Stopped at HPB today and actually found a couple things of interest in Japanese: a mystery novel (my local HPB seems to have a lot of those: mysteries and historicals and nonfiction—most of it uninteresting) and this physics book translated from Italian:
(すごい物理学講義 / La realtà non è como ci appare / Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity by Carlo Rovelli) This is actually one I came across a while back on Amazon but decided, much as I love science, that it and other science books would be low priority until I’d built up my vocabulary more, so it would be just (or mostly) science words I had to look up, rather than science words on top of a bunch of non-science ones. But since I found it here—and actually cheaper than list price, which is very much not the norm with JP books (although not “half price or less” by today’s conversion rates, but absolutely cheaper than Amazon)—of course I was gonna get it. I have for the time being also added the English translation to my wishlist.
I follow Bookmeter’s tumblr blog, and last week they did a rec post of books that have to do with bookstores or the publishing industry, and I had intended to start reading previews today of the ones that’d caught my interest, but alas.
I did, however, read all 14 pages of the third story from おばちゃんたちのいるところ.
I think I didn't dislike this one? Well, once I got past the part where it made me question everything, at least. So, like, the last half. I might adapt a part of it into a fic…
“Skin?? Ma’am, why does your baby bird not have any feathers? Just how young is it and why are you bathing it? It should definitely still be in its nest if it doesn’t have any feathers yet. And what do you mean ‘smooth,’ is bird skin not bumpy? (But then again, maybe that’s only when it’s been plucked…) —Ah, you’re washing a chick (female human) named Hina-chan, not a chick (baby bird).”
^^Basically my thought process the first couple paragraphs.
Then I thought Hina-chan was a baby or toddler, but then she talked, and she certainly doesn’t sound like a small child. But the narrator did say stuff like her having just learned a word and being smart, so then I thought maybe she was an elementary or middle schooler, but it seems they’re both adults.
She fished up the whole skeleton? I guess the magic that allows Hina-chan to be alive and visit Shigemi at her place at night kept her skeleton whole, because otherwise it would just be a single bone. Or her corpse, but she’s too old for that and this is a river, not a peat bog; that would be even less likely than her whole skeleton.
Maybe if I could turn my brain off, I would enjoy these more.
In other reading news, I read various of Edgar Allan Poe’s poems and short stories. Both the stories I read today, both ones I’d never read before, were kind of weird, rather in the same vein as おばちゃんたちのいるところ…
Eyeballing the scene it seems to be mostly the same phrasing and such too. I’d hazard a guess they’re not too different.
Japanese found under the leaves 
December 6th 
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