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

I’d recommend checking in the intermediate book club thread. If they are okay with reusing the same server I’ll create a separate text and voice channel for it.

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Huh, I still don’t know what I should make of the time decision for the reading group - there’s always somebody asleep at any given point :-/

The intermediate club reading group solved this by running two groups, but I don’t think this will work here because there are not so many people who are interested overall, and I guess two groups will both die after a while… (For comparison: in the intermediate club, 50 people signalled their interest in the initial poll, compared to 12 here.)

But at least the Saturday afternoon (in GMT) seems to be the most popular time, so let’s see what we can make of it… Please tick all the times at which you are willing to participate.

  • GMT Sa 11:30 / EDT Sa 07:30 / JST Sa 20:30
  • GMT Sa 13:30 / EDT Sa 09:30 / JST Sa 22:30
  • GMT Sa 15:30 / EDT Sa 11:30 / JST Su 00:30
  • GMT Sa 17:30 / EDT Sa 13:30 / JST Su 02:30
  • GMT Sa 19:30 / EDT Sa 15:30 / JST Su 04:30
  • GMT Sa 21:30 / EDT Sa 17:30 / JST Su 06:30
  • GMT Sa 23:30 / EDT Sa 19:30 / JST Su 08:30

0 voters

Also, almost everybody seems to be keen to start this weekend already, which is great :slight_smile:
That means it would be good if we could decide on a time soon.

Just a heads up: Unfortunately for the reading group (but fortunately for me) I will be travelling to Japan starting this weekend (yay!) and so I cannot participate this week (and maybe I need to skip the 3 following weeks as well while I’m in Japan, depending on which time we pick). But please go ahead without me, of course!

About how long do you expect each reading session will go for? half hour? or more, or less?

Hard to tell, tbh. In the intermediate group, it usually takes us 60 - 90 minutes to read and discuss. That’s of course more text, though. So maybe an hour or a bit less would be a good assumption.
You can always drop off early, of course, if it get too late for you.

I was rather wondering if I might be able to join in late on one of the times, but it sounds like probably not.

You can always try and see whether the session is still ongoing and then join in. I don’t see why this should be an issue :slight_smile:

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Should I join this club? I am already commited to like 2000 books, but at the same time, this one looks fun too…:upside_down_face::turtle::stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Not sure yet what exactly will happen, but I take it that something will happen at least… Since nobody objected in the intermediate group, would you (@seanblue) please be so kind as to create a new chat channel in the Discord server for the Zenitendou reading group to use? (Not sure whether we also need another voice channel, but it might probably be useful at some point… I’ll leave it to you whether you already want to create one now.)
Thanks!

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OK, based on the last poll, I’m suggesting to start out with two groups for the reading club (because it was impossible to squeeze you all into one group):

  1. GMT Sa 11:30 / EDT Sa 07:30 / JST Sa 20:30
    @Saruko, @StarLi, @Kyasurin voted for this group. With two regulars of the intermediate reading group, I guess you will be fine :slight_smile:

  2. GMT Sa 21:30 / EDT Sa 17:30 / JST Su 06:30
    @jaearess, @Kyayna, @windupbird, @2OC3aOdKgwSGlxfz, @Houndstooth voted for this group. As far as I know, none of you is in the intermediate reading group (please correct me if I’m wrong!) and so I checked back with @Myria who kindly agreed to be the host of this group.
    (Also @seanblue this means that we’ll need a second voice channel straight away to avoid clashes as this group will start roundabout when the Saturday Kino reading group finishes. Thx!)

For everybody else who did not vote but would be interested: Please join the group that suits you best!

Quick overview of the relevant information (collected from above):

The reading group will start Sat May 11 / Sun May 12.

Link to Discord Server : https://discord.gg/jgPTrv4
Please join the Zenitendou text and voice chat shortly before the reading group starts.

