We start a new chapter with a new narrator and a new story. As I suspect that the only persons from chapter 1 who will appear in this chapter are the librarian and her assistant, I have deleted the other proper nouns of chapter 1 from the ‘Proper Nouns’ list.
In this week’s reading there are several names for which the kindle version doesn’t have furigana.
For two of them the English version of the book gives a reading that differs from the reading that Jisho gives:
Ryou’s boss 田淵 is called Taguchi whereas Jisho gives たぶち (Tabuchi).
The employee from the sales department 紺野 is called Amano whereas Jisho gives こんの (konno).
What are the names of those persons in other translations of the book?
It drives me nuts that some authors don’t furigana their character names on first use. Do they not care whether their readers might pick the wrong reading?
Also finished this part. Enjoying this chapter so far. I like the romantic feel of the chapter so far - boy finds a love of antiques in a dusty old store, dreams of opening his own antique shop, meets a girl who hunts for sea glass on the beach. The store gave me Ghibli-esque vibes, perhaps it’s making me think of the shop in Whisper of the Heart.
バニラみたいなにおいがする。比奈のコロンだ。
I know he’s not really saying that his girlfriend’s colon smells like vanilla - but it made me giggle anyway…
蚤の市 - flea market!
I like how when you ask a girl out for a drink in Japanese you actually ask them out for a cup of tea…
So far, this story is really hitting a chord with me
Summary
being middle-aged, working in a job just to make money and thinking of “someday I will follow my dream”, without ever having the courage to take the risk, stepping out of your comfortable, mediocre life to follow a dream that you can’t be sure will work out. And the years go by…
Definitely looking forward how this story goes
Week 5 reading finished! (slowly closing the gap )
Some ponderings
I really appreciate the proper noun list for each week. I find myself frequently referring to the list to see who’s who.
And like @Oerli mentioned, Ryo’s situation also strikes a chord personally (how time flies..!)
I found the vocabulary more difficult in this story, so I had to look up a lot more words. I also went down a rabbit hole about silver teaspoon hallmarks and their various meanings (fascinating world I never knew about Hallmarks » Antique Silver Spoons)
The notable vocabulary I enjoyed learning was:
蛍石 or firefly stone - This is the stone Ryo and Hina polished at the mineral workshop. It sounds way more beautiful than the english translation of fluorite or fluorspar. In this rabbit hole, I saw how pretty these stripe stones are and learned they glow under black light…hence the reason for the name I guess!
凹凸 - （おうとつ bumpiness, roughness) - This was used to describe polishing down the bumpy parts of the fluorite stone until it was smooth. Initially I thought I knew this word, because these characters are easy to recognize - almost like ancient pictographs. I thought this was でこぼこ which even sounds bumpy to me. But it turns out the latter word is the two kanji in reverse order, or 凸凹. Both mean the same thing (bumpy) but 凹凸 （おうとつ）is the noun and uses the onyomi or Chinese reading, while 凸凹 （でこぼこ）is the na-adjective and uses the kunyomi or Japanese reading of the kanji. Or at least this is how I understand it. I would be interested to know how these two words developed etymologically, but try as I have many times in the past, I have never found a website on the etymology of Japanese words. I’ve tried searching using the term 語源 and various other combinations of words, but never came up with anything comprehensive, similar to this English version https://www.etymonline.com/
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