毎日の 吸血鬼 ドラキュラ・Dracula Daily Japanese Thread

Japanese Language Book Clubs
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:vampire: Dracula Daily :vampire:
毎日(まいにち)の吸血鬼(きゅうけつき)ドラキュラ
:woman_vampire: Offshoot Reading Club :bat:

Welcome to the Dracula Daily in Japanese club! Special thanks to @eefara for coming up with the idea.

What is Dracula Daily?
If you’re not already familiar, Dracula is a novel about a group of people facing off against the title vampire, Dracula. The story is told through a series of letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles, all of which are dated. Because of this, it’s possible to read Dracula in “real time.” The service Dracula Daily sends the corresponding day’s materials straight to your email inbox. Unfortunately other language versions are not available because, while Dracula is now public domain, many translations are not. This book club plans to read along in the spirit of Dracula Daily.

How long will it take?
The story takes place from May 3rd to November 7th. Depending on your translated copy, that’s an average of reading 1-4 pages a day.

Can I join late?
Yes, of course! This club is even starting a little late (May 8th), so it’s really no problem.

How difficult is it?
The text itself is probably better for intermediate or higher learners. The pace will probably not be challenging for advanced learners, but intermediate learners may have trouble keeping up on busier days. If you feel it is too difficult for you now, how about trying again one year later? :slight_smile:

Where can I buy or sample it?
Here are 2 amazon links
Bunko sized edition JP / US
Other edition JP / US

How should I post?
If you have questions or comments about a specific day, please post them under a summary tag. You can make a summary tag by clicking the gear icon when replying and selecting “hide details.” Or you can manually type

[details=“write the date here”]
Write your thoughts/comments/questions here
[/details]

For example

May 3rd

Obnoxious travel delays have been a thing forever, huh?

Which days have entries?
You can check out a calendar here. The days of the week most likely don’t align anymore, but you can more easily see the frequency of entries.

It’s not 2023 anymore, is this club still ongoing?
There’s no reason the club can’t repeat annually for as long as people are interested. It’ll be easy to check if someone has the same question since you can just search by date. So long as the forums are still running as well, there’s a possibility that an old member will still reply to comments on the thread as well.

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Pages Out of Chronological Order

May 9th
Chapter 5 or page 94 of this edition
July 24 is labelled June 24
Chapter 6 or page 110 of the above edition

~~

When adding pages for a different version, please add

or page x of [this version](link to version)

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May 3rd

Jonathan has delightful good fiancé/boyfriend energy. Like, “I can’t send this delicious food back to Mina, so I’ll try to make it possible for her to enjoy it another way” and he gets the recipe for her.

Also rip, taking all those trains sounds exhausting.

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I’ll join in from this Sunday and try to catch up by then. :blush:

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Sweet! Glad to have you :smiley:

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Wow, what a nice thread @DIO-Berry! I’m going to try to keep up as well as I can; I’m recovering from wisdom tooth removal, so basically everything I had on my plate is getting pushed back. :sweat_smile: What’ll probably happen is I’ll likely just skim the longer entries early on until I can get everything back in order.

I have read the May 3 and May 4 entries; I’m actually reading it along with Dracula in English (because it’s a quick read) and Spanish (because I’ve been looking for an excuse to pick it up and dust it off), so it ends up being a lot of Dracula, so I don’t feel too bad about skimming. I’m mostly looking for interesting vocabulary at this point.

Let me get some checkboxes in here so I can keep track of what I need to catch up to…
May 3
May 4
May 5
May 7
May 8

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If you’re reading this version, May 9th can be found on page 94!

I was so confused to get a Dracula daily email when I thought the next entry was on May 11th lol

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Should I use the second post to list page numbers for when chronological and sequential orders don’t match up?

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That could be helpful! Might be good to list under what chapter each entry is as well; my Kindle version doesn’t divide up by chapters, unfortunately, but it’s still helpful.

