Reading Report: 26 February 2023
An interesting week where I tried to throw in a small challenge this week and fell just a bit short of completing it before report time, but technically I still have today to finish up and I think that's achievable. I read the final volume of Yotsuba&! available right now, a little bit more of 掟上今日子, and started reading キッチン. More below.
よつばと！ Vol 15
Finished the current Yotsuba volumes. The last chapter where Yotsuba, Fuuka, and Yotsudad go to buy Yotsuba a ランドセル was amazing and perfectly closed out my feelings on the story so far. But I'm also grateful that it says つづく and I look forward to more when/if it comes!
掟上今日子の備忘録: 42 pages
It turns out the mangaka's bank notes were significant because she used the serial numbers as her passcode for internet banking and her memory was terrible (as proven by her not using 掟上今日子's name and having no passcode on her phone). It was uh... kind of a let down once again. But then story three is somewhat interesting again. Not a proper job this time, just a date between Kyoko and MC to do a scavenger hunt, only the guy leading the hunt... died.
キッチン: 163 pages (+37) (Finished~)
I got this book in Hokkaido and decided that I wanted to challenge myself to read it as quickly as possible. I started reading on Wednesday and over the following days I read in the following increments: 15, 77, 57, 14, ??. The aim is to finish it today but regardless of if I do or not, the Thursday and Friday outcomes felt pretty satisfying. Onto the actual content of キッチン, I have mixed feelings. The positives: I really like the romance of the first story, and I think the romance between two characters whose lives are surrounded by grief is interesting. I got really caught up in the カツ丼 scene near the end of the story and felt like my own mind was embodying みかげ's as she clambered up the wall to see 雄一.
Negatives (some spoilers): I felt mixed about the language use around gender-nonconforming characters in the story. I'm aware that the story was written decades ago so I want to interpret it from the period that it was written, but some of the cliches in the writing felt a bit dragged out. In addition to that, the letter written for 雄一 felt really weak, and I'm usually a sucker for letters like that. The narration during dialogue was also fairly plain, but serviceable. I've only just started the second main story of the book but so far it's pretty good. It's also about a pair sharing in grief and processing it in different ways.
EDIT to add: I finished it today and figured I might as well add onto the report for today rather than worry about next week. I liked the last story as a sort of meditation on how others help us temper grief and move on, but I definitely felt like the first story was stronger despite any other misgivings.
Life Stuff
This week I had my orientation for school. It went alright, I met some interesting people, and I am now as prepared for the coming school semester as I'll ever be. I had my first voice call with the goal of speaking Japanese. It ended up being a mix of English and Japanese to sort of get my bearings but it went alright in the end. For a first time I definitely felt like the words were usually there when I needed them, but the speed that I could process outputting wasn't quite there and I would sometimes jump over grammar that I knew was necessary because of my brain caching things weirdly.
I had an impromptu(-ish) visit to my dad's place. It was nice to see him before things got really busy. The weather ended up being very nice and it rained while we were on a walk, but the large, warm, rain globs felt good against my skin and the wet soil smelled really nice as well. I finished my last work project pre-studying. I'm probably going to be taking a small break while I figure out just how much leeway I have to work this week but in a way I'm itching to keep translating already.