時をかける少女: Week 7 Discussion (Chapters 10 and 11)

Japanese Language Reading
#1

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Chapters 10 and 11: 見つけた、”相談相手”／時間を跳躍すること

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Start Date: January 5th
Previous Chapters: Chapters 8 and 9
Next Chapters: Chapters 12 and 13

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時をかける少女: Week 8 Discussion (Chapters 12 and 13)
#2

OK, chapter 10 was easy.
Chapter 11 was more difficult, especially quite long “scientific” sentences from the sensei.

I am still confused by a couple of sentences from chapter 11. A breakdown would be helpful.

「ええ、それが、いままでとちがったおかしな気分なんです。なんだか浮きあがっているような、すごく不安定な、うまくいえないんですけど……」

It was a strange feeling different from before (?). Somewhat like floating, very unstable, … (?)
What’s うまくいえない ?

「ところがだね。科学というものは、不確かなものを確実なものにしていかなければならないためのその過程の学問なんだ。だから、科学が発展していくためには、その前の段階として、つねに不確実な、ふしぎな現象がなければならない」

ところがだね - ? Science is a studying process for the sake of making uncertain things certain (?) Therefore, for the sake of advancing the science, uncertain, mysterious at the current stage events must always happen (?)

#3

うまく言えない means she can’t say (explain) it well

ところが is a “but” or “however.” The だね is just a way of buying time when you’re talking, in this case.
学問 is like, scholarship, btw.
You’ve got the gist but I don’t have time to break it all down atm. But I’d say for science to advance, as a step before that, there has to be some ordinarily unknown, mysterious things

Also how are there aleady questions I haven’t even started reading yet aaahhh

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#4

I have read the chapters and will now state my thoughts about them, regardless of if anyone wants me to or not:

That was pretty uneventful. The teacher also seems strangely unsurprised.

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#5

I’ve done a first readthrough of the chapters and still need to go back and look things up for comprehension but I agree. My thoughts:

After the last action packed chapters these were quiet. I maybe need to suspend my disbelief because it is a children’s story but I’m highly suspicious of Kazuo and Fukushima Sensei. I feel like they might be involved somehow because who would actually believe such a crazy story. Also, side note - I thought it was funny how quickly Kazuko and Gorou went from schock at the accident to - whelp! we are going be late for school.

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#6

Not too suspicious of Kazuo myself (he is just weird like that), but the professor… hmmm he knows something we don’t (at least that’s my feeling).

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#7

My main reaction so far is,

There’s a word for 固唾??? Wha-

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#8

I see it sometimes and can never read the damn word. Somehow I read it right this time, though. Maybe it only works in WK forums :man_shrugging:

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#9

I’m just trying to deal with people deciding to name it.
Also the name dropping of Frank Edwards which may be starting to take me out of the story :wink:

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#10

I’m increasingly certain that Japanese has a word for literally everything. One of the joys of a writing system where each character has inherent meaning, I guess.

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#11

Fun fact, the reading of that word is one of my worst leeches on floflo. Actually seeing it in hiragana made me pause for a second.

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#12

That was hilarious! In my head it looked something like this actually.

I am also SUPER suspicious of Sensei. He kind of seemed a bit creepy almost, to me at least.
I don’t know who to suspect anymore, so for the sake of backing myself, I’m gonna stick to Kazuo. (And Sensei, cuz he’s just way too into this.)

I do think chapter 10 was pretty straight forward and quite an easy read, chapter 11 however did trip me up a bit, but I think it was still quite doable. It was like a nice little break after injured (probably dead) ladies, gentlemen and truck drivers .

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#13

I just read chapter 10 and hopefully I will get through ch 11 by the end of the week (so then I’ll only be behind on Aria but I digress).
I don’t know if it’s been discussed in any of the threads so far (sorry if it has) but there tends to be a lot of questions ending with かい (instead of just か）in this book and I’m not sure where I heard it but I’ve heard that usually only old people end questions with かい these days which makes me wonder how old fashioned the language usage in the book is, given that it’s more than 50 years old. Any thoughts or comments from the more experienced about this?

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#14

I have a quick question. Does anyone know what かけたまえ means?

Sensei says 「そうかい、まあ、かけたまえ」on kadokawa page 56 in response to the kids saying they have something important to talk about related to why they were late.

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#15

腰をかける: to sit down
-たまえ: “soft” imperative. (From a superior to an inferior, but not too strong)

“Please have a seat”

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#16

Thank you. I haven’t come across the たまえ usage before.

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#17

I find かける to be a troublesome verb personally. It can mean so many things so it’s often difficult to tell.

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#18

While not actually correct, I have a tendency to think of かける as either run or hang (depending), and treat all of its uses as idiomatic expressions thereof.
Hang your 腰 on this seat, would you?

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#19

You’ll eventually get used to it :wink:

I mean, get is pretty bad too

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#20

Older men, even. People like @OmukaiAndi

Anywho, I’m no expert, but I’d just say sentence enders and the general politeness levels are the main things that stick out to me as old-fashioned. There was some discussion already of how politely Kazuko’s mom told her to stop running into a fire, and all three kids referring to each other as surname-san seems a little uptight (but not unreasonable), and the just-mentioned common usage of たまえ through the book (that’s not the first time we’ve seen it) stands out to me a little because (in media) I tend to see people either being more formal than that or more casual than that (depending on who they’re talking to), and not a lot in that specific strike zone.
But eh. Not an expert.

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