That French connection will make that word easier to remember!
I couldn’t tell from your summary if you picked up on this - he only got stage fight and froze though because at the competition he had to play Schumann or someone non Mozart so he actually couldn’t play it and that was his first time not being able to play (since before that he just played whatever he wanted from Mozart to impress people- he didn’t practice for the competition)
My impression is the snack was meant for playing for enjoyment, not so much professionally. Something about her warning, was it not to be too ambitious or something along those lines? His wish was related to playing well for his lessons after all, and then everyone got carried away
Oh dear, is that how it was? In my memory they were frozen in time or something but perhaps I just made that up in my mind
I really liked how he had the choice to get a snack for the composer he had to past for the competition, but he realised how short sighted that was like you said and he got the ultimate snack to erase the whole thing
Oh, yeah, I got that, I was just generalizing that moment as “stage fright” even though that’s not exactly what it was. (No word for “when you go up on stage to play but you didn’t eat the music snack from Beniko for that composer” )
Yeah, that was basically her warning, that the snack is meant to be for enjoyment. At the end he understands, ah, I shouldn’t have used it to become famous and that was a mistake. So a pretty straightforward moral.
Yes, they’re all lying on the floor with their eyes closed!! And she’s like Oh don’t worry (: They’re just sleeping (: Ma’am I’m worried!
Overall I liked this story a lot!
I also read the Revenge Menko story but didn’t really have anything extra to add that we didn’t already discuss when I listened to it. So now I have only 1 chapter left to read, the hospitality tea chapter!
thanks, I missed that in Ch 4 (when Beniko arrives and everyone is lying on the floor)!
love that. I am starting to see why you’re referencing them by name as well, I need to start doing that as otherwise it gets too cryptic with numbers, and thinking - which one was that???
Not the spin-off, but I decided to jump into the first book in this series in Korean! I just read the first chapter along with the audiobook and I had about 4 lookups per page.
I definitely understood what happened and I didn’t feel as much of a gap between what I understood and what the book was actually saying, if that makes sense? Like, sometimes when I read in Korean I can feel that I’m not fully understanding something despite lookups, but I didn’t feel that way as much here.
As for the story itself, it was pretty simple but I did feel bad for Mayumi.
Question to people who’ve read further: Do the stories get more complex, or are they all like this? I’m definitely going to finish the volume, but I’m not sure if I want to continue with the series yet. Is it keeping your interest or do they get boring/repetitive?
How fun that you jumped into book 1! We can discuss that here, too, if you like as you go through it.
thoughts on that
I’ve read the first 4 volumes and am on volume 5. The author introduces variations on the story arc in each chapter, and the world expands with each book, and so far that variation has been what has kept my interest up with this series.
Taste is relative, but the good news is, I think you’ll see by the end of Book 1 how much the author plays with the flow of the story arc within one book to decide if you find that level of expanding world/complexity interesting vs repetitive. Then, for subsequent books, you can expect as much variation, plus there are additional surprises due to world building that makes the arc and story mechanic more complex or moves it in a different direction. This means on the one hand, there is enough of a recognisable pattern to the arc and characters that it’s easy to read, but on the other hand, there is always a variation on something that makes a story surprising in some way. I’ve tried to keep this vague since the something is the fun part.
If you finish book 1 entertained, then there are plenty of surprises in Book 2 to keep you going. Book 2 was my favourite of the first 4! Whether you move on from there? I would base that on how much you are enjoying it so far, and if you care about delving into the world and understanding what is going on, as that slowly unfolds. So far I’ve continued as long as I finished the previous book enthusiastically, and it hasn’t disappointed.
Despite my enthusiasm, at some point I might stop reading these because in the Japanese the kanji only goes up to about the 4th grade level and I’ll want to start spending more time on my kanji reading skills. But I’ll probably keep up with it as long as it remains my ‘easy reading in bed on the weekends’ series.
Thank you for the detailed response! I’ll keep that in mind as I read. My local library here in Japan has books 1-4, so I might pick up book 2 later down the line, even if I don’t read it immediately.
