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Brun_Ugle flies again (TAC 2012 team い) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6621 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes  Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 217 of 276 01 December 2012 at 8:59am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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BOOK REVIEW
Title: 妖怪のアパートの幽雅な日常 （Daily life in the secluded elegance of the haunted apartment.）I'm really not quite sure of the translation of this title as I did it myself, but in any case, it is the first book in the 妖怪のアパート series。 Author: 香月日輪 Genre: YA Fantasy Level: It wasn’t too difficult, but I did get lost occasionally and have to go back and look up words. Part of the problem is the strange happenings. It’s hard sometimes to know if what you think happened really happened or if you’ve misunderstood entirely. Usually I found that I wasn’t too far off the mark. It is at about an 11- or 12-year-old level, but the subject matter makes it a little more difficult. It might not be the first book you want to read because of that, but you can still read it fairly early. If you are prepared to look things up occasionally, a vocabulary of 3000-4000 words will probably be sufficient. Like with most books, as you get into it, you start to get a better idea of what’s going on and then it gets easier. Story: 夕士 （ゆうし）( Yuushi) has just finished middle school and is about to start high school. His parents died when he was in his first year of middle school and he has lived with his aunt and uncle since then. His aunt and uncle are nicer than Harry Potter’s were, but they don’t really want him and he is eager to move away. So he chooses to go to a high school with a dormitory where he can live. Suddenly, only a few days before the start of school, the dormitory burns down and it is supposed to take 6 months to rebuild. He could live with his relatives until then, but he doesn’t want to. He starts searching for an apartment, but they are all far out of his price range. After trying and failing to find anything, he is sitting in a park when a child comes along and points to a store and says to try there. When he looks back, the child is gone. He goes to the store and asks about an apartment. The man has an apartment for him and it’s 5 000 yen cheaper than the dorm. Of course, there is a good reason for this, and you’ve probably already guessed it. Yuushi guesses it too but, cheap is cheap, so he goes to look at the apartment. It turns out that his favorite author, a poet, also lives in the building. That decides it. He takes the apartment and moves in. He soon finds out that not only does the poet live there, but there is also a painter and a girl. It just gets better and better. However, things soon start to seem a little odd. The bath is an onsen located in a mysterious cave under the building. The cleaning lady never stops cleaning – ever. The cook makes great food, but is never seen. And what about the strange people who always seem to be playing mahjong? Or the guy who came to the door one day with a Hawaiian shirt and no head? The girl, Akine, speaks calmly to him as if Hawaiian shirts are a perfectly normal everyday sight, but Yuushi is slightly unnerved. None of the others seem to think it’s at all odd to have ghosts about. Some of these ghosts seem quite human, or maybe they are human, or maybe the humans are ghosts. How do you know who is human and who is a ghost? It’s hard to say what the plot actually was. It wasn’t the kind of story where one main event is followed from beginning to end with the traditional climax and denouement. It is quite simply about Yuushi’s daily life living in that apartment and about the ghostly residents and how they came to be there. The lack of a clearly defined plot made it a little difficult for me to “get into” at times, but as I read, the characters and their daily life became more and more interesting to me and I really enjoyed it. Recommendation: It is well worth a try if you still have enough of the child in you to enjoy this kind of story with strange characters and no real plot. If you don’t, then the story will probably be too boring to make you want to make the effort it requires to read it. I should note that although this book doesn’t seem to be translated to English, there is a manga based on the book and that is translated to English. I can’t say how good the manga is or how closely it follows the story in the book since I haven’t read it, but if you prefer manga to books, you can check it out. Edited by Brun Ugle on 01 December 2012 at 9:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5983 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 218 of 276 01 December 2012 at 4:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Glad to see you back Brun Ugle. And I'm really glad you've been able to resolve your work situation and can see the silver lining already. One of the best career moves I ever made was to quit a job that didn't suit me - with no plans for what to do next. It meant I was free to look for, and then take, whatever opportunities arose. Things worked out for me, and I'm sure they'll work out for you too.
Your book review is interesting too, I'll be interested in hearing more about young adult fiction. Sooner or later I'll need to graduate from elementary school level stuff! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 219 of 276 01 December 2012 at 6:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Brun Ugle, normally I would be sorry that you lost your job, but from your description of it it sounds like you
are better off without it. Good for you that you took matters into your hands and quit. I am sure you'll find work with someone who actually appreciates you. I once dropped out of my studies after having given 2 years and a half of my life without having a single exam to show for it. It felt like a failure then, but it turned out to be the best decision I ever made. As for the choice between Polish and Russian that is a tough one. I started out with Polish many years ago, but left it after having reached an A1-A2 level only. Then 15 years later I started with Russian, which I am still learning. For me Polish felt relatively easy, compared to Russian which is really, really hard. If I were to take the descision again I would probably have taken Russian from the beginning, but it sounds like you would feel more comfortable with Polish, and I guess it would be more useful I Norway. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6448 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German | Message 220 of 276 01 December 2012 at 6:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Those Polacks and electrical devices. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6621 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 221 of 276 01 December 2012 at 9:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I should mention one more thing about books which I forgot to write in my review. For some reason, they often give the pronunciation of names only the first time they appear (if at all). So write them down! I can never remember all those names and Japanese names are hard to figure out. The pronunciations often don't seem to have anything to do with the usual pronunciations of those kanji. In the Haunted Apartment book for example, they gave the name of Uncle Whatsis (I don't remember his name). The first time his name appeared, they gave the pronunciation of his name, but after that, they only gave the pronunciation for "uncle" as if we couldn't remember that! So after hunting back in the book for some of the names, I figured out that I should just write them on a slip of paper and keep it in the book.
