時をかける少女: Week 13 Discussion (Chapters 22 and 23 [END])

Japanese Language Reading
#1

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Chapters 22 and 23: 消された記憶／いつか会う人

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Start Date: February 16th
Previous Chapters: Chapters 20 and 21

Vocabulary List

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Vocab Sheet

Discussion Rules

  • Please use spoiler tags for major events in the current chapter(s) and any content in future chapters.
  • When asking for help, please mention the chapter and page number. Also mention what version of the book you are reading.
  • Don’t be afraid of asking questions, even if they seem embarassing at first. All of us are here to learn.
  • To you lurkers out there: Join the conversation, it’s fun!

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6 Likes
#2

Exciting!

But I have to go to bed first (>_<)

3 Likes
#3

This is the end!?

4 Likes
#4

Woohoo! Only two more chapters and this will be the first book I’ve finished in Japanese! :partying_face:

18 Likes
#5

Fyi, Santa Claus dies at the end so you might not want to finish the book…

:wink::turtle:

10 Likes
#6

Is that in one of the short stories? :joy:

3 Likes
#7

Me too! Whoo! :slight_smile:

4 Likes
#8

i saw this book club going on towards the end, after coming back from a break and ordered the book, but it’s still on the way :stuck_out_tongue: good job to all who’ve made it :smiley:

8 Likes
#9

Even though my reading speed is not as fast as I would like, I managed to get through chapter 22 without having to look up much at all. There were a few things in chapter 23 but it seemed like a short chapter after the previous one. (After I read 22, I was compelled to read what happens next.)

So I also completed reading my first Japanese book! Yay!

(Aria is also the first full volume of a manga I’ve read. #bookclubfirsts )

Spoilery story comments

Thinking about it now, the story has elements you see in anime stories such as time travel and the kind of 君の名は moment at the end. I wonder if this story influenced those things or whether those plot elements have been around in Japanese story telling for much longer. :thinking:

8 Likes
#10

And for me it would be the first finished book in the last 5 years! :partying_face: So happy to have these bookclubs and start reading again, it’s fun! \o/

8 Likes
#11

I also read the short stories after this one for that true completionist feel :ok_hand:

5 Likes
#12

So, time for questions?

しだいにぼうとかすんでくる一夫の姿に、けんめいに目をこらしながら、和子はたずねた。

I understand the meaning of the sentence if I ignore “ぼうと”. What is ぼうと and what does it add?

1 Like
#13

My dictionary says it’s the same as ぼうっと, which has an entry on jisho: ぼうっと

5 Likes
#14

From now on my jisho searches are going to look like this:

*ぼ*う*と*

15 Likes
#15

Come to think of it, this might be the first book I finished :thinking:
I’ve had others I got far in, or read 2/3 of the stories (well, this one big + minis still counts as completed since there was only one main story :wink: I’ll do the mini ones too I guess, for full completion =P )

Kiki I still have the last few chapters left. I fell behind near the end and once the book club ended I forgot about it ^^;

I’ve read several 2/3 of books, but this is the first book I finished :rofl:
Not counting stuff like Graded Readers and Manga, I’ve read a good number of mangas =^_^=

I’m still on a level where I only get bits and pieces. But I feel I got more pieces near the end than in the beginning! But the questions, answers and comments in general has helped me piece together the rest, and made it easier to pick up stuff in the next chapter since I was a bit more “caught up” :wink:
So a big thanks to all the active users! I would have been lost without you :rofl:

9 Likes
#16

Me too!!! Virtual high five! :high_touch: :raised_hand:
Ive literally just finished, but im at work, so I’ll properly read through this and add my two cents a bit later :slight_smile:

6 Likes
#17

I just read one chapter, and maybe I will read the last one later today! \o/ :partying_face:

1 Like
#18
Thoughts from chapter 22!

So… he’ll probably visit again when he’s finished perfecting his medicine, and it makes it sound like that will take a long time, but that has literally no bearing whatsoever on which time he jumps back to, so it really makes no difference to Kazuko. Unless he’s aged, like, fifty years, but that seems unlikely.

I find it a bit disturbing that the memory loss results in her fainting onto the floor. He’s effectively violating her memories, and on top of that it’s causing her to black out? Is he just gonna leave her there for Gorou to find? That can’t be the case, because he has to do this to everybody who knows him…

Kind of spoilers for the link to the anime

It also occurs to me that the anime rather ruins the ambiguous ending this book is presumably going to have. I guess it’s almost like an easter egg that Kazuko is the aunt? But it means that in that canon you know she never meets up with him again (yet), or at least that he didn’t stay.

Page 126

バリヤーがのぞかれたため、あのラベンダーのかおりが、立ちのぼる薬の白い湯気となって、和子をとりまていた。

Just a bit lost with this sentence. Kazuko is surrounded, but by the rising white vapour of the medicine? By the lavender smell? The となる makes it seem to me like the lavender smell is turning into white vapour (and “then” surrounding her), but how can a smell turn into a vapour?

Not sure of the first bit either - in order to be excluded by a barrier? In order for the barrier to be excluded?! I obviously just have something very wrong here.

1 Like
#19

I haven’t read this far yet, so I don’t have any context for the sentence and may be completely wrong, but couldn’t it be the “to remove” meaning of のぞく? Removing a barrier sounds like something someone would be more likely to do than exclude it from something, but I obviously don’t know if that actually is what happening or not since I’m a bit behind.

1 Like
#20

That is definitely also an option, but I don’t think it makes any more sense in context that ‘to exclude’ :joy: I’d have thought that ‘barrier’ is referring to the vapour surrounding her, but I can’t see how it fits with the rest of the sentence.