Please blur/hide any major events in the current week’s pages (however early they occur), like so:
(that’s [spoiler]text here[/spoiler]).
If you have a question about grammar, vocab, the story, cultural things or anything else related to the book — ask! There’s no need to be shy. If it’s something you are wondering about, chances are someone else will be thankful you asked first, lots of people enjoy answering questions, you learn something new, and the thread gets more lively. It’s a win-win on all fronts!
On the first page of the chapter (page 6 in the paperback), we get the word 柱時計 with no furigana! While 時計 is a WK level 15 word and beginning readers will probably recognize it, 柱 is a WK level 40 (!!) word.
However, it’s a grade 3 kanji for Japanese schoolchildren, which means you may see it without furigana in children’s books. Those dang kids, having better kanji skills than us WK’ers! It means ‘pillar’ and is read はしら with the on’yomi チュウ。And when you put it together, a ‘pillar clock’ is a grandfather clock!
This word will come up a lot in the reading so since you’re learning it now, if you’re doing WK, when you get all the way to level 40 you’ll have a kanji freebie!
This week's reading
The story: S先生 was crushed flat!
Me:
Next page: And then S先生 transferred to a new school
Oh, okay, I guess he was fine then
Only just started but I enjoyed the reading, looking forward to this book!
I think I missed something in the story about S先生. I get that he was carrying the clock back and forth to the warehouse and eventually tried it without help and got crushed. It’s supposed to be a scary story related to the grandfather clock but I don’t think it’s real.
I do like the opening where he’s really sucked into a book he’s reading and is jarred out of it by the clock chime going off in the real world.
One new word I found on the prologue page was 忍び込んで for a book snuck into the spaces between other books. It’s an interesting way to spook the reader by asking if the book they’re reading is secretly evil or something.
S先生 had the clock moved to a warehouse because he didn’t like it. But the clock appeared back in the library the next morning! When it kept happening, he set up cameras and saw that he himself was the one carrying the clock back and forth…without knowing. Despite the fact that he could be seen easily carrying the clock on camera, when he went to pick it up to take it back to the warehouse, it fell on him and crushed him because it was too heavy.
I remembered the installing of video cameras and the fact it was heavy enough it needed three people, then he carried it himself on the video as if it was really light.
I had missed that it moved back by itself each morning and he didn’t know how at first. It makes more sense now that I reread it knowing that part. Kind of ties together moving the clock in the first place and why he had video cameras. I like the reasoning that a pendulum clock is too loud for a library.
I still wonder if this is a “real” ghost story the girl at the counter knows or if she’s made it up trying to scare the main character.
I’m starting a little late, but still going to give it a shot. Clearly I need to read more prose, because my brain is already like, “This isn’t dialogue. We don’t know what to do with this.” Manga, games, and even my Japanese textbook are like 90% dialogue. This is going to be an adjustment.
I basically read every page in full, then I go back and break it down to make sure I actually understand what I’m reading (and look up the stuff I don’t understand.) Though I’m not going to read all the pages for this week today.
1st page of 1st story
The zombies right off the bat threw me off. I thought for sure I was reading it wrong. Like, “what’s going on?? Where’s the library? No, that word does mean zombie… Okay, guess we’ll see where this goes…”
Not feeling super great today, so I only read the first 2 ½ pages.
That first foray into the wall of text in a novel is definitely a workout Luckily, the type of descriptive and narrative vocabulary used in novels gets reused pretty often, so you’ll get used to a lot of common narrative words.
Nice!! I love this strategy, I used it a lot when I was starting novels. I think I read almost all of Goosebumps book 1 by reading ahead 5-6 pages, then going back and reading them again with lookups the next day.
first page
Unexpected stuff is always the hardest! I was also like, wait, zombies?? I thought this was about ghosts!
I read the first like two pages, up to the first picture. I was then summoned to help my brother with health insurance. I liked how the zombie story combined with real life. Makes me think of when I get engrossed in a book and the world fades away.
I’m reading this without yomitan, so it was pretty intimidating at first. But, Bookwalker is different now from when I used it two years ago, it now has the ability to highlight and translate directly in the app. Like yomitan, but a little extra time and steps. The extra effort makes me second guess if I really need to look up that word. So I’m reading slower but my brain is working harder.
Finished this week’s part. I also had the experience of being really confused about why zombies were suddenly mentioned and got a bit confused by the sudden scene change. I got what was happening, but definitely need to reread some pages/sentences to truly understand them better. Loved the first story!
Vocabulary wise it felt fine! Also had to get used to not having quick yomitan access, but Bookwalker’s dictionary really is quite fast.
Really what gave me most satisfaction was realizing that I’m getting much more comfortable reading with no furigana instead of having an immediate panicky “oh no a wall of text” response.
Only issue I had was that tapping to highlight a word would sometimes swipe to the next page instead.
In the next couple days I will hopefully post again to reread some sentences that gave me some trouble.
Maybe I could try the Bookwalker highlight option now that I’m at it.
One thing I found curious was the fact that throwaway characters like S先生 are not given a proper name, just an initial. I saw another Japanese author, 星新一, do it in his collection of short stories, (in that case the initial was even spelled in hiragana, which took me a while to realise what was going on. I just thought he liked to used really weird/short names lol).I wonder if it’s a common thing?