Some basic rules: If you want to join, you can of course decide whether you just want to listen in without talking or writing, whether you want to type in the chat (in English), whether you want to speak (in English) or whether you want to read a bit of text aloud (in Japanese ofc). Everyone who would like to read is given the opportunity. You can read as much or as little as you want - one sentence is also ok. But maybe the others will stop you at some point when you read too much lol

We will not only read the text but also clarify questions or discuss the contents in general as we go. You can always chime in and ask something.

It is definitely not only for those who are already fluent readers! Just give it a try.

I would hope that the fast readers try and read a little slower than usual, or break it up more, given that we want beginners to feel welcome! Also, I would like to encourage all participants to speak up if they think something should be changed in the reading club (e.g. slower speed, more breaks for questions, whatever might be helpful) so that everybody can get more out of it.

Happy reading!

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@Saruko @StarLi
If it’s just the 3 of us, then an hour later would be much better for me too.
That would be 8:30am EDT, 9:30pm Japan time, on Saturday night.

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And we have our own channel!
Thank you @seanblue!

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Sorry, I didn’t explain myself better before - 7:30am EDT, 8:30pm Japan is the best out of all of the options in that poll for me. I could push it to 8:00am EDT, 9:00pm Japan, but I might not be able to do it if it were later than that. (Weekends are family time during the day for me, so I was trying to see if I could get in on the tail end of the latest time slot in the poll, but ended up deciding it would probably still not be late enough.)

Well, I just negotiated 7:30pm my time (7:30am your time, 8:30pm Japan time) so I will be there tomorrow and hope to “see” you. :smile: And maybe others will join us? The first time might be a bit nerve-wracking, but after that it is fun.

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Just wanted to note, I probably won’t be able to make it to the group this week, since this weekend is pretty busy for me. I will try, but it doesn’t seem likely (that’s why I voted for skipping this week, but it seems everyone else is available, so it’s all good :slight_smile: ) At the moment at least, it looks like I should be good for the weeks after that, though.

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Thanks a ton for organizing all of this! Really looking forward to it :blush:
To my group, I think I actually voted to start this weekend, but I wasn’t thinking because I’m currently out of town while my parents visit me in Japan so I’ll have to join next week sorry don’t hate me

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Week 2 discussion thread is here! Reading pages 7-21 this week.

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Just a reminder that Saruko and I will be hanging out in the Zenitendo channel on Discord (see link above) in about 10 minutes, and you are welcome to join us no matter where you are in the chapter. :grinning:

Hi everyone! Just to say that I have started reading the 銭天堂 and am following the regular pace (Week 2 at the moment).
I have earlier epic-failed the start with Intermediate club, seemingly bc the reading of キノの旅 was too challenging for me. So will try to keep up the pace with you, Chapter 1 seems so far quite a nice reading.
I will have some newbie-らしい questions, hope those won’t be a bother.
To start with those, I very much like the idea of the vocab spreadsheet, but it is right now a bit confusing.

  • it uses the paper book page numbers as markers, so what if I want to add sth from my e-version? I can probably use the % position from e-book, although that is very uncertain. Or may be I can just leave the page column blank?
  • Currently there is a gap b/w page 12 and 14 - that was intentional? It seems like all those candy names are somewhere around that position.
  • When building a vocab I usually try to keep a sentence as a context reference for a word. It also helps learning the surroundings and proper usage. I wonder if I can use the notes section for this reference?

In addition, it was great to see there is now a reading channel on Discord! I am not sure I will be able to join, despite all my wishes, as the time is clashing with my other appointment. Perhaps some time later in the summer I would be able to join.
Well, that is it for now, thank you for reading :sunny:

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Welcome @Kawazoe!

I too fell under the reading train in the intermediate book club (I tried 時をかける女子), but this book is much more accessible, even though I feared otherwise after reading the foreword.

Glad to have you!

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That was beginner book club too. :stuck_out_tongue:

For past books, we’ve included a column in the spreadsheet for each version of the book. It could be good to add a new column where you can put the ebook percentage. So long as @Radish8 is okay with it.