銭天堂 ・ Zenitendou, The Mysterious Sweet Shop! (Beginner Book Club)

[Radish8]

Welcome to 銭天堂・ふしぎ駄菓子屋  

We read this as the Beginner Book Club!

We’ve finished reading this book as a club, but please feel free to continue posting in the discussion threads (linked below) if you’re reading at a later date and have unanswered questions or thoughts you’d like to share

There’s also now a General Discussion Thread for anyone reading further volumes in the series.

Not sure if this book is for you? Check out the sample pages in the Nomination Post for a sense of the difficulty - remember that your fellow book club members are here to help you out though you can also look at this rating poll to see what we thought of the book, though watch out for spoilers in the rest of that thread.

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Buy the Book

Physical | CDJapan | Amazon JP

eBook | Kobo | BookWalker | Kindle

If you haven’t used Amazon JP before, note that you will need a separate account.
CDJapan has (slow) economy shipping options available so is usually cheaper.

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Reading Schedule & Discussion Threads

Week	Start Date	Chapter	Page Numbers	Page Count
Week 1	May 4th	Chapter 1 - 型ぬき人魚グミ *	10 - 13	5
Week 2	May 11th	Chapter 1 - 型ぬき人魚グミ	14 - 21	7
Week 3	May 18th	Chapter 1 - 型ぬき人魚グミ	22 - 31	8.5
Week 4	May 25th	Chapter 2 - 猛獣ビスケット	34 - 42	8
Week 5	June 1st	Chapter 2 - 猛獣ビスケット	43 - 52	9
Week 6	June 8th	Chapter 3 - ホーンテッドアイス	54 - 62+	8
Week 7	June 15th	Chapter 3 - ホーンテッドアイス	63 - 72	9
Week 8	June 22nd	Chapter 4 - 釣り鯛焼き	74 - 83	9
Week 9	June 29th	Chapter 4 - 釣り鯛焼き	84 - 94	10
Week 10	July 6th	Chapter 5 - カリスマボンボン	96 - 106	10
Week 11	July 13th	Chapter 5 - カリスマボンボン	107 - 117	10
Week 12	July 20th	Chapter 6 - クッキングツリー	120 - 130	10
Week 13	July 27th	Chapter 6 - クッキングツリー	131 - 143	11.5
Wrap-up	August 3rd	Epilogue - 閉店	146 - 149	3

*We will also read the prologue on page 7 this week
⁺The last line runs onto the next page

Vocabulary List

銭天堂 ふしぎ駄菓子屋 Vocab

Please read the editing guidelines in the first sheet before adding any words!

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Members

Are you planning to read 銭天堂 ふしぎ駄菓子屋 with us?

• Yes
• Yes, but I might start late
• No
• Not sure

If you’ve read it before but will join in the discussion, please select ‘yes’!

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[Radish8]

Version

If you’re joining us for this book, which version are you planning to read?

• Physical
• eBook

Vocab List

When we read 時をかける少女 it seemed like not many people ended up using the shared vocabulary list on Google Docs, partly because there was a FloFlo list available as there hopefully will be for this book.

If you’re joining us for this book, would you find a shared vocabulary list helpful?

• Yes
• No

I’m interested to hear people’s thoughts, particularly anyone who read 時をかける少女 and used the vocab list for all or part of the run. Obviously we’ll have one if there’s no FloFlo list by the time we start.

[Radish8]

Schedule

The schedule proposed in the OP sees us taking two weeks per chapter.

One chapter per week would see us reading even more than we did for 時をかける少女. The content is a bit easier, but this ought to be an easier read! Those able to read much faster can always read other things on the side

We can’t really go much slower either, because 18 weeks would be a long time to spend on one book. Chapter 1 is a bit long with the prologue, so the schedule in the OP has us taking three weeks for that: starting a bit slower has worked well for previous picks.

Schedule if we also spend two weeks on chapter 1

Week	Chapter	Pages
Week 1	Chapter 1	10
Week 2	Chapter 1	10.5
Week 3	Chapter 2	8
Week 4	Chapter 2	9
Week 5	Chapter 3	9
Week 6	Chapter 3	10
Week 7	Chapter 4	9
Week 8	Chapter 4	10
Week 9	Chapter 5	10
Week 10	Chapter 5	10
Week 11	Chapter 6	10
Week 12	Chapter 6	11.5

Does anyone have any objections to this, or thoughts? I’ll hold a vote if there seems to be a lot of disagreement. We can always remain flexible and hold a vote in, say, week 4 over whether to speed up from chapter 4 onwards if we’re finding it too slow (this would still allow us enough time to hold the vote for the next pick).

[FlamySerpent]

If you’re joining us for this book, would you find a shared vocabulary list helpful?

I personally wouldn’t use it, it’s faster for me to use jisho, but I do use it with Girls’ last tour because of no furigana:D So I understand how people find it helpful. Also I don’t add words there, so I don’t have any right to say “yes” and then not help:DD

I hope I make sense and don’t sound rude:D Thanks for the thread!! \o/

[Radish8]

You don’t sound rude at all ^^ thanks for the feedback

I also use the vocab list when we do manga, and I really do find it pretty speedy and helpful. Just concerned that if more people are using FloFlo / not bothering for a full book it will be a bit pointless, or burdensome for people contributing to it.

[Kyayna]

I don’t think this book is on floflo so maybe a vocab list will pick up a bit of popularity again

Personally, I’ve stopped using vocab sheets. Partly because taking the time to look up words helps me remember them, but also because I simply stop focussing as much on vocab and try to look more at grammar or general comprehension.
Especially with a book that’s a bit easier, I really wanna push myself to see what I can understand without immediately looking up everything I feel like I don’t know.

