Thanks @mitrac for making the thread!
Nice idea with the trigger warnings, maybe with spoiler tags. I’ve seen several times that people had to drop stories that they wouldn’t have read at all if they had known.
My reviews:
- (B) Sakura and Suzuki’s long distance relationship: ouch this one was hard as a first one, I wasn’t prepared for casual speech at that point. Now I would maybe breeze through it?
- (A) Closeup: The Zama Nine Murders: tough one, don’t think I got much out of it learning language wise
- (B) Akiko’s American Foreign Exchange: very long but that wasn’t bad. Unexpected turns of events. I think this one helped me quite a bit on building my reading stamina
- (A) Closeup: After the Tokyo Subway Attack: interesting (quite shocking) events, tough one language wise, so I started to think that maybe I would get more out of Satori Reader by not reading too hard stories yet
- (B) Kiki-Mimi radio: okay story, great one for language learning
- (B) Hole in the Wall: nice story, it surprised me that it took that direction, awesome for learning about some aspects of the Japanese culture / daily life
- (B) Meditation: okay
- (B) The Jam Maker: this one moves a lot of people who read it, I found it only okay, sorry!
- (I) The Neighor: okay
- (I) The River Sanzu: liked it quite a bit
- (I) Kona’s big adventure: very predictable story in my opinion, but nice language learning wise
- (I) Koibito: haha loved that one the most, just really enjoyed the narration switching and not knowing how it would end. I did like how it ended.
- (I) Oku-Nikkou: already enjoying this one, both language wise and for the story, makes me travel to a part of Japan I haven’t been before
Edit: review after I’m done reading, mild spoilers I really enjoyed the setting of the story, a child staying with his grand parents at an 温泉 in 奥日光 and wouldn’t have minded more descriptions of their daily lives over there.
Then I got pretty captivated by the grandma’s disappearing and really curious about what had happened to her.
Then from when we learn what happened to the end of the story, I found it a bit less interesting story-wise, too fictitious for me, but still enjoyed it language wise. I also thought the epilogue was a nice touch.
Right now reading Oki Nikkou and wow I have had a big moment of how beautiful the Japanese language is in one of the episodes, kuddos to the writer.
It’s a spoiler if you haven’t read that story yet until episode 21.
Oki Nikkou episode 20
So the grandma hasn’t came back from picking up mushrooms, the family goes to bed. The kid wakes up and hope she came back home while he was sleeping. In the previous chapters they described the noise that he was hearing every morning when she was making breakfast.
The sentence goes like this:
そして台所からいつも聞こえてくるはずの、トントントントンという、包丁とまな板の音は…
So I’m like, yay she is back!
And then the sentence goes:
…聞こえてこなかった。
Loved the effect with the reveal in the verb at the end of the sentence!