I finally caught up and even read ahead a little so that I (hopefully) won’t fall behind for the rest of the book!
Since I’m early this week, I’ll blur spoilers for the bits of story I want to bring up. Although I’m guessing that most of the readers have already seen the movie anyway.
It was neat that 瀧 got to relive the moment on the train three years ago where 三葉 gave him her hair tie. I remember reading this scene way back during the first week of the reading and having no idea what was going on (I assumed it was just some kind of weird symbolic/foreshadowy dream).
I actually made this connection back when 瀧 first visited 糸守町 and 奥寺 commented on the cord he wears around his wrist. I meant to go back and reread the beginning of the book to refresh myself, but we got to see the whole scene again now. I know 瀧 mentions that he was the same height when he was 13, but it still seems odd to me that 三葉 really didn’t notice any difference. 13 and 16 are typically miles apart in terms of physical development, but I guess we can chalk it up to the memories from the body-switching dreams being fuzzy.
In any event, I still decided to go back and re-read the first 7-8 pages of the book since I can now mostly make sense of them. But, I did come across a line that struck me as odd:
Shouldn’t 三葉 be the one who recalls being surprised by the Tokyo water? I remember her making a similar statement the first time we see her in 瀧’s body:
Perhaps I’m overthinking it. And to be honest, I’m not 100% sure where in the timeline that chapter 1 bathroom scene is (though I have my suspicions). Am I missing something and/or just plain misunderstanding the Japanese?
Man, time flies. We’re nearly done with the book! Have a great week everyone!
This week’s reading ends on page 193 in my Tsubasa Bunko. I’m pulling ahead!
I think he’s saying that him at 13 is the same height as Mitsuha at 16. Can’t see where it says that Mitsuha can’t tell the difference between mini-Taki and regular-Taki - he’s not the same, but he’s still recognisably Taki.
I think the point is that Taki’s remembering Mitsuha’s surprise, sort of thing. As though in a half-remembered dream?
The text doesn’t say she can’t tell the difference, I guess I just made the inference based on the fact that she doesn’t seem to have any reaction to the fact that he looks younger than he should be. One would think she’d be taken aback by the fact that he is visibly quite a bit younger than she expected, since at this point she would have no idea about the time difference. But since it’s all from his perspective, maybe we just don’t get to see it.
Also, I’ll check the height thing again. I read this section really fast (probably 30 minutes or so, which is, for me in a foreign language, faster than I’m used to), so I probably just misunderstood that.
Edit: Never mind. I was definitely just not paying enough attention. We absolutely do get some indication that she is at least confused by 瀧’s appearance. I reread the last bit of this week’s reading this morning - I think I was overexcitedly skimming through it the first time and missing details here and there.
This makes sense I suppose. Although, in any other instance that she’s been in his body, he hasn’t been aware of how she felt about anything unless she noted it in one of her diary entries. But I suppose by this point, maybe their dreamlike memories of being in each others’ bodies have merged into one big, fuzzy shared consciousness or something.
Edit: Actually, now that I think about it harder, there was a part in the book where iirc, 三葉 kind of pictures “herself” writing in her notebook (she’s in fact seeing 瀧 as her doing it), so I guess it has been hinted at that they have some vague and perhaps subconscious awareness of what they do in each other’s bodies (even beyond what they explicitly spell out for each other in their respective diaries).
I’m now halfway through this week’s reading, and I’d just like to point out that in this week’s reading there’s also a two-page treatise on the nature of memory, followed by five and a half pages of Taki having a flashback to Mitsuha’s memory of her visiting him in Tokyo, so yeah, there’s certainly some bleed-through going on there, and to be fair, he’s having the flashback while in her body, so it’s not quite the same thing, but still.
You even brought up in your post that Taki was re-living the moment he first met Mitsuha.
I don’t think I realised when watching the movie that the whole scene was Taki seeing Mitsuha’s memories, but watching it again after reading it, that’s definitely what’s going on here - the flashback is bracketed (and interrupted) by shots of Taki-in-Mitsuha riding the bicycle, rather than Mitsuha-in-Taki standing on the mountain.