I’m also a bit like @FlamySerpent, I won’t be adding any words, so I don’t think voting yes would make sense. But I do see how it may be helpful for a good few people.

[Radish8]

Ah, don’t worry, I realise there isn’t a list right now I’m hoping to utilise my patron powers to get it added.

[Saruko]

re: vocab list

I didn’t read 時をかける少女, but for the two book clubs that I have participated in (なぜ？どうして？and しろくまカフェ) I’ve found the vocab list to be very helpful! My usual flow is to read the chapter/section straight through without looking things up, then go back and look up words. So having the vocab list is very convenient. And if there are words that I have to look up that aren’t in the list, I’ll add them.

Even if this book was added to FloFlo, I probably wouldn’t use it because I’m not interested in doing more SRS.

[Belthazar]

So, ah… aside from the first and third weeks, your “length” counts are all out by one. For example, pages 14-21 is eight pages, not seven. (Also, you could add page 7 to the page numbers as well. “7, 10-13”.)

[NicoleRauch]

Thank you for this thread and for laying out the schedule!

I personally would be in favour of the slower schedule for the first chapter because I think it is helpful for “newer” people to get a slow start on doing the reading in general. I remember quite well how overwhelmed I was when reading the first pages of my first book Getting to ~10 pages from the 3rd week sounds very good to me (plus, as you said, we can always use a poll to decide later whether we’d like to speed up).
Curious to hear what the others think - especially the “newer” people!

[jaearess]

I’ve ordered my copy, and it should be here with plenty of time to spare. This will be my first time in a “Beginner” book club. I’m currently reading through しろくまカフェ in the Absolute Beginner Club, and have been making my way through にゃんにゃん探偵団 with the past club thread.

I’m looking forward to tackling something harder. Looking at the example pages in the nomination post it’s going to be considerably harder, so I’ll definitely appreciate the slower pace at the start.

I’ll admit I’m not using the vocab sheet from しろくまカフェ much (Jisho lookups are usually faster for me), but it’s still nice to have when words are ambiguous. Floflo alone won’t solve that problem, unless I’m mistaken. But I’m also sure it’s a ton of work for people to put together a list, and maybe not worth it if a Floflo list will be enough in 99% of cases.

[Radish8]

Ah, it’s the actual length we’ll be reading, when you discount the full-page illustrations. I thought that would be more helpful information to provide, but maybe I’ll rename the column to make it more clear.

I remember quite well how overwhelmed I was when reading the first pages of my first book

Same still feel this way when starting a new book, tbh…! If people are finding it a bit much in week 3 we could even vote to slow down for chapter 2 as well, but any more would be pushing it, I reckon.

This will be my first time in a “Beginner” book club.

Looking forward to reading with you you probably already know this from the Kitty Detective book, but the first few pages / chapters of any book are usually the hardest, so hopefully if you persevere through those first few weeks it will get easier too

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So far I’m feeling a lot of support for a vocab list, so that will probably happen

[jaearess]

you probably already know this from the Kitty Detective book, but the first few pages / chapters of any book are usually the hardest, so hopefully if you persevere through those first few weeks it will get easier too

Yeah, absolutely. It was quite the step up from a short manga like しろくまカフェ to even a picture book like にゃんにゃん探偵団. This will be even more of a jump, it seems like.

[Voi]

I’m interested to hear people’s thoughts, particularly anyone who read 時をかける少女 and used the vocab list for all or part of the run.

I definitely used and contributed to the list and would for this one as well, though I usually end up reading closer to the end of the week. Simply put, my vocab and kanji are trash, to the point that trying to memorize a sufficient amount of vocab on floflo meant staring at strings of unrecognizable kanji. It was too slow of progress to be able to keep up with the book club.

The list helps a lot, I think, and is a good reference to go back to for future rereads (I save them after each book is over). If we don’t I’d probably make my own anyway. I have read with just a dictionary (even on a my phone with the book split screened with the dictionary…that was an experience) but it gets annoying to go back and reread passages that way. My 2 cents

[Radish8]

Welcome to Zenitendou…

[Belthazar]

Hold on a second. Something really disturbing just flashed up in the middle, there…

[Radish8]

So… this book series has a whole website devoted to it?!

偕成社 | 児童書出版社

Where you can get a daily fortune, no less! There even seem to be little web-based stories you can read (just in case anyone wants something to tackle before May…).

There are descriptions of the main characters and all the sweets too, but that seems like it might be straying strongly into spoiler territory…

[jprspereira]

@Radish8

If you’re joining us for this book, would you find a shared vocabulary list helpful?

Since I’ve started reading more actively, I noticed that pre-learning words through SRS is wasted time. I read it and search for words I find that don’t know. If useful, I add it to SRS. Learning vocab post-exposure is so much more fun and efficient than pre-exposure.

I use this method:

キノの旅 Week 1 Discussion

I’m almost done with the chapter and marked some sentences where I encountered a grammar point I didnt understand, I might post about them later if I still don’t understand them after taking another look So far it’s a very enjoyable read that seems to be right at my level! So happy about it Now I’m going to do some very shameless plugging (sorry!) since I absolutely love the way it sped up my process of looking up words and adding it to a SRS program: On android I use…

[jaearess]

Pre-studying isn’t the only use for a vocab list. It also works as a hyper-specific dictionary as you’re reading. In that way, it can work as a complement for your method (well, maybe not your exact method, since it ties specifically with jisho.org and kitsun.io, but for the more general method.)

[jprspereira]

Pre-studying isn’t the only use for a vocab list. It also works as a hyper-specific dictionary as you’re reading. In that way, it can work as a complement for your method (well, maybe not your exact method, since it ties specifically with jisho.org and kitsun.io, but for the more general method.)

So that you get to see other meanings that word has? Or that you get to learn the specific meaning being used in the source material?