香君 上 西から来た少女 | Week 3

Japanese Language Book Clubs
1

香君 上 西から来た少女 | Week 3

Week 3 14 June 2025
Chapters 1.6, 2.1
End page 115
Pages 34
Last Week 香君 上 西から来た少女 | Week 2
Next week 香君 上 西から来た少女 | Week 4
Home Thread 香君 上 西から来た少女 Advanced Book Club : now reading!

Discussion Guidelines

Everybody should feel free to post and ask questions–it’s what makes book clubs fun! But please do not post until you are familiar with Spoiler Courtesy!

Spoiler Courtesy

Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.

  1. Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
  2. Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
  3. Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
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I’m pretty sure that somewhere in this week’s reading I picked up the word いがらっぽい – but now I want to look again at the context it was used in and I can’t find it. Would someone who’s reading the ebook be willing to do a text search and let me know where in the chapter it was used?

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It’s in the second sentence of 2.1.

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Thanks. (I suggested an update to jmdict with some glosses that better fit the way the word is used here, which was accepted.)

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Thoughts

I liked the new details about the 青香草, plus we did end up learning who the リタラン are.

I’m surprised they risked lying to 香君 about アイシャ’s identity. I’m sure the scent of lying is pretty easy to sense for a god like her. Maybe she is happy to have アイシャ, who clearly has unique talents compared to the others who work at the shrine, and just ignored the lie to make things easier.

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I really liked the atmosphere this week, and chapter 2.1 in particular.

I thought it was odd that アイシャ wasn’t more surprised or paniced when it turned out that this place she was being sent to was technically working for the 香君 and she’d need to be presented to her. Or did I miss something earlier?

Does the choice of path on your first visit actually matter? Is somebody noting down what everyone picked? Or is it just a tradition?

ミジマ is an interesting character: clearly マシュウ trusts her a lot, because he gave her the true story about who アイシャ is and why she’s there, not the cover story and identity.

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If I remember correctly, アイシャ also asked this question, and the answer was that it’s just tradition. But I wouldn’t be surprised if 香君 could sense what path the candidate chooses.

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It’s been a really long time since I’ve read 獣の奏者, but I feel like 香君 is dumping so much more lore up front compared to that book. Don’t get me wrong, I am enjoying the vibe of the book so far and I find it intriguing. It’s just that more lore = more lookups = more exhausting to read.

I’m about 1/3 of the way done 2.1, so I’m fine for this week. But I won’t have time to read this weekend and there are two longer weeks coming up, so I’m really going to have to focus if I don’t want to fall behind.

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ミジマ claims it doesn’t matter. But the last sentence of the chapter implies it does and she just doesn’t want to reveal why. I wouldn’t be surprised if the 香君 accepted アイシャ despite the lie in part because of the path she took.

Last sentence:
ミジマはそのまま目を開けることなく、眠りを装っていたが、その身からは、相変わらず混乱し、思い悩んでいる香りが強く発散されていた。

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Finished the portion a bit late.

Thoughts

I continue liking this story, very nice! I like all these smell descriptions, emotions. When I read this book, I feel like I really there.

About the plot, I’m curious why Mijima worried so much. And if Matthew could guess in advance that Aisya is gonna chose this path on her own. I wonder if it all the part of some plot of his. All these people around Aisya seem so reasonable and smart, so I won’t be surprised.

And I’m also curious how reliable is the Aisya’s background story. Won’t main family be suspicious and probing her for information she doesn’t possess?

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Seeing “Matthew” confused me so much for a minute. :sweat_smile:

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I think the idea is that the cover story is one of those double layered ones: the main family will be suspicious, but the cover story implies a “safe” ulterior motive that they don’t care about. So because they have to reason their way to “マシュウ is doing this as part of his 視察官 work” rather than being told it, they’re more likely to believe it and not bother probing further.

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