We’re reading to the end of the ‘case’ section this week!
Upcoming Schedule
Week
Start Date
Part
Page Numbers
Week 11
January 13th
Case Part 3
110 - 118
Week 12
January 20th
Solution Part 1
120 - 129
Week 13
January 27th
Solution Part 2
131 - 139
Week 14
February 3rd
Solution Part 3
140 - 149
Vocabulary List
Please read the editing guidelines in the first sheet before adding any words!
Discussion Guidelines
Please blur/hide major events in the current week’s pages (however early they occur) and any later content, like so: [spoiler]texthere[/spoiler]
Err on the side of caution!
When asking for help, please mention the page number (or % for eBooks).
Don’t be afraid of asking questions, even if they seem embarrassing at first. All of us are here to learn and someone else will probably be grateful you asked!
People usually find that they engage with and enjoy the discussion much more if they don’t read ahead, though of course it’s up to you
To you lurkers out there: join the conversation, it’s fun!
Participants
Mark your participation status by voting in this poll:
I’m reading along
I’m still reading but haven’t reached this part yet
I’m dropping this book
0voters
If you’ve read it before but will join in the discussion (or have read ahead), please select “I’m reading along”!
Sapphire Kawashima… uh, I mean, Takamatsu. She’s the only one holding something that could possibly conceal two mice. Unless Matsuyama’s got a fake stomach, and is hiding things inside. Either way, mouse number one (with the diamond) is no longer in the room.
Not clear on the relevance of the Great Cat Heist, though. And there’s no way that it’s not relevant, especially with the sticker on the back of the truck, as someone pointed out. Unless it’s simply to prevent the cats from catching the other mouse, in which case, I guess it’s Capone’s time to shine.
Wow someone was busy filling in the vocab spreadsheet quickly this week! Very helpful thank you!
So it’s my first case, are there supposed to be enough clues for us to actually solve the case? If so I was hoping to be able to work it out given that it’s a children’s book!
My theory
On page 118 I translate Hanae as saying there is a single person who is unmistakably in disguise. I’m not sure I can work out who that is, but Takamatsu seems to have an Adam’s apple - maybe a man in disguise as a woman?
Agree with Belthazar, I think the cat robbery is to get rid of all the local cats so they can’t catch the mouse
I thought the first one was fairly obvious, and you could work out the gist even if not everyone got all the fine details. The second one was almost insultingly easy, but it was extremely short. With this one… I have no idea D: only read it through once, but…!
Ahhh… I thought they were going to use the stolen cats to create a commotion in the hall with all of the cats chasing the little mouse. That doesn’t seem to be the case. What a letdown.
No problem! Yeah, I was just thinking that then people could infer that’s not what happened plus it kind of spoils the appearance of our tiny friend, though I grant you that happens page one.
I think this ま is 間, meaning “time; pause” - you see it used a lot in phrases like “to be on time for”, or いつの間にか meaning “before you know it”. Then に is just a particle.
So I think the whole phrase is basically “in that small moment when everyone’s eyes were focused on the mouse…”
And I try to read through quickly at the beginning of the week to help populate the spreadsheet
Just finished reading! In a single sitting. Back at the start of the book this would have been impossible. It’s really gotten easier reading the book (until the next big sentence or sentence with 8/10 unknown words… lol I hope it’s some progression on my part and not just the book being easier)
I don’t really have a lot of questions… most of it I got on my own and I don’t want to fuzz over every tiny nuance.
BUT! This one big sentence:
そとに仲間がいれば、- the colleague outside with the ~eba provisional, which makes it a regular if clause I think… so if the colleague outside… ? I’m not sure, haven’t come across this grammar a lot yet.
なかから - from inside
わたすことはできたかもしれないが、 - I know the parts (hand over, thing, be able to, perhaps…)
庭に - garden with particle
はりこんでいた刑事は - the detective on the lookout
だれもこなかった - who came back
といっている - is saying
If there had been an accomplice outside, he might have been able to hand it over from inside, but in the garden a police detective that had been on the lookout was saying no one came.
I thought it was もの, acting in its capacity as a nebulous indicator of ‘thing’.
So like… “{the thing of) anybody leaving the room, wasn’t”. In more natural English it would just be “nobody left the room”, or “nobody had left the room” (I can’t quite remember the timing/context of this remark).
I could be wrong on that front; もの is another of those slightly fuzzy words I really don’t get along with, and I couldn’t tell you why one might choose to phrase the sentence this way rather than another. I guess it sounds more dramatic?
Then maybe it makes more sense being 者, because there is いない instead of ない? Though then the presence of だれも seems a bit superfluous if you’ve already got ‘there isn’t a person who left the room.’
Oooh, very true - sorry, I should have looked at your suggestions more closely. That would make more sense.
Hmmmm. Maybe the だれも effectively adds emphasis? So it’s not just “there isn’t a person who left the room”, but more like “there isn’t anybody who left the room”? I’m just guessing from gut feeling here
I think you might have been hinting that the purpose of the cat competition was to make sure there were no cats prowling in the neighborhood on the night of the exhibition, and if so, I agree.
Rats, notorious in comics for man-handling (rat-handling?) triangular chunks of cheese and presumably capable of managing cheese shaped diamonds (p108), would have an easy time slipping through the iron bars on the window, but might come to a sticky end if they then ran into one of the locals outside. And I say “rats” because I think the only thing you can even begin to infer from a tag reading “No. 2” is that somewhere out there is a similar tag reading “No. 1”.
As for the 犯人, I’m kind of out of ideas. Sophia has a handbag, which might conceal one or two rats in a pinch - an advantage she has over the other two. @Micki also mentioned that she appears to have an Adam’s apple in her portrait picture, and has also covered up almost all of her skin - these suggest a disguise, which Hanae has said is definitely a feature of the perpetrator.
…if you’re disguising as someone like Matsuyama you could maybe hide some rats under a fake belly but I agree that, after reading all of your theories, Sapphire/Sophia seems the most suspicious. I also didn’t really notice before that we only know the last names of the two guys but are told Takamatsu’s first name!
And now a question regarding
page 116
どぶねずみがまぎれこんだんじゃないってことだ.
Did I ever mention that I don’t like こと sentences? I don’t fully understand the use of it yet… most of the time.
So I’m wondering if here it means something like the following?
As for the brown rat (that) didn’t get lost, it is (this) thing / it is (this) one.
plus it kind of spoils 
