Which part of this sentence is troubling you? The whole thing, or? There’s quite a bit going on there grammatically.
Aside from basic structural elements, I pick out three so-called “grammar points” (though I don’t really enjoy this term):
[verb た]ことがある/ない: Have/have not experienced something
わけではない: It’s not the case that…
ほど…ない: Not as much as; not to the extent of
I would translate the sentence as a whole as something like: It’s not that she hadn’t experienced romance up until now, it’s just that it didn’t have as much appeal as work. (Disclaimer: translation is not my forte )
Given this thread will exist for years and years, there might be many people who are still reading even if the book club is long finished. Therefore it’s worthwhile to spoiler-mark stuff no matter where you are in the week
Yes, this is perfectly normal (it initally confused me as well). maskedkoala already posted a good explanation of its effects.
Plus, skipping the verb if it is easily guessable is a really common stylistic choice. Remember, Japanese heavily relies on context, and lots of stuff can be skipped.
Did you ever get an answer for this question?
I encountered this a few weeks ago already (in a different book), but I still have a somewhat hard time to wrap my head around it. The only explanation I could find is this one (with explanations in Japanese and example sentence translations in Chinese, sorry!) My current understanding is that it is used to express a somewhat strong contrast - I’d probably translate it as “But Kazu…” or something. (If anybody can offer a better explanation, I’m all ears!)
Thanks for that link, even if it’s hard to understand. I haven’t been able to find anything about it myself. I have the English translation of the book, and it seems to me the 数で part is completely ignored. As I was reading I thought it might mean something like “Kazu, being Kazu” (as in, having her personality), but it didn’t really fit well with the context, nor with what your link says.
That’s what I figured, although it’s strange to see it written down in novels, when I’ve been taught it’s ungrammatical to skip the verb. I’d expect it in manga, or spoken language. Interesting to see it elsewhere.
Thank you! I’ve started browsing through some other novels, and it really seems it’s very common. That’s so interesting, that using the same tense all the time is regarded as too repetitive. I suppose it comes from the main verb always being last in a sentence, so if you read aloud, most sentences would end with the same (or very similar) sounds.
To me it felt more like “Kazu in her very Kazu way of doing things…” kind of way. I am not sure about this, but after finding this and this it seems likely to me.
I think so. Based on the links posted by @NicoleIsEnough and @Shadowlauch and the context, I think your instinct is correct, but I think it’s important to realize the contrast that the phrase is emphasizing here.
Hirai says, “In other words, he chose his job (over you).”, and about her comment, the text notes: 「平井は二美子の顔も見ずにサラリと核心をついた。」; Roughly: Hirai cut straight to the heart of the matter without even looking at Fumiko.
Then a few lines later, we get Kazu’s line, “In other words, you didn’t really want him to go to America.” , and the text further notes: 「数も数で核心をついた返事をした」; roughly: Kazu also cut to the heart of the matter in her own way with her reply.
Notice how the author used the same phrase (核心をつく) in each line. In other words, Kazu and Hirai were both direct in pointing out what they were reading between the lines in Fumiko’s story, but where Hirai was pretty rude in her frankness, Kazu by contrast was frank in her own way, which was nowhere near as abrasive. That’s what I get out of the 数は数で
Thank you for this excellent explanation. It makes perfect sense now. 数は数で is again used a few sentences later, and again it can be interpreted as Kazu doing things in her own way in contrast to Hirai’s way. So it’s both emphasizing that the subject has her own way of doing things, and contrasting this way to something else (someone else’s way), like @NicoleIsEnough pointed out.
The 「スナックを経営している」modifies the「常連客」. And isolated it means that she is managing a snack bar (it is not a place that sells snacks confusingly). The other part is pretty accurate, though make sure to pick up on the ばかり it adds further emphasis that she just turned 30 this year.
Se is a regular customer who runs a snack bar in the neighborhood and has just turned 30 this year.
A スナック in Japan is a neighborhood bar (as in alcohol) mostly attracting salarymen and the like. They’re generally run and staffed by women who chat with/flirt with/accompany the customers in a variety of ways. Apparently, Hirai manages one - so that, combined with her flashy attire and her pretty blunt way of speaking gives us a decent depiction of the type of person she is.
Edit: Fixed her name because I’m at work while posting and apparently can’t think about two things at the same time.
Edit 2: Moved the spoiler tags a bit to cover up only the minor info about this week’s reading.
Aye, they’re essentially hostess bars with only one woman. There’s often karaoke and such as well.
In Kimi no Na wa, one of Mitsuha’s frustrations with Itomori is that there’s no cafes, but there are two snack bars, which are (for some reason) right next to each other.
I’ve just been marking even small details as spoilers as some people get pretty sensitive about it and I’d rather be safe than sorry. The definition of スナック isn’t a spoiler of course, but the fact that one of the characters is associated with one might be to someone. If I were more thorough, I could have only blurred the one sentence about the character in question I suppose.
(Edit: I fixed the spoiler tags. )
Indeed, fresh off of reading 君の名は, this is the first thing I thought of when the subject came up in this book as well. (Which reminds me, I still really need to watch the movie…)
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If I were more thorough, I could have only blurred the one sentence about the character in question I suppose. 
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