I just read chapter 2, which I enjoyed a lot more than chapter one! It was nice that there was more drama and I loved that the terrible older brother got his comeuppance! Mwahaha revenge!
However, I did do more lookups than chapter one, which I’m going to blame on all of the animal names.
ooh how lucky that you can get these from your library. I really must remember to try that here (Germany), but I would have to use interlibrary loan and I’m not very fast yet…
Ch 2
haha, yeah, I liked that one, too. You might like Books 2+ then, as the drama in about half the stories tends to increase compared to Book 1.
I find the lookups so variable depending on the chapter and the themes. For some I sail through, and for others I ask myself if I know any Japanese
When I started the series, I was expecting every story to be like the Mayumi story (you should have read the directions!!) but there’s actually a pretty good variety of setups and resolutions (some good, some bad). So far, the stories haven’t felt repetitive.
My guess is that eventually the language will feel too simple/easy and I’ll want to read something harder, so I’m just taking it one book at the time and seeing if I’m still enjoying them before I read the next one.
Also, I enjoy discussing the stories in the club here so that’s another reason I’ve kept reading.
I totally get that, and that’s awesome that you’re overcoming it! It sounds kind of similar to what someone on wk or somewhere else was calling ‘the fog of reading’ where you know what’s going on but there’s still that extra gap.
(Currently reading through book 4 after completing 1-3.) There is a pattern to each story and it does expand the external world as you read through them. There is variety within the stories and although there is the general pattern, some are more complex than others. I did also feel I’ve been exposed to a lot of new vocabulary as I’ve been reading them because of the differences between each story.
I feel the stories do have a lesson behind each one and the lesson isn’t always what you would expect. There also seems to be a wider story arc that spans the series, where you get a deeper look into the main character.
I did find that some stories I can read most of without look ups and understand it without any help, whereas other stories I understand very little without looking a lot of stuff up. I think most of that is just vocab though as the grammar level seems to be pretty consistent to me.
Side note: I did buy the whole series, partly because I’m a collector and partly because I wanted to use these as a gauge for how much I was progressing as I do re-read books to gauge my progress. If you’re enjoying them or getting something from them, then I’d say keep reading after the first one. You’ll be able to gauge how you feel once you’ve read through a few of the chapters and see if it’s for you or not.
I’ve continued reading and finished chapters 3 and 4 today. I really enjoyed the ghost ice cream story and liked the fishing story as well. It’s nice to see the different variations that the author is showing with each story. I didn’t expect an adult character, as this is a children’s book. It’s interesting to see all of the characters’ different ages, genders, and personalities.
From a difficulty perspective, I’m finding the grammar is straightforward and the vocab varies enough by chapter to keep things fairly challenging in terms of the number of lookups. With that being said, chapter 4 felt rather breezy to me in comparison to the others, so that was nice.
Ok, I’ve finished the book! I liked it enough that I put book two in the series on hold at the library. The stories ended up being varied enough that I remained entertained. I enjoyed the last story about the cooking tree, even though it was quite sad.In addition, the grammar is quite easy and despite the mountain of unknown vocab, the audiobook narration helped me to guess the general meaning of some of the unknown words. Overall, it was a pretty quick and accessible reading experience.
So I just finished reading book 4 intensively. I highly recommend getting this far! The last chapter and epilogue had some tough dialogues but have some super interesting world building. On the one hand I was so excited I started Book 5 right away a while ago. On the other hand, I wanted to go back and get every little detail from the last 6 pages or so of book 4. Well I finally had a clear head for that and all I can say is, let me know when anyone gets that far, I’m excited to discuss!
I finished reading volume 2! I had a lot of fun with this volume, I liked the stories more than volume 1.
Book 2 chapter 6: Hospitali-tea
So his cake shop is called ヴェルデ, verde. It took me a while to realize what he was saying until he was like, it’s italian for midori! and I was like ohhh verde.
