- If it lasted long enough I’d probably spend a whole lot of it reading all my endless books, cause most things you do disappears the next day, but reading is retained. Will need to remember what page I was on only, so I can continue. I have SO many books! Including a huge lot in Japanese! I’d become fluent
I’d read the entire Wheel of Time series, quite fitting! I’m on book one, have the entire set =P It’s on my to do list already
I’d also try to hone my art skills, though not being able to retain any products would be horrible no products would be wasted so I could just go for it! Use up all that airbrush paint! It will be back tomorrow! No fear of braking equipment either! =D
Go out and buy spray paint, money will be back and wherever I paint will be gone, so living room wall funzies!
Eat candy all day! No, wait, I already do that =P
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- I still don’t know how I feel about the main character herself, though I am enjoying the narration style. A lot stories try to leak in a lot of third person omniscient details no matter the base person, giving more details than necessary/wanted. I feel like the book is doing a good job introducing the world from her point of view rather than as an invisible pet telepathic parrot, sitting on her shoulder. Though it seems this is a more common trait of Japanese writing in general, based on my experience with other books.
I can actually relate with Ai’s interactions with Yurie, as I’m a fairly detached person myself. I don’t connect with people very easily at a personal level, though I still have a wide social circle. If I were told by a friend, however, that they were in a time loop, I would believe them with reasonable doubt. If I don’t believe them, I risk being a jerk. If I believe them, I believe having to told I’m gullible. The latter is a much better option in my eyes. Besides, I’d love to find out that supernatural phenomenon actually exist (if one does, why wouldn’t others). All I’d have to do is tell them something about myself I hadn’t before and them have them tell me the “next day.” That would be enough for me to have no doubts whatsoever.
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I personally would enjoy the experience to the fullest. I’ve always loved when Bill Murray got to the point of acting as God in Groundhog day, and I’ve envied Kyon and Co. through now 10 watches of Endless Eight (after who knows how many times reading it). The only problem I’d have with a Time Loop scenario is if it turned out I was still aging through it. THEN I’d be probably be panicking pretty badly. A Time Loop in which you keep your memories is effectively a time stop without the inability to interact with people. Though I guess I’d have to give up on WaniKani if I was in one!
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Not getting the spooky vibes yet, but we’re not very far in. The very autumn-like descriptions of the environments and weather is very Octoberish (for my hometown, which is generally quite a bit colder than most of Japan), and, as a result, reminiscent of Halloween to me. Seeing as this is my favorite time of the year, it’s quite enjoyable.
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I think i would be a bit scared at first, but the opportunity to catch up on my reading sounds too good for that to last long. Just a chance to have some me time sounds great.
As for the spooky factor, I’ve read a little ahead so I can say it does start getting a little spooky, but nothing too bad yet.
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@AnimeCanuck Thanks so much for the discussion questions! Sorry to push the first round onto you when you haven’t had the chance to read; you didn’t have to force yourself to write them. 無理しないでね！
1 & 2. Does anyone else think that if they were in Ai’s situation they’d take much longer to come to the conclusion it was time travel? Especially the first day; I would’ve just presumed I had made some mistake with the class and that Yurie’s story sounding familiar was just Dejavu. Honestly with how repetitive and disorienting college life can be, it would have probably taken me the 3rd or 4th time around to consider the supernatural 
Because of this, my first impression was that Yurie was actually a really good friend for entertaining the idea of time travel based on Ai’s words alone. Although based on Yurie’s refusal to let her sleep over, it’s possible that she was lying about believing her. Still, I think Ai’s reaction was too harsh, basically saying “Well I don’t think of her as a friend, either.” She’s definitely very solitary and honestly seems pretty passive to me; she hasn’t experimented much with the day-repeating phenomenon and hasn’t tried to reach out to anyone after the first repeat. I do feel bad that she’s upset about being stuck in this situation, but she’s not the most sympathetic protagonist there ever was.
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I’m kind of “meh” about the main character. As I mentioned before, I probably wouldn’t be her friend in real life.
Depending on the circumstance of that day it could be a good or bad thing. I think for the main character the circumstances she was stuck in makes it easy for her to determine how she would want to experience her day.
Since I don’t own the physical book. I didn’t know this. But so far I don’t think the book is that scary or creepy for that matter.
- I do like Ai, I do like how she sticks straight to the matter at hand and doesn’t get sentimental .
- Not sure, I guess I would catch up reading, anime and american Shows. However most Video games would be frustrating/impossible to finish. So after I finishing catching up on the other stuff I might just lose it.
- I do like the atmosphere but I’m not so easily spooked. I hope it does get scary though I like being scared.
And about Ai’s solitude problem, as someone who has thought a lot of people were my friend and been turned on by those people I can understand Ai. I’ve had people pretend to be my friend and then use the information they got about me against me, use me for my notes/homework but not invite me out, and old friends who straight up ignore me when I try to contract them. (One even blocked me on snap chat! All this time I thought he changed numbers but he actually hates for some reason that he will not say. I feel like tsukuru from Colorless) So my rule of thumb is, don’t just assume someone is your friend just because they talk to you. I hate being naive. In fact I don’t think I have any real friends right now either, I just call them that for lack of better words. So I would have had the exact same reaction as Ai actually. I don’t think shes wrong, F*ck Yurie.
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I hadn’t heard of it, so I looked it up: “Replay” by American author Ken Grimwood is a real novel, that was very popular in Japan, about someone given the chance to go back and replay his life.
