ごと means including, and all, with… when attached to nouns.
so “the chip along with the shoulder’s flesh”
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Hey, could you use spoiler tags to blur this? Highlight the part you want to blur, click on the gear icon at the top of the reply box, and click “Blur Spoiler.”
at p.51 line 7 at the botom there is a kanji that I couldn’t find. it’s the combinaison of 夾 and 頁. The only kanji I found was 頬. Are they the same???
Looks like it! Just alternate versions of each other I guess? As if there weren’t enough ways to say cheek already 
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Thx a lot. Pass 15 minute of intense raging against a dictionary to finaly tell myself that it’s prob a alternate version. Alternate version sur are a pain.
Finished chapter 3… yatta!
Count me as another who’s hoping there’s an organized resistance movement we’re about to meet and it’s all nezumi’s weird and quirky friends!
Also totally agree: 羅史 is so 100% a henchman. Like a Darth Vader to the emperor we haven’t met yet.
I was cheering when Shion reminded Rashi about how he had previously called him 天然, even though he’s now accusing him of knowing too much and being too smart. Cheering for hipocracy exposed, but also cheering because I actually remembered such a small plot detail from before!
This chapter has definitely been a comprehension pivot for me. The reading is going faster and I feel like I’m understanding more and more. Glad I pushed through the tough spot.
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Now I ask a really stupid question:
Is ネズミ the person and ネズミ the mouse actually the same? I have to admit there was a point in the whole escape sequence where I wasn’t sure if we were talking about the mouse or the person!! By the end of that sequence we definitely have the person ネズミ present… but it seems like it started out with the mouse.
like, on page 116, “灰色の小ネズミだ。治安局員の喉に食らいつく。” – that’s a small brown mouse, who attacked the dude’s neck. Did this mouse transform into ネズミ at some point after, and I missed it?
I’m sorry to point this out but, it wasn’t Rashi who said this, it was Nezumi who said this to Shion in the first chapter. Then later in the second chapter, the rat whispered in Shion’s ear and said the same thing. So when Rashi was commenting about how calm Shion was acting in such a heavy situation, he only parroted what Nezumi had said to him in the past.
I told you it would start rolling along! I’m glad you got past all the difficult vocabulary in the beginning of the chapter.
Maybe it’s a typo, but you typed the same name twice, but I know what you’re asking. ネズミ is the other protagonist, the person we meet in the first chapter. 小ネズミ are the robot rats that ネズミ uses to do the dirty work (see your example), send messages (see chapter 2 at the station with 沙布), and other things. The rescue scene is definitely confusing because the author doesn’t mention anyone entering the car until after 紫苑 notices him at the wheel.
Hopefully some of the others agree with what I said…
Yeah, this can be quite confusing. There is ネズミ the human, and there are also some ネズミs which he controls. I’ve had a few heh? moments myself over this, but mostly you can rely on context. If a ネズミ is on 紫苑’s shoulder, it’s one of the rats, if it’s driving a car, it’s the human. Also, they’re often differentiated by their eye colour.
Oh, I just saw @LucasDesu answered too. Good point about the real rats being called 小ネズミ. Do they always have the 小 though?
I’ve also been assuming they were robots - was it mentioned explicitly somewhere? They seem to have cameras for eyes and other robotic type abilities, but I wasn’t completely sure if they were robots or modified live rats.
arrrggg
I see now:
「言われたことがあるんです」-- “it’s been said before” (i.e. by ネズミ and 小ネズミ)
I read it as “you said that once before.”
Thank you for the clarification, yay book club I never would have understood this otherwise.
Definitely never occurred to me either that the 小ネズミ are robots. If so, I wonder if they were created by the same source that created the winged insects?
Since I have the kindle edition I can quickly search the book for references to 小ネズミ, and to my knowledge the author/narrator differentiates the two and never refers to ネズミ as 小ネズミ and vice-versa. I too had the same confusion then I started paying attention to how they were being referred to and it’s been quite consistent.
In chapter 3 while they are walking through the treatment plant, it’s revealed that the 小ネズミ are robots, but it’s unclear who created them. I’m assuming that it was ネズミ’s work because it wouldn’t make sense about why he can control them so easily. But then again, I could be wrong about such an assumption.
Jisho.com is good for this. It shows alternate forms below each entry. For actual definitions/searchability I prefer Weblio, but Jisho makes finding alternate forms really easy.
I had the same confusion, so after Google Translate gave me 「頬」a couple times I figured it was probably an alternate form and searched it in Jisho.
By the way, not that I know enough yet about Japanese literary conventions and whatnot to judge, but at times the use of archaic/more complex or unusual readings and kanji seem contrived and pretentious. I am intrigued by the possibilities presented by alternate readings and writings as a way to convey meaning and all, but there are times (not necessarily in this case, but generally speaking) where it feels gratuitous. Again, not that I know enough at this point to tell when this is the case for sure, but I have to assume that some authors overdo it in an attempt to seem more…“literary.” Like the equivalent to using archaic and fancy English to sound erudite and instead sounding like you’re trying too hard (as I often do, sometimes for comedic effect, sometimes – I hate to admit it – not).
At this point, of course, that’s how it feels every time some weird radical or reading pops up and gives me a mini headache. I’ll know I’ve made progress when I only occasionally stop to stare, sigh heavily and mutter “but why?”
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A site for Alternate form of Kanji would be www.Kanjipedia.jp
Kanji section of Jisho and Tangorin can’t do this.
I created a thread for this, Kanji Alternate Form Thread with different unicode
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Also, I think I’ve finally internalized the reading of 呟く.
And it’s a good thing because no matter what I try, I can’t get the Midori or Japanese apps to recognize it when I draw it in. Has anyone else had this problem?
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I’ve never been real successful with apps using writing recognition. I always seem to either get the stroke order wrong or the proportion incorrect.
I had trouble with the last sentence of the 3rd chapter. 母の顔がちらりとうかんだ. Fleeting glimpse of mother’s face?
To be honest I also have trouble trying to translate this into English. The way understood it was, “His mother’s face flashed in his mind.” ちらりと means glance even though it’s an adverb and うかぶ means to float or to come to mind. So if you can put together something more coherent then that’s what it would be.
I’m a little behind this week, but hopefully should just about be able to polish off chapter 4 tomorrow.
I think I have the gist of what’s going on on pgs 160 - 162 (although I feel it’s deliberately a bit vague), but just to confirm: these are two people we haven’t encountered before, right? Also, anyone else feel like the guy with glasses on the screen may be our first introduction to the ‘enemy’?
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When you mentioned this, I knew exactly what you were talking about even though I don’t have page numbers. I also think it was deliberately not clear whether we should know them or not. However, I suspect that one of them is Rashi and the other (the one wearing the glasses) is someone we haven’t formally met yet in the story. What his role is in NO. 6 seems likely that he is the “enemy in the shadows”.
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It did occur to me he might be Rashi, but then I couldn’t think of any reason not to name him. He’s obviously someone who’s expected to know similar things to Rashi. Maybe he’s just another member of the 治安局？Perhaps a mole inside the organisation for (as you nicely put it) the enemy in the shadows.
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