I liked the whole story except the detail about how ‘ohh he was bullying her because he liked her,’ which is a fairly common trope/thing people say in general. But I’ll let it slide because he worked so hard to get her attention again by making delicious cakes, which is sweet and shows he’s grown since his schoolboy days. He seemed to regret how he treated her too. I also thought it was such a sweet story to have two adults meeting when they’re older (I think Midori is in her 40s?); I really like the variety of protagonists in the series so far.
I’m not quite there yet, illness and lack of focus haven’t been helping me the last few weeks. I only have the last chapter and epilogue to read in Book 4 but it might take me a bit to do so because of how I’m feeling atm.
I started volume 2 earlier this week and read chapters 1 and 2. The first chapter was kind of boring, to be honest. I didn’t really care about the main character and it seemed a bit silly. I enjoyed the second story a lot more, as Chisato was sweet and it was fun to watch her go around helping people. I liked the ending, where the doctor and the cheating opponent got their just desserts.
I felt like the second story was fairly easy to read, aside from the occasional medical words that popped up.
I also finished chapter 3. It was exciting (?) to have a story with a properly bad ending. Very fairy tale, even if there is a far off glimmer of hope for Sana to eventually escape from wherever she is if someone else comes to buy that product.
Chapter 4 was quite nice. I liked that Hibiki regretted his choice and was actually able to turn back time to before he ate the candy. It reminded of the mermaid story, but (presumably) without fame later in life. This was definitely the easiest chapter to read so far!
I didn’t care much for the protagonist framing, either. This one changed my perspective a lot on what Beniko is doing with her sweet shop. She doesn’t seem to mind who she helps, it certainly put the morality tale framing to rest and made me really curious about her motivations and the rules around her shop.
I agree Ch 2 was so cute, I loved that one!
Bk 2 Ch 3 Key ring
Did you see in the Book 1 thread for the food tree, everyone was kind of building up for a little shop of horrors ending and then it was pretty tame? I kind of felt like this story made up for that
Bk 2 Ch 4 Musical crisps
A rare example of Beniko’s customer doing something sensible
Bk 2 Ch 6 Hospitali-tea
love your English translation
oops, that’s right, sorry, I was relying on my memory there when I said midori (I’ll go back and correct it!) and I should have checked since in the back of my mind I was thinking, well they both meant green, but wasn’t it just a bit different? lol
yes, my thoughts exactly. I hadn’t seen this trope before ever, but it’s come up a few times in this series and really annoys me because it’s so obviously a trope even if you’ve never seen it. In general, any of the children’s stories about bullying I tend to read extensively. This one I did ok with because I totally missed that part until my intensive reread and by then I had found the rest of it rather endearing
that’s what I remember, too. The variety of protagonists really carries me through this series. I don’t mind zooming through the more childish or contrived ones if there are others that are surprising. Plus, I tend to have an outsized enjoyment of the prologue and epilogue
Well, definitely put this on the back burner, then. The end of the last chapter and epilogue took me a lot of focus, to be honest. I read them extensively and then it took quite some weeks before I had the focus to go back and read them intensively. The intensive read was challenging, but worth it to understand the story progression. I suggest waiting until you have the energy for that.
I feel the same! “Boy bullying a girl because he likes her” is such a stupid trope but I feel like it wasn’t handled too badly here. I’m rooting for them! In general, I really liked how the story portrayed Midori as an older woman living alone happily, aside from occasional loneliness. While the end pointed towards romance, it didn’t feel like a moralistic message against being single, if that makes sense?
I’ve finished book 2! I liked it way better than book 1 and will definitely continue onto book 3 after reading something else to cleanse my reading palette.
Yes! I felt like the way it dealt with her being lonely was very realistic. Like, yes, she feels lonely sometimes, but she still has a good life and enjoys her independence.
You read so quickly! I’m going to take a break before book 3 as well, but I’ll be back in a few weeks.
)
I’m going to take a break before book 3 as well, but I’ll be back in a few weeks. 