Very relevant to our protagonist’s interests
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So, I am still a little behind and hit the following sentence now, which i don’t quite get the gist of…
page 18 (first chapter). Ai has done the 繰り返し for the xth time now and wonders about how often she has repeated the 7th of November now…
不思議なもので、何度も同じ一日を繰り返していると、はるか昔から世界はこうだったような気すらしてくる。十一月7日以前の歴史や、私は含めた人々の記憶は世界を騙すために巧妙に創られた偽物で、世界はそもそも十一月7日しかなかったのではないか。
I know all the words, but still cannot translate it…
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I can’t do a proper translation for you, but I think the gist is: It’s strange, but when the same day repeats over and over, it feels like that’s all there ever was. She wonders if all the time and (her memories of?) people that came before were just made as some elaborate trick. Maybe 7/11 is actually all there’s ever been?
(One part I’m a bit unclear on is the 記憶 - not sure if she means her memories of people, or other people’s own memories.)
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「It’s a strange thing; no matter how many times the same day repeats, it seems as if the world was like this even long ago. It’s like the history before November 7th was a fake strangely created to in order to trick the memories of the people involved, and that the world originally consisted of only November 7th」
That would be my field translation (I don’t have my actual document with me). This is how I see the part about the memories.
含めた人々の記憶は = Memories of the people included
含めた人々＝ People having been included (Included people)
人々の記憶 = People’s memories
Edit: If anyone sees any glaring issues with my translation, please do tell me! As a note, my translations will often be a bit more awkward English-wise, as I tend to be very literal grammatically, so I apologize in advance for that!
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It’s a strange thing, repeating the same day over and over, you even start to feel like the world has always been this way. That all the history before November 7th, and everyone’s memories including mine, were all just cleverly constructed lies created to fool us, and that there was only ever November 7th to begin with.
Gave translating it a try as well. As far as I know no one here is a professional translator but hopefully our combined efforts helped make things a little clearer
these sound good, but isn’t “もので” a conjunctive particle indicating cause or reason?
It is when following a verb (usually in casual form). In the case of this sentence, however, it is not. 「もの」 is acting as a nominalizer here for the adjective 「不思議な」. When following an adjective, the Kanji isn’t used (that I’ve seen, at least, especially since the kanji must refer to a concrete object). 「で」 is acting as the -te form of the copula in order to connect 「不思議なもの」 and 「何度も同じ一日を繰り返していると。。。」. At the very least, I can’t even begin to find a way of making the sentence work causally.
Edit: That’s the reason for my particular translation. “Strange Thing” rather than something along the lines of “Mystery” acknowledges the nominalizer, and I used a semi-colon to link the sentences while maintaining as close to similar phrasing as possible. Of course, my own translation could always be changing the question to fit the answer! >w<
ok, that makes sense. This was what was mainly tripping me up, because I couldn’t make it work either!
Thank you
Thank you, @riccyjay, @EiriMatsu and @Snowflying,
This definitely makes much more sense now! And it is a very interesting thought!
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So, we should be moving on to chapters 4 and 5 this week, I think. How’s the pace for everyone?
At first I was actually worried it would be too slow, but it’s turned out to be perfect. With No.6 my main goal was just to keep up with the schedule and understand the plot. With the extra time for 秋の牢獄 though, I’m really trying to understand as much detail as I can, re-read every chapter, note down all the vocab I don’t know and properly practice it in Anki. And it’s working really well. I feel like I’m getting a lot more out of this one in a learning sense than last time.
Small point about the book: anyone else find the name 北風伯爵 is somehow inherently unthreatening? The descriptions of him are all a bit chilling, but the name…I don’t know, just sounds kind of funny to me. Sounds like a 90’s dance craze. Everybody do the Kita-kaze Haku-shaku! Woo!
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The repeated 北風伯爵 so much, I loved saying it (I read out loud)
I do a “read without dictionary” run mostly, cause I would have to look up too much and would still struggle to make sense of it =P
But with the help of questions and answers here, as well as general comments and dialog, I’m able to keep up with what is going on. Some of it I catch myself, other I catch here =P
So I often jump over kanjis I don’t know, so having this long string of kanji repeated over and over, while knowing how to read it thanks to it being mentioned (I would have guessed all ‘on’ reading if not =P ) was actually kinda fun
Chapter four was so enjoyable I did it in one sitting! I usually do 1 or 2 pages per sitting before getting worn out, but the “Kita-kaze Haku-shaku” made it such fun (and dialog in general makes for a different flow =P )
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I do the same actually. First (usually a little in advance) read the chapter with no dictionary at all for gist. Then (first half of the week) go back and look up everything I don’t know - even if it’s just the reading. Then put them into Anki. I use Anki because I can then review words based on whether or not I find them important. Often there will be a word I don’t know that well, but which I’ll just move to a long interval because I don’t think it’s useful. Finally re-read with my (hopefully) upgraded knowledge of the new vocab. It’s working well so far. Repeatedly seeing new words in context as well as in an SRS is helping them stick a lot better for me.
It’s not that I feel one way or the other, but it reminds me of an anime I watched called D.Gray-Man. The antagonist in that story is called 千年伯爵. So every time I see 北風伯爵, I get reminded of that character.
Unfortunately I failed to enjoy it as much as you did I think, as 伯爵 pronounced naturally ends up “Hak-shaku,” which is significantly less entertaining. 
Pacing is technically a bit slow for me, as I’m just cramming the portions into one day a week currently, but it works out fine, since it allows me more time to translate the other two books I’m reading! I’d be fine with a speed up if more people wanted it, but the current pace is quite fine. @LucasDesu Glad I’m not the only one!