時をかける少女: Week 11 Discussion (Chapters 18 and 19)

Don’t let me worry you. You’ve got this!

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Gotta love the moment you completely understand a word you’ve never seen before in Japanese, but can’t remember the word in English. So you look it up on jisho to find the English word. :joy:

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So in the end, chapter 18 was actually pretty easy. There was a ton of vocab I didn’t “know”, but I guessed a lot of it. Specifically the science vocab was mostly obvious from the context.

Just a few questions (Tsubasa pages):

  • Page 103: つまり、卒業して世の中へ出ても、全然役に立たないような、いわば常識以前のことしか教えることができないのだ。
    What exactly does 常識以前 mean? Something like “previous common knowledge”, implying they know the stuff that’s common knowledge from before all the advances, but none of the new information?
  • Page 103: 電子頭脳 - Does anyone know if this is just an old term for computer or if it means something more specific? This monolingual definition makes me think it’s pretty much just a computer, but it’s still a bit unclear.
  • Page 105: でも、僕なんかからいわせると、むしろこの時代の子供の方が発育不良なんだけどね。
    I assume いわせる is 言わせる, causative of 言う. For the first part of the sentence, is it basically saying “But if someone like me had to say, …”? Or is it more like, “But if you allow someone like me to say, …”?
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What I found quite amusing was that

Warning! Contains chapter 18 spoilers

some advanced future cilivization invents a method of education that uses 録音した磁気テープ
This really was written in the 1960s wasn’t it?

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I think it translates to something like “not even common sense” or “a stage (so basic) it comes even before common sense”. Monolingual definition that seems to fit this case:

ある状態に達する前の段階。「結婚―の住所」「能力―の問題だ」

Seems to be just an older term to a computer that does calculations, really. There’s another neat monolingual definition here:

…本項は,ディジタルコンピューターに限定して記述する。 なお,人間の脳が行うような計算を電子的に行うので,登場当初(1940~60年代)は電子頭脳とも呼ばれた。中国語では電脳と呼ぶが,日本語でも漢字2文字語が好まれる場合に,電脳ということがある。…

More like the second one, I think :wink:

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Well, at the base level, all any computer does is calculations.

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Funny enough, 「常識以前の問題」 is an example sentence for 以前 in my dictionary.
Anyway this came up when I searched about.

105: I think it’s the normal thing where Japanese people always do a softening pre-amble before stating their opinion on something, so like, I don’t know, “if someone like me was allowed to say…”

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I know, just computers being computers.

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Ah, shame on me for not looking up 以前 in a monolingual dictionary.

Yeah, funny stuff related to computers tend to pop up in older novels. I think when I read The End of Eternity it was them talking about people as computers that I found funny. Even though I already knew the origin / original usage of the term, it just made the novella feel old.

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“Hey computer whatcha thinking about?”
“Just computer stuffs”

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By the way, did y’all know that until the 1950s, a computer was a person doing computation? Nowadays we call that job (in history books) “human computers” to avoid confusion, but that definition was most likely still relevant and understood in the 60s (when the novel was written).
So I hope the computer you mentioned also think of other stuff, like their spouse and kids.

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Technically, in that case, their spouse and kids is computer stuff!

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While this is what it means literally, I kind of understood of as a softer way of saying “from my perspective” idk if that’s actually correct tho just my headcannon lol

Yeah that was pretty hilarious XD

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Chapter 19 was pretty easy, so no questions from me. But let’s talk plot for a bit.

Spoilers through chapter 19

It’s bothering me right now that Kazuo knows about all of Kazuko’s worries and that he remembers spilling the chemicals before. I doubt it will be explained explicitly (if it is then yay), so I guess I’ll just have to write it off as him being immune to her time leaps because he still has the chemicals in his system. Talk about plot conveniences though.

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Ch 19 speculation/spoilers galore

I think maybe he went back in time again (using his medicine) soon after the falling beam thing, to try and undo what he had accidentally done to her/prevent things from happening the way they did so that she wouldn’t have to go through so much stress (although, as I’m thinking about that more, I don’t know that it would have worked that way…). If that was the case, he would be there at that time (because he knew she was going back there), and he would still know what had happened, because he used his medicine to leap back. …I think. Right? This is hurting my brain

What bothers me more is, when the heck did he actually arrive in Kazuko’s general time period for the very first time? Because it seemed like Kazuko had known him for a while before all this stuff went down. What was he doing there all that time? How did he have parents and a house in this time period, if he’s from that far in the future? Or am I misunderstanding/missing something? Didn’t it say he was born in like 2649? Did he just somehow assimilate himself into a family? Is he not really “Kazuo,” but a body double of the present-day Kazuo? If so, what happened to the real Kazuo? D: I have so many questions

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Your second part is answered explicitly. But I would have to go back and check where. I don’t know if you just didn’t reach it yet.

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It hasn’t been brought up yet in the story, so yes, later, then.

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Well, in that case, I guess I’ll be very much looking forward to that explanation xD I’m glad it does get answered at some point, though.

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That was my experience too \o/

Unlike the previous two chapters, I didn’t look up any words in chapter 18. I just checked the 10 words on the vocab spreadsheet, and I feel like my guesses were pretty good for the most part.

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Reading chapter 18 felt exhausting with all that unknown vocab. Then again I read it in one sitting. I’d never done that before.
I was not expecting this turn of events, but I’ll have to keep reading to see where it goes.

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