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Me at the beginning: “What do you mean you love her like a steam whistle? What could that even mean!!??”
Me at the end:
What the author described sounds a lot like sleep paralysis. Feeling like you’re underwater, the squeezing sensation that makes it hard to breathe, and the one sound that breaks it all and wakes you up, it all reminded me of the few times I’ve experienced sleep paralysis.
This was my favorite reading so far, I felt myself getting absorbed in it. You know how when you’re reading a really good story, the world around starts to feel fuzzy, and it’s like you don’t even exist at that moment? It started to feel like that. But, as I feared, I’m still too distracted by figuring out the story that I can’t completely grasp the emotions behind it.
I was looking forward to the reading parts of this chapter, because when all is said and done, I got into Japanese to read fiction, so a textbook chapter that gives me the chance to practice reading and talking about fiction still seems a lot more relevant to my actual goals than the usual essays about people on student exchange.
I actually already knew the story from Y1, because it’s part of a bilingual short story collection I read a couple of years ago, when my Japanese was still so bad the only thing I understood was the first sentence, so I pretty much gave up and switched to the English version after that . It was gratifying to be able to read it properly this time.
I was hoping that Y2 would be another short story, but well. At least cats > internship programs.
Agree that the internship and exchange student stories are becoming tedious. Especially the listening sections, I swear every single one has been an exchange student talking about culture shock. I do think it’s important for people to be aware of cultural differences and the culture shock that they will probably experience, but when it’s the same thing over and over again, I start to crave some diversity.
Or a crushing feeling of loneliness. I guess it’s part of the charm of this story that everyone can relate to it based on whatever you’re feeling when you lie awake in the middle of the night.
Lol, yes. Even in part 1, most of the topics were just tailored to the need of people attending university in Japan. The parts where you had to learn how to ask your professors for favors and properly thank them are probably very useful to people who are actually in this situation, but to me, they just felt so irrelevant. That’s one thing I really prefer about Marugoto, the textbook series we use in my class. It’s got its own flaws, but at least the topics are so varied, there’s something for everyone.
The VN we’re reading with the VN club right now is being a veritable treasure chest of Chapter 9 grammar points today. I’ve encountered くらい, 得ない, はずがない and に違いない all within like 10 lines of text.
I don’t know if all VNs are like this or if this one is special, but I feel like it contains every grammar point. Whenever I look up one, I find it in the VN script! (that I have now thanks to Textractor, I saved it in an editor after every session)
Reading strategy 14 asked “What degree is emphasized as considerable?” And I had no idea what the authors meant by this, so I had to ask ChatGPT what they were trying to ask:
After it rephrased the question, I understand it as: “To what degree is X being highlighted?” And in the example, 成長 is being highlighted to the degree of さびしいような気持ちになる(ほど.)
I mean wow, MURAKAMI! I went in blind to listen to the first text and got so excited when I heard his name I’m reading one of this book right now, though it’s not fiction and he doesn’t write that much as it’s a collection of interviews (it’s Underground if anyone is curious), plus I saw a movie about him last month, plus I have many more of his works that I want to read, so I’m super happy now to have read one of his stories!
One of the most read Japanese author in the world
He’s been translated in every language so you can decide if you go Japanese or not. Would probably go for Japanese though if you can, he is very hard to translate as sometimes it is hard to understand what he means - but I think there’s a reason for that, you can choose your own interpretation, but translators have to make choices that don’t match the Japanese language, so things get lost in translation.
I can’t recommend anything as I’ve only read one of his books a long time ago, but I think Norwegian Woods is one of the most popular one, and maybe you’ve heard of 1Q84 before too
That’s actually really exciting, to think that we read something written by such a famous author!
I think I’ll wait a little bit, until I have some more reading experience, to attempt his books. Just because I want to be fully engrosed in the writing and emotions, and constantly having to look up words or work out a sentence would pull me out if that trance.
I’ve heard of 1Q84 but it’s not really my type of book. But I looked at some of his books and Norweigan Wood, Men Without Women, and South of the Border East of the Sun, are some that I would like to read eventually.
Yeah when I saw how you just casually wrote “the author”, I figured that you probably didn’t know but super nice to see that he can have this effect with such a short text, on someone who doesn’t know about him!
Quartet 1 and 2 Study Group
(Quartet - 読む - Chapter 9)
. It was gratifying to be able to read it properly this time.
but super nice to see that he can have this effect with such a short text, on someone who doesn’t know about him!