Unfortunately, the book I am reading now often doesn't give the pronunciations even the first time. It's a great book though so far. And also the easiest I've read. Finally, something I can get through quickly. And if I like this author, he’s written 500 books (as of 2008 – according to Wikipedia)!!! So I’ll have plenty to read. That should take me through the Super Challenge and then some. reineke: I don't really think it was the Poles’ fault. They just connected the new one to where the old one was. It's my crazy landlord that causes all the trouble. He also seems to be in some kind of time warp where next week can mean anything from six months to never. I forgot to mention about the postboxes. I had ordered a DVD and it didn't come for a long time so I started to wonder what happened, but I thought it might just be taking them a bit longer to send it. Then I got a telephone call from someone asking me why I hadn't come to the meeting. "What meeting?!" "On Friday. We sent you a letter about it." So then I knew something was up. I went to the post office several times before it got straightened out. Apparently, they can't deliver inside buildings anymore. So we have new postboxes on the back of the building. Only the landlord never told us! So I had a few months’ worth of mail that I didn't get. I don't usually get much mail, so I didn't notice and if it hadn't been for the DVD and the missed meeting, I might still not know about it. g-bod: Thank you so much. I'm actually not stressed at all now that I've finally cut all ties to them. It hurt to have all those lies and accusations thrown at me, and also that after people found out I'm crazy, some of them wouldn't really look at me. But other than the people in management, most of them are OK. I thought it would be really hard to leave because of the people that I liked there, but so many of them have quit and new ones have come. So I hardly know most of them now. Every year I've been there at least 10 % of the people have quit. This year it is about 20 % including me. That probably says something. They hire a lot of recent graduates every year, give them the jobs no one wants to do and pay them terrible wages. After a few years, most of them quit. They have the name of a well-known, respected company on their CV's, and then they find a job paying a lot more, sometimes double. I know I never came up to the salary I would have had if I'd stayed in the Customs department. It was kind of naive to believe them about good salaries, educational opportunities and career advancement. NEVER leave a government job. So now I'm looking for a new one. Cristina: Wow! I never imagined you read my log. I'm honored! Thank you for your kind words. Life is definitely much better without a job. At least, without that one. I do miss my iPhone though :( I had to turn it in. Now I'm using an old phone, but it's not really all that "smart." Also the battery isn't very good. I think I'll probably break down and buy my own iPhone, even though I'm known for being a tightwad. I still don't know whether I should learn Polish or Russian. I like the idea of Polish, but Russian has a cool alphabet and I'm a sucker for cool alphabets. I don't really want to study more than one of them because I want to stick to one language per family (a rule I'm bound to break though.) Anyway, I still can't decide, so I think I'll do Spanish next year :) I've been trying to get my therapist to read Harry Potter. She’s heard me going on and on about it for about 7 months, which is how long it took me to read it in Japanese. So she started talking about maybe reading it herself, but she still hasn't done it. So then I said for a joke that I would read it in 7 different languages. And if I could read the whole series in 7 different languages, then certainly she should be able to read all 7 books in one language. If I do that though, I think I'll have to cheat and make Swedish and Danish two of the languages. Even then, I'll still need to learn two new languages. But then I think I'll be able to call myself a true Harry Potter fan. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6448 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German | Message 222 of 276 01 December 2012 at 10:32pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I couldn'r resist a Polack joke. How many were there? They should have checked. I enjoy your log. It's very good. You remind me of sheetz. Don't joke about HP. Doing the same book in many languages is a proven method. Don't have too many rules. Do what you enjoy. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6621 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 223 of 276 02 December 2012 at 8:39am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yes, I understood the joke. Poor Poles. Everyone jokes about them. There were two of them, but Polish or not, I don't think anyone would think to trace the outlet vent to see that it wasn't connected to the bathroom. On the bright side: It's better that the vent from the kitchen blows into the bathroom than the other way around :P
WOW!!! That's probably the greatest compliment anyone's ever given me! I'm kind of surprised to find out that people outside of my own teammates and the occasional Japanese learner, actually read this thing. I always figured my log was mostly too boring to read, but I do try to break it up with some fun idioms and some book reviews now and then. If only I could read faster; there'd be a lot more reviews.
No. No one gets to make fun of the great and wonderful HP! But even I could use a little tiny break. I think I read the books almost every year though, so I'll probably be ready to go again by the time my Spanish is good enough. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 224 of 276 02 December 2012 at 10:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I enjoy your log, and it's fun to read about Norway seen from the perspective of a non-Norwegian. You probably do not give much though to that aspect of your log, but I do find a gem here now and then in that respect :-)
1 person has voted this message useful |
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