Please read the guidelines on the first page before adding any words.
Discussion Guidelines
Everybody should feel free to post and ask questions–it’s what makes book clubs fun! But please do not post until you are familiar with Spoiler Courtesy!
Spoiler Courtesy
Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.
Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags
Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).
Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:
Example
This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.
The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.
This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.
Posting Advice
When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked. As the threads get longer, it becomes more convenient to use the Search function, which is located in the upper right corner of the forum. It is the magnifying glass which is near your profile picture! The best way to search is usually to type part of the sentence you are confused about, and select “in this topic”. This will show you all posts within the current thread which has that string of text.
Be sure to join the conversation! It’s fun, and it’s what keeps these book clubs lively! There’s no such thing as a stupid question! We are all learning here, and if the question has crossed your mind, there’s a very good chance it has crossed somebody else’s also! Asking and answering questions is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, so never hesitate to do so!
Participation
Will you be reading along with us this week?
I’m reading along
I’m planning to read but haven’t started yet
I’ve already read previously but I’m here for the discussion
So, the reference to a fictional band on page 24 means that the Foo Fighters album being listened to is probably Dream Widow. In my copy, the cover of the CD that “onii-san” gives to her is blank, but I’ve found another version online which replicates the actual Dream Widow cover, so I guess there’s differing editions.
Also, Uncle calls “onii-san” Mitsuki. Is this the first name we’ve gotten for any of them?
I wonder how this pace will feel for people. There’s so little text on these pages that I read the chapters in like 5 minutes, but I know there’s no furigana for actual beginners which is why I wonder.
I’m finding the pace all right, though I do have to reference the vocab sheet a lot because there’s a lot of words I don’t know or I don’t recognize words I should know
This is the first time I’m joining a BBC, have done a couple of ABBC before this. The pace was very doable. I did these pages in about an hour. The vocab list is very helpful; if I had to look up the unknown kanji myself, that would have taken longer.
There’s quite a bit of unknown/ungrammatical (?) conjugation so far. I’m not delving too deeply into this, as long as I get the meaning. Which helps in keeping a good pace in reading.
Example from p. 30: なくしちゃいそうで. I’ve never seen the ～てしまう pattern conjugated like this, but I assume it’s somehow similar to how she conjugated 違くて?
しまう is a verb like any other, so you can further conjugate and tack on bits as needed. This is just ～そう applied to しまう which in turn is an auxiliary verb tacked onto the て form of なくす, but as a colloqualism the てしまう bit is shortened to ちゃう.
Remember that Japanese grammar largely involves tacking on auxiliary verbs (or adjectives like ない or たい), and those in turn can be handled like any other verb or adjective. I personally find it’s not very helpful to think of these constructions as a single conjugation, because each auxiliary verb you tack on can be conjugated and extended with more auxiliary bits in turn, and you can extend that potentially infinitely (though there’s a limit to what you’ll see in practice, of course).
Such a cool story! Can’t read it too fast, takes about an hour to go through it as I can’t copy out the kanjis out of the Kobo reader, but it’s worth going through it. Never read this type of manga before (mostly the likes of Death Note, Demon Slayer,…), so I’m happy to be discovering something new
聴く kind of tripped me up this week. I pushed forward and context made it clear it was listening, but I even tried looking it up on Jotoba. Sadly while I could bring up the kanji in the radical search, it did not have 聴く as a word, so it wasn’t clear. (Jisho does list it as an alternate spelling of 聞く though).
That’s a weird oversight that it’s not listed as it’s own entry or at least found via search. It is an alternate spelling of 聞く meant specifically for listening. Oddly, 訊く (the alternate spelling specific to asking) does have its own entry…
