Thank you for doing this and for leaflings for introducing you to us. I'm new to reading vertical text that is not manga, and I'm also new to Japanese novels in general.
Besides thinking that 台所 was an "elevated place" throughout my whole first read, I didn't have any other amusing mishaps. It seems that up until 床, we are just in the narrator's mind. Then we move on to the physical world.
Some vocab were hard but if I were to ask anything I'd ask about the description as a whole. Maybe this is just my lack of novel-reading skills, but I couldn't picture the scene as vividly. I figured from the last line that it's a present-tense narration, "when I do X, I see a Y", but I'm not quite sure about the rest.
New kanji: 淋. I wondered if there's a specific nuance to 淋.
edit: I remember once saying 包丁 to a Japanese person on iTalki, who then sort of corrected me with ナイフ, and said that 包丁 is for slashing/killing. Any thoughts on that?
I know what you mean, reading Japanese novels can be very hard, even if you understand it, it's not easy making sense of it all, but as I kept going it does get easier. Now you know what this kanji means the next time you see 台所 and this will happen more and more and then it becomes fun. I'm still very much a beginner, so I know the struggles, as we all do here I think, but the fact we are here is and are trying is important. I guess one can kill with a kitchen knife, so it seems logical that it can also mean slashing/killing.
Hi Mischa, welcome! It seems like you're enjoying your first immersion reading project, so I'm really glad you could join in :) And it's amazing that you're making your way through the story with relative ease, great job! If you run into anything you don't know, just post it here and the community will jump in to help.
In practice, 寂しい and 淋しい are used interchangeably, but if we're nitpicking we can say that 寂しい is closer to stillness or quietness or solemnness (as in 静寂), while 淋しい has connotations of loneliness.
I would disagree with that teacher on iTalki and say that you definitely use 包丁 to refer to a larger kitchen knife. ナイフ is what you use to eat alongside a フォーク and a スプーン :D
Well the vocab is not particularly hard, I’m even surprised some words are not in kanji. However I found it hard to understand the whole meaning of it, except that the narrator likes kitchens. I’m only at my first reading, without checking any unknown word. I’ll push through
Overall, the reading difficulty was not as high as I would have expected. Yoshimoto's style is very likeable because she uses words and expressions that are easily understood. I certainly appreciate this quality since it's difficult to achive expressive simplicity. Of course, I had to look up some words and, as Kavit, I created a vocabulary list (by the way, thanks for sharing yours, Kavita).
Maybe I could understand better what was written because I have already read Kitchen in my mother tongue. However, reading it in its original language is for me a kind of adventure, as if I were rediscovering the story again in a voice that I have to understand again.
About this first page, I would like to highlight how, from the very start, the protagonist expresses her love for the kitchen. Indeed, it's a space that consists on the centre of the home, not only where food is made. As the story goes on, we can come to understand the protagonist's eagerness to be attached to the warmth the kitchen provides her at the same time that she uses it as a shelter from the loneliness that lies beyond the window. Somehow I found this feeling familiar and I believe that anyone could have the need to find a shelter at some point of their lives.
Finally, I would like to leave a question related to this page:
Glad my wordlist is helpful. I like your question at the end and my favourite place in the world would be anywhere in Japan, maybe Nara, with the deer or just relaxing in the hot springs there. My favorite place in our house as a kid was my bedroom, because I loved to read in bed and I could read well past bed time. And I still love reading.
If I had to choose one, because of all this place means to me, I'd chose the sea. Next to it I lived my best moments. It's a habit of mine sitting in the balcony at morning and just gazing the inmensity of the sea. It's something that you definetly have to experience. Also, I really love stargazing. So, in the end, both the sky and the sea are my favourite places in the world.
Thank you for the scans, I wanted to start this novel for a while. I liked the contrast between the third and the fourth sentence on this page. Even if the main character is not living in their dream kitchen, they still like their actual dirty kitchen a lot. I am not sure I understand the following word grouping correctly: ひと冬軽くこせるような食料 "lightly crumpled food after one winter"? Or "food as to easily pass one winter"? Moreover, which kanji would you choose for ひと here, "人" or "一"?
Hi Pirifimi! Really glad to hear you're enjoying the story! Perhaps the sentence is clearer with more kanji (for a change): 一冬軽く越せるような食料 → food enough to easily last for one entire winter. You're doing great, hang in there and keep going!
I really like this section, because the story takes place at a very common place in the house; in her kitchen. It starts off so simple, with an easy sentence and makes you think about your own kitchen and the memories and especially as a women all the time spent there. Yes, the story starts simple enough and then it deepens more. I also liked the last sentence on the page, mainly because I could understand it, but also because the emotion of loneliness is mentioned and you can sense the main character, whose name is not yet mentioned, at this point, might be lonely, but she feels comfort inside the her house, especially in her kitchen. 窓の外には淋しいく星が光る。Outside ,the window stars are glittering, lonely.
Glad my notes are helpful and I must say this is a fun project, more at my level I believe. The kanji and words aren't that hard, but still the story is interesting enough so that you want to know more and therefore keep reading.
Hi there. It's my first time here. ( ^_^)／
Thank you for doing this and for leaflings for introducing you to us. I'm new to reading vertical text that is not manga, and I'm also new to Japanese novels in general.
Besides thinking that 台所 was an "elevated place" throughout my whole first read, I didn't have any other amusing mishaps. It seems that up until 床, we are just in the narrator's mind. Then we move on to the physical world.
