The slow pace I’m reading at doesn’t help either. I’m really bad at remembering small details in books in general, and the slow pace just makes it worse. Even though I understood the “ridiculous number of small boats” part when I read it, when you wrote this I still didn’t remember that they said this. I had to go back and read the line again, and then I remembered.
I’m not sure I would have understood the nuance of that sentence even if I did remember the context, but remembering more context in general certainly couldn’t hurt… That’s actually one of the reasons I like when chapters have the gaps for scene changes every few pages; it gives me a good goal to reach in one sitting and the context is fresh the whole time.
I understand where you are coming from. When I read this section, I didn’t remember much about the small details that I referred to in my last answer either. But what I’ve found when I’ve brought problematic passages to friends to help me interpret in the past is that there’s always contextual clues they point to in the sentences going into or coming after the troubled spot on which they based their explanations. Although I still suck at doing this now, I know that my awareness of solving these puzzling points when reading has slowly been improving.
I’m sure with your studies especially since you are focusing on these kind of details now, you’re improving by leaps and bounds with every question.
Oh glad it wasn’t just me!
This felt like a whole different league than the previous chapter O_o
Didn’t help that I was reading on a train without the vocabulary list.
But when reading the Swedish version after I felt I had understood more than I realized. But once you are under the 80/20 you feel completely lost! ^^;
Wow, I really made it… I’m now reading along! And I don’t plan to fall behind again!
Thank you for the break, it gave me a lot of motivation to push myself and catch up!
I’m very lost after the second comma. When’s it cold, people stop paying attention to small things, and…they don’t do things they don’t need?
A sentence parser is telling me that すまそうとする here is doing the to とする trying/attempting thing with the 済ます verb which whilst i just began studying i have little context for. Could somebody help me out after the second comma?
I have the feeling that you have already answered your own question. Putting everything together I would say that people try to get things done without doing unnecesary things.
Alright, right back to it, then! Looks like we’ve got about 11 pages to go through this week. Should be pretty easy. Four days of 2, one day of 3.
From pages 1-2 of Ch. 8:
風はコンクリートの建物の角にぶつかり、また角にぶつかってくるせいでしょうか、ふくときは刃物のようにするどく、かと思うと、ぱったりとまり、また急にふきはじめるのです。- If you’re anything like me, your brain shut off several times while trying to read this. Let me see if I can break it down correctly, section by section. (The wind collides with the corners of the concrete buildings), (Maybe it’s the fault of it coming and colliding with the corners again), (When the wind blows, it’s sharp like a knife), (And just then), (Suddenly it stops), (Again, suddenly begins blowing again). So, all together, I would read it as "The wind crashes against the corners of the concrete buildings, and maybe because of it colliding with those corners the times the wind blows, it’s sharp as a knife. Then, just like that, the wind will abruptly stop, before suddenly picking right back up again.
山々 - Jisho has nothing for this, but DeepL puts it as ‘greatly’ or ‘many mountains’. I’m assuming it’s the latter.
I read it as a question with two choices. Like, “When it gets cold, do people stop paying paying attention to the little things, or do they not go overboard on tasks?”
Jisho does have this word, but there seem to be some connection issues leading to jisho showing the „nothing found“ page… if you try reloading it should show up.
It’s really kind of reassuring seeing that seanblue had troubles with the long おばあちゃん talk, too. I didn’t really get much out of it either, but the summary by @Kyasurin and some re-reading helped a lot.
It’s outcome, result, consequence, Jisho
So, I think it’s very roughly Maybe it’s because [the wind] is striking against the corners again?
I think of it as “on account of,” which makes terrible sounding English, but it’s easier to just plop into a literal translation: Maybe the wind is so sharp on account of it coming at me after having crashed into the corners of concrete buildings… and then crashed into corners again, she thought, just as the wind completely stopped, but then it started right back up again.. I think she’s trying to understand the winds’ motivation for being so mean to her–basically, it’s cranky from getting battered by buildings
but I’m still making the threads, I don’t mind ^^ I like reading your questions and comments too 
And I don’t plan to fall behind again!
I didn’t really get much out of it either, but the summary by 