Oh, I don’t mean to discount your friend at all, especially since my understanding of the term is still a translation of my 国語先生’s explanation. Just that the meaning made less sense (to me, at least) once the context of the rest of the passage was revealed.
I made an assumption that the next passage would illustrate what those thoughts were exactly when I asked about the initial sentence, leading me to be biased towards that interpretation. If no thoughts were illustrated afterward, the sentence would make absolutely no sense meaning a sudden thought. Idle thinking would make more sense in that context, as it would be pointless to write that a character had a sudden thought and not tell the reader what it was.
Nah it’s fine; I must’ve skipped over that word the first time so I had to go back and re-read it. I feel like I understand it a lot better the second time through though, with your teacher’s insight in mind. Now I’m encouraged to go back over the rest of this section one more time; this time with a focus on unfamiliar vocab words
Made a few small edits to the character list; Ai is a university student, right?
Yeah I think she’s a second year university student!
Also I am doing the same thing basically. I go through and quickly read through a few pages each day without a dictionary or anything. Then I check the thread and go back over things more carefully. I understand the gist but I definitely end up missing quite a lot of nuance at first.
You know speaking of which, I’m a sophomore at college too. feel like every time I read a book the characters are always my age or a little older. (I’ve been reading diligently since I was 11). I could swear I"m not purposely looking for my age group, it just seems to happen a lot. Same with cartoons and anime too. I wonder if anyone else gets this feeling.
Unfortunately, since I read a lot of light novels, so that’s normally not the case (curse of the high school cliche!!!) for me. Though I can definitely say I’d prefer to be able to find more books with characters my age (mid twenties). I think it’s probably related to the fact that books dive into a character’s personality much more (at least, with first person or third person limited) than other media forms, so it’s more enjoyable to read about a character with whom you can relate the most, I adored the Pendragon series when I was in high school, and, while it’s still my favorite book series, I can’t “click” with it when I reread it like I did back then. Though, maybe it’s just because I’ve reread it too much. It also helps that older characters should naturally be “better” characters than younger ones (as they should have more experience and development), and that, as we age, we start to understand the older characters more. xD
Well, I finished reading it today, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Although I have a lot I want to say about it, we’re still technically on chapter 1 so I’ll leave it at that. If anyone else has read ahead and has questions feel free to ask me, just make sure to spoiler them.
So, it seems from the first chapter that Ai is a rather lonely and isolated young woman. She only has one friend, but doesn’t seem terribly bothered by this and mostly wastes her first repeated days with disinterest. (Might as well drop the obvious discussion question in here: What would you do if you discovered you were in Ai’s situation?) She displays certain paranoid tendencies and if it weren’t for her attendance at uni, would seem to a borderline recluse. I wonder if anyone else is getting the feeling this may be related to why she’s trapped? Is she supposed to learn some lesson? Has she been selected specifically?
This type of character seems to be fairly common in Japanese fiction and I wonder to what extent Ai is representative of a wider sense of loneliness and isolation among young(ish) people in Japan…
Also, has anyone else noticed we will still be reading this on 7th November?!
I would be so worried that the one time I did something crazy and illegal, that would be when the repeating would stop and I would then be stuck in horrible-consequence-timeline.
I’ve been reading a little bit ahead (because I started early) and I have one small question. It doesn’t even affect the basic understanding of the plot, but I am just curious.
Page 27 line (or column?) 5
「いやあ、ここがわがってえがったなあ、お嬢ちゃん、寂しかったろう」
I don’t understand the first half of the sentence.
My first thought was that I would use my recently-acquired infinite free time to travel, like, everywhere. Imagine my disappointment when it was established that you get transported back home when midnight hits. At least you could take day-trips! Seems like long international flights would be difficult though, esp since it seems like she gets transported directly to the next morning without having any say in what time she sleeps?
Interesting. I’m also getting a little head start on the next section and was a little puzzled at first, too. I guessed what the words were, but attributed it to ‘old-man-speak’. Interesting to see the real reasons for it.
@Snowflying - I had the same thought as you. I guess you could still travel most of Japan and fly to some Asian countries, though. Especially since you’d be able to time everything to perfection. Also, like @Scaso (and Bill Murray from what I remember), I’d definitely get up to a lot of いたずら. Maybe do some gambling each morning to get the funds up, too.
From what I read in one of the definitions, the dialect is dying. So pretty much only old people speak this way according to the person in the source I linked to.
@atrejub I’m with you about doing anything too riské and then have to pay the rest of my life for it. Perhaps I’m too goody-goody for a situation like this. haha
I don’t think I would do anything bad, just come up to complete strangers and start talking about all the things i learned from them the last repeat. I’ve never been a joker, so i think it would be kind neat to try something new. Of course, just talking to strangers is new territory anyway.
But if you think about it, how much do you really know about the people you live around? With enough repeats you could actually get a chance to know everyone, at least as much as you can in a single day. Wouldn’t it be crazy to have had a conversation with every single person in your city?
Just that the meaning made less sense (to me, at least) once the context of the rest of the passage was revealed.
Now I’m encouraged to go back over the rest of this section one more time; this time with a focus on unfamiliar vocab words 
Though at point I could just steal alcohol get caught, and wake up in bed the next day.