⛩ Week 1 | 帰命寺横丁の夏 | Children's Novel Club

Japanese Language Book Clubs
1

:black_cat: Welcome to week 1 of 帰命寺横丁の夏！:black_cat:

Next Week :backhand_index_pointing_right:

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:backpack: Home thread :backpack:
:seedling: Children’s Novel Club :seedling:

Week 1: June 13

Chapter Pages Page count Ending line
1 5-14 9 明け方の雨は本降りになっていた。

Discussion Guidelines

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  • 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!

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2

I just got back to Japanese after about a half year break. This is currently the most difficult thing I have read yet. Not used to such a degree of inner monologue etc. Curious where this story takes us! :ghost:

3

Woohoo, we’re starting!

Having only looked at the cover, I assumed the protagonist would be a girl, so I was surprised when we got a boy narrator. But I guess the girl on the cover will be our ghost!

I was surprised by the inner monologue too, but I like it! I feel like not all kid’s books are written with such a distinctive voice so it felt different, but def. is a bit harder from a learning perspective.

4

I enjoyed this! Def got confused at some bits but I liked the setup of staying up too late watching scary TV and Kazu’s perspective was fun to read. Not to mention the hilarious ingenuity of peeing out the window. I can only imagine how his mother must have felt on that snowy[1] morning…

  1. yellow ↩︎

5

Wow, Kazu peeing out the window was really not how I expected the first ghost sighting to happen! :rofl:

Question re page 7

Kazu’s mom says:

「半分の建坪だってぜいたくなくらい広い家が建つわ。」

And from the narration it seems like that is supposed to imply some kind of renovation that she wants to do? But I can’t make the connection between what she said and an idea for any kind of renovation.

Did this make more sense to anyone else?

6
page 7

Previously, it says that the じいさん had built the house, and lived in it while doing various renovations at the same time. I took this to mean that the house is old and kind of patched-together, despite being big. The mom says, “with even half the floor space we could build a pretty luxurious big house,” and has dreams of rebuilding (建て替え) so I assume she just wants a house that isn’t so old, and they would have plenty of space to do so on the same lot, but they don’t have the budget, so they live in grandpa’s house.

7

Oh man this kid hahaha. I feel like Kazu seems a bit more immature than the other kids in elementary level books I’ve read. I’m guessing it’s because everything else I’ve read has been female protagonist and there’s a bit more pressure on girls to mature early? Or maybe I’m just biased because peeing out the window sounds gross hahaha

8

Initially I didn’t plan to read this book with you, but your comments made me curious. So I just bought it at amazon and will start reading it today.