I don’t remember reading anything similar in short stories I’ve read in other languages.
I guess it’s like calling a random character “Mister X”, but I feel like in English it carries a different meaning apart from simply not wanting to bother creating a name for a throwaway character/unknown character.
Yeah, sometimes having a little delay in the lookup means my brain thinks about the word for longer, and I realize that I already know the word!
Awesome! Getting over that ‘wall of text’ fear is probably when reading started to click and feel more fun and less intimidating for me. The more fun it is, the more you do it! And the more you do it, the better you get
Hmmmm, I think the equivalent in English would just be referring to someone with an indefinite article. Something like “Once, there was a teacher who blah blah blah…” Japanese doesn’t have articles, so the ‘indefinite’ quality has to be expressed some other way, I would guess. (Not a linguistics expert)
Oh that’s reassuring. Maybe I’ll get used to some of them before we’re even finished this book!
I hate getting bogged down with lookups, so I try to make sense of it as I read at first. Sometimes I’ll read a section two or three times to see if anything else clicks in my head, and often it does! And then I go back and look up anything that didn’t click. Like, “hmm, I feel like I know that word/kanji. I’ll keep going for now, and see if additional context or a bit of time for it so soak in jogs my memory.”
first page
Zombies? In my ghost story? It’s more likely than you think! (Lol)
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who was initially worried I’d bought the wrong book.
I’m assuming this means like, a translation of a horror novel? And that he’s not the one doing the translating?
蛍光灯
Me: firefly… Lamp? Okay, I’m assuming he has some sort of light over his head. Is it shaped like a firefly or something?
I looked it up.
It means fluorescent light. Is it because fluorescent lights flicker? I’m so curious now!
Page 10
Reading this page went more smoothly, until I got to the last paragraph. I had to read this paragraph like three times, and I’m still not sure whether it’s describing the boy or the grandfather clock! I’m leaning toward the clock though, because of the description of black wood. And I’m hoping our middle school boy isn’t two meters tall yet, or his poor bones…
If nothing else, I’m hoping I correctly understood that this paragraph leads into determining the time is four o’clock?
I’m definitely going to need more practice tracking the who the speakers are when novels actually switch to dialogue. The conversation on pages 11 & 12 made my head go blank for a second. I know we do the same thing in English, but it never fails to confuse me in another language.
Page 13
Okay, did anyone else think that there was a giant eye on the clock’s pendulum for a second? 綾目さん really just hangs out here with a cursed clock all the time, huh? I hope she’s about to give us more details about it. I want to know everything about the cursed clock.
I think that’s as far as I’m going to read today. I’ll read another couple pages tomorrow, assuming I’m feeling well enough.
I notice this a lot too in Japanese writing - in the collection of short stories, Read Real Japanese the editor, Michael Emmerich, comments on the way in the first story a character is referred to just as シュノーケル (because he had snorkels dangling from him neck) saying that: “This is an example of metonymy, fairly common in Japanese fiction, where people are referred to by the name of something they are wearing”.
I think I completed this weeks reading. Honestly really like this book so far. I really enjoy mystery / horror themes in books so this is a hit. Still having a hard time actually connecting the grammar. I know them in isolation (bunpro reviews), but having a harder time seeing them and actually recognizing them in the wild
I remembered this paragraph being a little weird so I went back to check on it. This is on page 9 in the physical copy. I think probably this sentence is the confusing one:
中学一年生としては標準サイズのぼくが見上げるくらいの大きさだから、大体二メートルくらいだろうか。
The sentence overall is describing the clock, but it starts out with describing the boy in comparison to the clock.
中学一年生としては
As a first year middle school student
標準サイズのぼくが
The standard size me
見上げるくらいの大きさ
The size is such that I look up at it
大体二メートルくらい
About 2 meters
So maybe something like “The clock was big enough that as an ordinary sized middle schooler I had to look up at it… was it two meters tall?”
This is really hard in Japanese, I feel like Japanese books are very light on dialogue tags like ‘he said, she said.’ Usually you have to pay attention to things like sentence ending particles and politeness levels to figure out who’s speaking, it’s tough!
Yay, glad you’re liking it!
I think the grammar clicking is probably just a ‘trust the process’ thing. The more you read, the more you see grammar patterns, the more they click, the faster you read, the more you enjoy reading!!
Home thread
It means ‘pillar’ and is read はしら with the on’yomi チュウ。And when you put it together, a ‘pillar clock’ is a grandfather clock!
so since you’re learning it now, if you’re doing WK, when you get all the way to level 40 you’ll have a kanji freebie! 
Despite the fact that he could be seen easily carrying the clock on camera, when he went to pick it up to take it back to the warehouse, it fell on him and crushed him because it was too heavy.
The way she’s smiling in her character card picture looks a little shady, I don’t know if we should trust her 
Luckily, the type of descriptive and narrative vocabulary used in novels gets reused pretty often, so you’ll get used to a lot of common narrative words.
The first introduction page was without, it was doable but slooow
what a cute word
