明けましておめでとうございます
Here’s the discussion for Chapter 17!
Here’s the Vocabulary List
And the Main Page.
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I do, but it’s a spoiler:
since the object of her affection is a married man who sometimes rejects her companionship, I think Kyoko was seeking the comfort of Rei’s love after being rejected. It is, for sure, a poisonous relationship.
There’s already been hints that 桐山 has a crush on 香子-- back when he happened across ひなちゃんwatching 高橋s baseball game, so for now, I will say-- I think 香子 needs to feel loved. I can’t remember when the other parts come in.
Does anyone know why Rei says shamisen here? Is this some kind of cultural reference to being deceitful or something?
Catching up with Ch18, and 「ゆとり世代」 caught my attention. Googled a bit to learn some context and it reminds me of the boomers vs millenials thing ^^; also really interesting that the current education system in Japan has already “less pressure,” when it’s still seems to be much stricter compared to other countries.
I was curious about that, too. What did they used to cram that they don’t anymore?
In 2002, schools were no longer compulsory on Saturdays.
In the lower grades of elementary schools, science and social studies classes were abolished and “environmental studies” was introduced. In junior high school, the number of elective classes was increased to further motivate students.
From 1992, schools closed on the second Saturday of every month to increase student spare time in accordance with the teaching guidelines. From 1995, schools closed on the fourth Saturday also.
In 1998, the teaching guidelines were revised to reflect the council’s report. 30% of the curriculum was cut and “time for integrated study” in elementary and junior high school was established. It was a drastic change.
they also reduced total class time significantly.
^ yeah, from what I read, they generally cut the time students compulsory spend in school. I would think the schedule was more or less the same case in Korea (at least in the 1980-90s dramas I’ve watched haha), where even though classes technically end in the afternoon, students would stay late at school until 9/10/11pm ish for individual study including Saturdays, which is supervised by a teacher. Since that was abolished, I guess that’s why cram school is now a thing over there to “compensate” since the academic standards don’t seem to have exactly relaxed either 
but also, because of the abolition, those from the older generation think that the yutori generation have lesser academic ability / “snowflake” tendencies 
edit: on a sidenote, I just learned the 「棋」kanji and 「将棋」 makes much more sense now 
(commanding chess pieces cool cool)
talk about plans not working.
japan’s math grades have been going down steadily in some math tests(TIMES/TIMS what ever it was). in the wikipedia article there we mentions that they acknowledge this(decline in academic ability) but decided to focus their attention on helping kids “survive”. IMHO it makes sense to lower academic ability to develop more essential skill especially since so much of the workforce is going to end up in the service industry.
I agree. We barely use high level math outside of school anyway haha
Anyway! I have a question from Ch19
What is せんかった here?
I assume it is する in negative past form. Not sure if it is slang or dialect.