Some vocab were hard but if I were to ask anything I'd ask about the description as a whole. Maybe this is just my lack of novel-reading skills, but I couldn't picture the scene as vividly. I figured from the last line that it's a present-tense narration, "when I do X, I see a Y", but I'm not quite sure about the rest.
New kanji: 淋. I wondered if there's a specific nuance to 淋.
edit: I remember once saying 包丁 to a Japanese person on iTalki, who then sort of corrected me with ナイフ, and said that 包丁 is for slashing/killing. Any thoughts on that?
I know what you mean, reading Japanese novels can be very hard, even if you understand it, it's not easy making sense of it all, but as I kept going it does get easier. Now you know what this kanji means the next time you see 台所 and this will happen more and more and then it becomes fun. I'm still very much a beginner, so I know the struggles, as we all do here I think, but the fact we are here is and are trying is important. I guess one can kill with a kitchen knife, so it seems logical that it can also mean slashing/killing.
Hi Mischa, welcome! It seems like you're enjoying your first immersion reading project, so I'm really glad you could join in :) And it's amazing that you're making your way through the story with relative ease, great job! If you run into anything you don't know, just post it here and the community will jump in to help.
In practice, 寂しい and 淋しい are used interchangeably, but if we're nitpicking we can say that 寂しい is closer to stillness or quietness or solemnness (as in 静寂), while 淋しい has connotations of loneliness.
I would disagree with that teacher on iTalki and say that you definitely use 包丁 to refer to a larger kitchen knife. ナイフ is what you use to eat alongside a フォーク and a スプーン :D
Hope this helps!
Well the vocab is not particularly hard, I’m even surprised some words are not in kanji. However I found it hard to understand the whole meaning of it, except that the narrator likes kitchens. I’m only at my first reading, without checking any unknown word. I’ll push through
You can do it Heloise! Just share anything you have trouble with, we're all here to help out!
Overall, the reading difficulty was not as high as I would have expected. Yoshimoto's style is very likeable because she uses words and expressions that are easily understood. I certainly appreciate this quality since it's difficult to achive expressive simplicity. Of course, I had to look up some words and, as Kavit, I created a vocabulary list (by the way, thanks for sharing yours, Kavita).
Maybe I could understand better what was written because I have already read Kitchen in my mother tongue. However, reading it in its original language is for me a kind of adventure, as if I were rediscovering the story again in a voice that I have to understand again.
About this first page, I would like to highlight how, from the very start, the protagonist expresses her love for the kitchen. Indeed, it's a space that consists on the centre of the home, not only where food is made. As the story goes on, we can come to understand the protagonist's eagerness to be attached to the warmth the kitchen provides her at the same time that she uses it as a shelter from the loneliness that lies beyond the window. Somehow I found this feeling familiar and I believe that anyone could have the need to find a shelter at some point of their lives.
Finally, I would like to leave a question related to this page:
● What is your favourite place in the world?
Glad my wordlist is helpful. I like your question at the end and my favourite place in the world would be anywhere in Japan, maybe Nara, with the deer or just relaxing in the hot springs there. My favorite place in our house as a kid was my bedroom, because I loved to read in bed and I could read well past bed time. And I still love reading.
Thanks so much for your thoughtful reflection Sara!! My favorite place in our house as a kid was under the piano. What about you?
If I had to choose one, because of all this place means to me, I'd chose the sea. Next to it I lived my best moments. It's a habit of mine sitting in the balcony at morning and just gazing the inmensity of the sea. It's something that you definetly have to experience. Also, I really love stargazing. So, in the end, both the sky and the sea are my favourite places in the world.
Thank you for the scans, I wanted to start this novel for a while. I liked the contrast between the third and the fourth sentence on this page. Even if the main character is not living in their dream kitchen, they still like their actual dirty kitchen a lot. I am not sure I understand the following word grouping correctly: ひと冬軽くこせるような食料 "lightly crumpled food after one winter"? Or "food as to easily pass one winter"? Moreover, which kanji would you choose for ひと here, "人" or "一"?
I would also say thatひと冬軽くこせるような食料 means stocked with enough food to
get through a winter.
Hi Pirifimi! Really glad to hear you're enjoying the story! Perhaps the sentence is clearer with more kanji (for a change): 一冬軽く越せるような食料 → food enough to easily last for one entire winter. You're doing great, hang in there and keep going!
As usual I made a small wordlist:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-eh1P0qB1rCsrtAS-VgYEB54byjpsUlM/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=102772733310968467199&rtpof=true&sd=true
I really like this section, because the story takes place at a very common place in the house; in her kitchen. It starts off so simple, with an easy sentence and makes you think about your own kitchen and the memories and especially as a women all the time spent there. Yes, the story starts simple enough and then it deepens more. I also liked the last sentence on the page, mainly because I could understand it, but also because the emotion of loneliness is mentioned and you can sense the main character, whose name is not yet mentioned, at this point, might be lonely, but she feels comfort inside the her house, especially in her kitchen. 窓の外には淋しいく星が光る。Outside ,the window stars are glittering, lonely.
Thanks so much for always sharing your notes! Yoshimoto's writing is, as you say, beautiful because of its powerful simplicity.
Glad my notes are helpful and I must say this is a fun project, more at my level I believe. The kanji and words aren't that hard, but still the story is interesting enough so that you want to know more and therefore keep reading.