BUTTER 🧈 Week 3

Japanese Language Book Clubs
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Welcome to BUTTER Week 3 :books: :butter:

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Week Start Date Chapter Percentage 文庫ページ
Week 1 Jan 31 until line break ending with 電車に乗り込んだ 6% 40
Week 2 Feb 07 stop when you see chapter 3 13% 81
Week 3 Feb 14 until line break ending with 挑発するように揺れている 20% 124
Week 4 Feb 21 until line break ending with どうしても食べてみたくなったのだ 27% 167
Week 5 Feb 28 stop when you see chapter 7 37% 224
Week 6 Mar 7 stop at line break ending with 稀有な経験はないだろうと思う 46% 279
Week 7 Mar 14 stop at line break ending with 両手を打ち鳴らした 54% 323
Week 8 Mar 21 stop at the section beginning with 2月２４日 62% 371
Week 9 Mar 28 stop when you see the break 12 69% 413
Week 10 Apr 4 stop at line break ending さびしさがにじむことを。 78% 466
Week 11 Apr 11 stop at line break ending 再び汽笛が鳴った 86% 512
Week 12 Apr 18 stop at the end of the book, not including 解説 98% 584

Discussion Rules

  • Please use spoiler tags for major events in the current chapter(s) and any content in future chapters.
  • When asking for help, please mention things like chapter, page number, part of audio track, etc. Mentioning what version of the book you are reading may also help people locate the section
  • Don’t be afraid of asking questions, even if they seem embarrassing at first. All of us are here to learn.
  • To you lurkers out there: Join the conversation, it’s fun!

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BUTTER :butter: Advanced Book Club Home Thread
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Done with week 3. Chapter 3 was much more enjoyable for me, but my speed is still pretty slow overall. I just preread already so I can actually finish comfortably in the allotted timeframe :smiley:
I wrote down many notes again, but I try to keep it shorter this time:

Thoughts:

Man, I hate people like the grandpa. Can’t cook themselves for shit, but always complain about food. My dad is the same and I could sometimes slap him senseless for his comments. Luckily, it seems to be more a thing in the older generations. In my friend group, all the guys are cooking as well, me included. If you cook yourself, you actually learn to be appreciative about people cooking for you.
It’s not the feedback or criticism by itself that ticks me off to no end, it’s always the WAY in which it is levied.

Ha learned something new お見合いのさくら. I’m kinda feeling a little sad for her mother. She doesn’t seem to life a particularily happy life and it doesn’t seem she has much fun either :frowning: . Totally the silently enduring archetype.

What surprises me, especially in this week is all the place names of 区、市、駅、and actual shopnames in this book. Are Japanese people not living in Tokyo actually supposed to know half of that stuff? Are they also looking it up like I always do? Wouldn’t have a “we went to some other part of Tokyo to eat” have sufficed? Maybe it is meant to give the story a sense of realism?

God, I like Reiko, solid advice, great friend. I’m not sure why she is switching gynecologist though. I thought it was established that the likely cause is stress. Reducing the guy’s hours and stress would probably be more effective. But maybe I’m misremembering an earlier week, and it was her own stress that was identified as the cause and one of the reasons why she quit?

Interesting encounter with 梶井. First time she actually lost her cool and dropped her demeanor a bit. Finally getting somewhere :smiley: .

Seems to be enforced this week when she actually thinks through her usual suspect when she plans to dine in the restaurant recommended by 梶井 and can’t think of a single one she can, or wants to go with.

Sadly I kinda lost the plot and interest a little bit in chapter 4 again when she started to have these big inner monologues again. This time making parallels to some movies and characters in them. I honestly couldn’t be arsed to look all that stuff up to make it make sense. Since it was also interwoven with all the French food talk that was its own kind of challenge and required enough lookups on its own.
The actual happenings in the restaurant and her way to and back from the restaurant were okay.
I hope the rest of chapter 4 is more similar to chapter 3 in regard to stuff actually happening and not only our protagonist thinking to herself most of the time.

Okay, comment got longer than I wanted to again. Sorry to the people who read all my ramblings.

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Finally finished this week’s reading, first week so far that I’ve been late on. I’ve been reading consistently everyday, at least 10 min, but I need to be committing closer to 24 min to stay on track…

Anyways here are my thoughts:

Summary

I like Reiko, but she also reminds me of a certain type of person. I don’t know the word for it, but for example when she complains about societal changes like Little Black Sambo being banned or Japan banning smoking more. I suppose I hear it more from conservatives eg complaining about straws being banned or needing to wear masks during the pandemic but it feels like it’s complaining just for the sake of being against change rather than actually caring about what’s happening. I can’t quite word it correctly so I hope someone will understand what I mean. When she complains about the man being yelled at for smoking (and tbh I don’t believe that he was yelled at as bad as she’s saying, types like her like to exaggerate) she adds that Japan is being anti-common sense expanding smoking bans. Ma’m you are having infertility problems and yet think smoking bans are anti-common sense??? Where is your common sense.

We’re now 20% in the book, and usually I’d expect some type of major plot development at this point in a book but I think Butter is more focused on societal observation so we may not get that.

I suppose it’s like in American media when they talk very specifically about locations in New York City. I do think a lot of Japanese people will be familiar with the locations at least, I live in Tokyo and they are recognizable to me, and around a third of the Japanese location lives in Tokyo or a surrounding prefecture so a lot of people probably would. I don’t think the stores are as famous though? I think knowing the locations adds a layer to it but you don’t need to know them.

4 Likes
BUTTER :butter: Week 4
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Annndd that was a lot of reading this book today, but caught up to week three now! :flexed_biceps:

Saaame. My (now deceased) grandpa was like that. Didn’t cook, my grandma cooked everything, she said he complimented her cooking two or three times during their 50 year marriage :exploding_head: My grandma made sure her kids could cook though, so thankfully my dad is nothing like that.

I think it’s for the realism, yeah. Because it’s Tokyo a huge number of people will actually know the places and be like, ‘oh yeah I’ve been there’. I’ve seen this sort of name dropping in other Japanese books but it’s almost always in Tokyo rather than say, Sendai or where ever.

I struggled to stay focused through that bit, but I do remember all her comments on 援助交際 and how 梶井 was with a 40 something married man when she was 17. Oof. Definitely a lot of commentary on being a woman/girl in Japan.

That whole scene I was like "but…smoking and second hand smoke are terrible for pregnant women?? I think Reiko’s character is more or less just a foil for our MC who is, imo, a bit of an idiot who lacks both true empathy and introspection. The ground breaking insights her friend gives her are uh…rather basic :joy:

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Way behind the club but finished this week as well.

I have to say I struggled to keep focused at the beginning of chapter 4, with all the characters from various media that I am not familiar with.

And I was a little annoyed at the discussion of her weight. I know it’s a big thing in Japan, but having her previous „normal“ weight be 49kg with 166cm… that’s a BMI of 17.8. And what the hell were her boyfriend‘s comments :sob:

4 Likes