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Great point! I just made the second post a wiki so people can add as needed for various versions. I’m sure I won’t always be the first to notice.

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@eefara I was trying to double check which page 5.11 is on and I found my copy has a diary entry from 4.25 on page 107. Do you know if that’s a typo or what? I don’t have time to read all the way to it tonight.

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Good eye! Yes, that’s a typo. Compared against my English copy; that “4.25” entry is supposed to be 5.25.

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Thank you! That’s good to know. I thought just having the Japanese copy and Dracula Daily would be enough for cross referencing, but I guess not lol

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May 4th

It’s probably just the association of Jonathan with JoJo’s Jonathan, but he has solidified in my mind as an absolute himbo now. People making crosses at you and telling you not to go someplace while crying and/or looking worried? And giving you rosary beads? And that doesn’t prompt a return home? My dude…

May 5th

Often when I’m reading, I try not to look up words and mostly infer them from context. I’m glad I ended up looking up stuff like 遥か and ノコギリ. They really do a stellar job of atmospherically setting up the scene.

The way the food is important to Jonathan is just so cute to me.

I’ll probably come back and edit with more thoughts, but I should turn off my computer for the night.

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Yeah, Jonathan’s such a good guy here. Right off the bat he sees a ton of creepy stuff and he’s just like, “I’m here to do a job”, haha. I wonder if he ever remembered to grab those recipes?

I have to say, I’m getting in some good practice searching for dates for some of these entries, especially when they jump around out of order. I wish this Kindle version would at least divide the book by chapter, but that was apparently too much work. :stuck_out_tongue:

I’ve been reading along with more emphasis on usual on using the English as a guide if I come across a sentence that gives me trouble; it’s really interesting comparing the two. I can definitely see a case where you can argue that reading the translation isn’t a substitute for reading the original; the Japanese seems fine so far, but the English feels more…lyrical? It’s probably just my English-speaking bias that’s coming across here, granted.

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Ah, that’s really interesting. So when talking with my English speaking coworkers, I found out they never learned about rhyme in school (grade school or college). I’ll try to ask if they ever studied any poetry (beyond memorizing songs), but I think the odds are that they didn’t. I don’t know what the translator’s background is, but I wonder if they’re aware of it either. Although as a translator, I’d hope so but I’m not sure.

It could also be a deliberate choice too. When I was in Latin class, we learned there are 2 approaches to translating the Aenid, a famous Latin story. Translators either go for translating it as a narrative or poetry. It’s pretty difficult to figure out what’s going on with the poetry approach, but the narrative approach just lacks the punch of the beautiful sound of the original.

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I guess in this case I don’t mean “lyrical” as Dracula reading like poetry or having any particular rhyme or meter; the English just feels very evocative to me, which is, I think, enhanced by the fact that it’s written in period English. The Japanese is just modern Japanese as far as I can tell, so maybe that’s the missing spice?

Same here; poetry was never any sort of focus in my school days beyond memorizing a poem a year or something way back in elementary. We probably discussed meter or something when reading Shakespeare, but those memories are long gone now, haha.

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Ah got it. Maybe that’s it then? Although if it used late 1800s Japanese, I would have tapped out lol

Oh wow, where are you from? If that’s alright to ask

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Yeeaaah, same here, haha.

I’m from Georgia in the US. It’s possible poetry would be a focus/have a class to itself if you were an English major in university, though I can’t confirm that personally.

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Damn, what problem could Georgia have with poetry?? I remember 6th grade in Virginia was all about poetry basics and then in middle school, we didn’t focus on just poetry, but I can remember some of the poems we read (I had some stellar English teachers in middle school). I know we read and talked about Shakespeare in high school and I think in our composition classes we maybe looked at some poetry? I was always in honors/ap classes, so I’m not sure if that makes a difference. I have no clue what non honors Virginia ms/hs classes read. :thinking: My major was not English, but I did have to take a literature class in college but the focus was on early English writing, which was very oral and could have been considered progressive by some of today’s standards lol.

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