go “Huh? What? No way!”

Summary
  • Your civilisation (conveniently lacking all the less smart people who are living off-planet) has gone from inability to teach people enough to get a job in less than decades, to teaching them all that stuff while they sleep during their childhood?
  • That must have seriously frustrated all the people who graduated in their 40s only to discover children were going to know as much as them in next to no time. :thinking:
  • You are HOW OLD???

Of course it’s always difficult to predict the future, and a couple of things struck me as slightly prescient - so either they were already trends or predictions back when the book was written.
Specifically - people getting married later and having fewer children, and then children being taller due to their consumption of カロリーの高い栄養食ばかり.

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I think that was actually prescient as well. That example is extreme, but a combination of the Information Age access to knowledge and the continual growth of necessitating new types of knowledge in the job market had already led to a lot of older folks who can’t find a place in the job market because they essentially grew up in the wrong era.

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After all the posts mentioning the age it strikes me as odd, because I don’t recall being shocked by that information so I went back to check it out and I certainly didn’t read that part as 二十一歳 :laughing:

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Just started reading and the chapter seems full of science words, but actually it’s pretty manageable this far! But, nevertheless, I’m kinda stuck on the first page…
In this sentece このころ、すでに月や火星には植民地ができ、労働力の過剰のため、地球に住めなくなった人たちは、どんどん他の惑星へ移住をした
what does 労働力の過剰のため mean?

So, in 2600 year there was sudden overpopulation on Earth, right? I don’t quite get if they could or already did colonize the Moon and Mars. And then this labour, how does it tie into this? Why did people go to the other planets? (colonized, I guess)

And after that all this paragraph. So, poor people and lower class people discussed something, then basically all of the other people got together and developed technical civilization?
But then again it says that there was one thing, that ordinary people couldn’t understand all that stuff, scientists changed their specitalties (why?) and that there were a lot of emotionally disabled people? Why? Or am I not getting something at all? :sweat_smile:

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Because of an excess of workforce.

すでに already. They go away because there’s no space and no job.

No, it says that scientists had to get (over)specialized, because it was just impossible to keep up with the progress being made. The fact that you can be so knowledgeable about something while knowing next to nothing on literally everything else created some mental disorders or something (I cannot check the book right now, and I don’t remember exactly)

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Ahhhh, okay, thank you, I get it now!! For some reason the lack of jobs wasn’t obvious for me :sweat_smile:

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I don’t think there was any mental disorders. Just that nobody could teach the new advancements, right? I could be misremembering.

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I think it’s from this sentence in the beginning
科学者たちも、専門化され、分業化された。その結果として、自分の研究していることだけはよく知っているが、その他のことは、初歩的なことさえ、ぜんぜん知らないという、いわば精神的な不具者が多くなったのである

I didn’t read that as mental illnesses, rather that there were many people who were mentally insufficient (so-called mental cripples?) because they knew about nothing but their own specialized subject.

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Ah, okay, well at least I got the general idea right:D Thanks!
And I might not even finish the chapter today, because of the bad headache D::: So I’ll post any questions later, if I have any :slightly_smiling_face:

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I usually don’t comment until I’ve read both chapters, as well as the thread, but I’ve just finished chapter 18 and I cannot help myself: How is it that the only thing that pops into this girl’s mind is Man, this guy must have studied a lot…
Surely there are other, more important points that have come up, like, I don’t know, that we’re regularly attaching electrodes to little children and call it education in the future. But hey, what do I know right? :roll_eyes:

/rant over

Sorry, had to get that out of my system. :joy: I feel like over this whole book, Kazuko is just the densest thing sometimes.
Anyway, I was a bit intimidated by this chapter over the first couple pages, but it turned out to not be as bad as a whole I think. A lot of weird words, but otherwise manageable. Especially found that grammar wise, it was quite straight forward.

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There’s was all this hype about a super hard chapter, and it wasn’t even that hard. So disappointed (and happy).

Just wait until you read chapter 19. Kazuko always knows the most important things to focus on. Huge revelations. But Kazuo sure is precocious!

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but there won’t be any connection between the two of us, why do you bother telling me? DUH!!!

haha that was hilarious. To be honest, I read the chapter so fast, I had no idea what I’d just read so I had to go back. I get it now. She isn’t exactly the sharpest tool in the box.
but yes, he is super precious!!! An eleven year old genius’ first love :heart_eyes:

This one was a fairly nice read actually. And by trying not to look too many things up, especially grammar (unless I’m completely stumped), I actually get into a really nice reading rhythm.

I think today I’m more on the happy side. I’m super tired, haven’t had proper sleep in about a week and all I wanna do is face plant onto my bed, but alas The Japanese Learning Gods have called me yet again. So here I am, reading about this weird made up space-jump-time-jump science with way too many kanji in a row and frying my brain in the meantime.

I shall now proceed to reading this thread and being amazed at what everyone seems to pick up that my brains just automatically goes ‘nope!’ :joy:

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Just finished, feels weird that I don’t have to read everyday to catch up anymore. I think I’m going to miss it.

End of chapter 19 spoilers

Chapter tittle: 意外な告白
Me: Come on book, if you tell me there is a 告白 I’m not going to be surprised
一夫: きみが、好きになったからさ
Me:
pika

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Summary

It could have been referring to a non-romantic 告白. It probably was intended as a double meaning here. :man_shrugging:

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Summary

Yes, that was what I was actually expecting so I was legitimately surprised :joy:. I just had to make the joke.

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