Another very busy week. I’m down to the wire trying to make time for a bunch of responsibilities and unfortunately reporting in japanese didn’t make the cut.

On Sunday I started reading また、同じ夢を観ていた. I’m currently 74 pages in, a little under halfway done — a little behind schedule but I’m pretty sure I can still finish it by next week. Right from the beginning I knew I was going to like this one. The main character is often funny in a way that you think she’s doing it on purpose, but other times the joke is clearly that she has a lot to learn about the way the world works. Her 人生とは lines always get a smile out of me, even when they don’t quite make sense either at first glance or on further scrutiny.

It would be easy to stop there and let the whole gimmick be “little kids don’t know what’s going on”, but the emotional core of the story comes largely from adults in her life who gently correct her misunderstandings without quashing her curiosity. I especially like アバズレさん. Her voice is always so kind but there’s an understated sadness behind every line. I’m very much enjoying myself and there have been several points where I’ve gotten lost in the story and gone over my quota for the day.

I also finished 女生徒. I definitely enjoyed the first half more than the latter half, but it was pretty good overall. One bit from the last page stuck out to me in particular:

明日もまた、同じ日が来るのだろう。幸福は一生、来ないのだ。それは、わかっている。けれども、きっと来る、あすは来る、と信じて寝るのがいいのでしょう。

On my list of all 太宰治 works read to date, it gets #1 spot easy.

Today I was doing some prolonged programming and decided to watch Naruto while I was at it. I watched 24 episodes, covering four arcs: Mizuki, Bikochuu, Kurosaki, and Gosunkugi. Was nice to see Hinata in the spotlight for a little bit. Mizuki is a great villain; really good delivery on all his lines and the ruthlessness in his character comes through very strong.

Finally I listened to ナベちゃんのヨメ (4x 1:00, high focus) by the author of パッとしない子. Blog post coming soon (maybe).