Thanks to @Kyasurin for adding all the vocab to it! 
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I found this link to a translation of Kawabata’s short story The Master of Funerals, which includes some of the details in 骨拾い.
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/k/kawabata-dancing.html
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To continue with the nerdiness, I’m not as afraid of new words as I am of new sentence constructions. Things like new grammatical structures and idioms and poetic language always trip me up. I can often (read sometimes) read new words the first time I come across them, by knowing the constituent kanji.
Thanks for your answer. I’ll probably buy the kindle edition and lurk along. If I buy it on my kindle, my girlfriend can’t complain about me having too many books because she won’t know about it. Bwahhahhahha…
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Is that 500 unique Kanji words?
It’s just 500 unique words. Some of them are onomatopoetic like むずむず, so pure hiragana.
Hows everyone doing?
I’ll kick off with some questions. If anyone has any help, I would greatly appreciate it.
- 息をすると、むずむずいう。 p11
Im reading this as: When I breathe, it makes a "むずむず” sound.
But that word means itchy or impatient. So i’m kinda at a loss as to the meaning.
- What does the ”針一本” refer to? p11
thanks
- I read it as “even if you dropped a (single) needle”, in the sense that it’s very quiet. But I might be wrong.
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Given the other archaic forms in this story, I wonder if it just means “When I breathe, it feels itchy”?
I read it as being the sort of morning where it seemed as if time stood still (in the next sentence he says he can’t move) and even the dropping of a pin would cause something to break. I don’t think it would refer to sound, as he has just mentioned the noise of the cicadas.
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That makes absolute sense, I was wondering about the sound of the cicadas. Thanks for the explanations!
I don’t guarantee they are correct! Just my best guess, and maybe someone else can confirm for us. 
Thank you for the files, much appreciated. 
I found the story fascinating, beautiful, and very atmospheric. The vocabulary is way beyond my level and I would have despaired, had I needed to look up every unknown word/kanji. But thanks to the google sheet prepared by @Kyasurin and @MissMisc, I actually enjoyed reading the story (thanks again!).
I am fascinated by 緑の圧迫 (the pressure of the green?). I guess it’s the special light that bothers the narrator and is reason for him feeling unwell. What’s your view on this?
I, too, found the story fascinating, beautiful, and very atmospheric. The vocabulary is way beyond my level and I would have despaired, had I needed to look up every unknown word/kanji. Thank goodness these stories are short! 
I also found it very interesting learning about the burial customs, and finally understood a number of things I’d seen before but not really understood.
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So tomorrow we (if there is anyone left) will start the second story. I can be in charge of creating the vocab list. I will post it.
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can anyone tell me how to inset a link to jump to a certain part of the thread?
The original vocab list has tabs at the bottom for each chapter already, everything can be found in one place! Chapter 2 vocab has already been added to on there:
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hey everyone,
Sorry, got crushed at work this weekend, should have the vocab list done today. (through pg 22 already)
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There are still a couple of things that I am not sure about in the vocab list, but those are marked.
Question though, anyone know what the こい, そい “prefixes” are?
Like on page 24, そいから、…
This story was really f**d-up. Dude definitely did not have a cheery view of humanity.