Yep, pretty sure you are right. I just searched again and found the Japanese manga page and it just uses katakana. I can’t even find the page I shared anymore haha. Still, it served its purpose for my immediate concern which was just “argh this book just keeps describing the layout by talking about different shapes and angles and I can’t imagine that at all!’. Sorry for the confusion folks 
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Ha! I thought you were studying Chinese on the side and just low key flexing 
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Oooh, I agree that this is a really good idea! I might try this too!
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So I liked this (and made sense, thank you!) but still wanted to run it by my tutor to be sure (hey, what are tutors for 
) and you were on the money 
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Finished chapter one too.
I really like how they’re setting things up and I love the writing. Really interesting seeing the language that was more common 30 years ago too. Like おたく for “you”. (I’d heard about it but this was the first time I’d seen it ‘in the wild’).
I think picking up novels by some of the authors mentioned is a great idea! (So many books to read though! XD)
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Reread that part and that really cleared it up for me. I might need to tweak my dictionaries now 
Just the last section to go. Thankfully I am almost done with manga for the month 
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Alrighty, finished chapter 1.4. I wanted to recap some points, make sure I didn’t misunderstand anything:
So our seven students are gathered here by invitation of Van’s uncle, who either works in real estate or knows of the real estate plans for 角島: it’s going to be turned into a resort-like area for young people. All seven of our protags are essentially the top people in their mystery “research society”; said society 1) has a limited stock of author names they pass down from graduation senior to underclassman, and 2) produces some sort of mystery magazine monthly (?). It sounded like up-and-coming members of the society are partly identified by their work in the magazine. (I’m not sure if it was specified, but I guess they’re writing original mystery tales for the magazine? Not sure.)
The group thought they were here for a week to more-or-less for vacation/to scope out the site of the grisly deaths of four people (+ disappearance of one more), but LeRoux intends for them to do their homework society magazine work instead. 
Does that all sound right? Any backstory I missed/misinterpreted up to this point?
Edit: And done! Looking forward to the next chapter; I’m wondering what crime these students could have committed to warrant being invited into a (probably) elaborate death trap. Also looking forward to about 20 less pages in week 3, haha.
Just wanted to note that there is an English translation, and the digital edition is currently on sale (in the US, at least) for those who want a reference to double-check major events. (Or you could refer to the translation of 十画館 itself, of course.)
So at the end there, Van says he’s feeling unwell and leaves, and after he locks his door Carr says 「嫌らしい奴だな」. This group seems to have some interpersonal issues, and in order to defuse the awkward moment they start talking about how nice a night it is, which leads to them talking about common weather myths, which leads to common moon myths and legends, including rabbits on the moon.
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I’m also finished the reading! I also found the prologue and part one difficult but the rest of the chapter way more approachable. I’m really liking the character dynamics that are already coming out and the little hints of backstory/tension between the characters. Although that probably means I will care more when they all start dying as I presume will happen given the multiple (I think there were at least 3 in this section?) references to ‘and then there were none’
What you set out is the same as what I got, so if you missed anything key I also missed it I really enjoyed Le Roux’s kind of pretentious speech and the less than enthusiastic response he got
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I asked a friend about that おたく usage, since the difference in meaning is rather strange (and it’s well down the definition list in JMDict) He said that about 40 years back, it was used as a less intimate version of おまえ
What we currently refer to as おたく started using that word and it became popular among them. Something about being antisocial so not having close bonds between them, so the word was a good fit…. And slowly the meaning changed…
Although wikipedia has some interesting theories
I actually bought that as a Xmas present, maybe I should ask to borrow it
Edit: chapter finished. Now… do I make a sneaky advance onto chapter 2
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I would recommend to check your library first. Mine has both the manga (digitally) and the ebook available… as well as an audiobook. (I’d rather spent my monies on new Japanese books… 
)
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I finally finished this portion! I like it a lot so far. The writing is just flowery enough to set the atmosphere, and I enjoyed the little digressions on misdirection in card tricks, flowers in Japanese classical poetry and their connection to disease, and practical meteorology/folklore beliefs on the moon.
I thought the writer does a much better job than Agatha Christie in fleshing out the characters - I’m not sure if it’s the nicknames, but I have a much easier time telling them apart than I did in And Then There Were None. Although I may be losing track of what each one is studying, what year they are, and what they’re wearing. I hope it’s not going to be too important.
So we already have a hint of resentments the students may be harbouring towards each other, although none of these seem to be enough motive for an elaborate mass murder.
I’ve been wondering about those nicknames. It seems to me that the characters are mere avatars instead of independent personalities because of them. Not only do they take the names of famous mystery authors, but apparently they’re also the names their predecessors bestowed on them. It’s like they’re hiding behind a persona that is not entirely their own.
Continuing my thinking on the names above, I have wondered whether they will end up paying for their predecessor’s sins, as heirs of their names/roles. I guess it’s bothering me how we got such an elaborate explanation on such a needless detail as a nickname. We’ll see soon enough, I’m sure.
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This is my thought as to why they went into the details with the nicknames. I’m guessing there are some shady pasts involved, and I could totally see at least one of these people seeing the mystery society as a fresh start of sorts. I could also see how the bestowal of a nickname would want to you to try to live up to the nickname, thereby altering/suppressing part of your personality. All just speculation, of course; could be the author was just really taken with the club setup and wanted to gush a little bit, haha.
I have my eye on Orczy; feels like she has the most potential to pick up a knife and go to town. 
The quiet but crazy type, you know?
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Reading her talking about Agatha I wasn’t sure if she envied her, hated her, or had the hots for her She’s already my favorite
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So it wasn’t just me, then.
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The story is dated as 1986, right? The word otaku is still alive as You and I’ve listened it in conversations a few times over the years.
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Yes, an actual house with some many rooms would have different furo and toilets for men and women here in Japan.
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しゃちほこused as a verb was one of the high points of the chapter to me. The only use I knew for it was to be part 9f Nagoya’s castle’s roofs ornaments.
I’m not a mistery reader, so I’ve got no idea of the nicknames except for Agatha Christie…
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It may look a bit silly to write in this tread when we’ve nearly finished the book, but I was rereading the prologue for clues, and I have questions. Rest assured, no spoilers beyond this section. Still, I’m hiding it under a details tag in case you don’t want to know what someone may be wondering about after having read 80% of the book.
Mostly a grammatical and vocabulary question, really
Mainly, I’m trying to figure out where the man (he must be a man because 彼) is in this scene. He’s sitting on a cold concrete 防波堤. From what I understood from the island, there’s no such structure , unless I’m misunderstanding the word?
However, he says of his victims-to-be: 「何も知らずに、彼らはやって来る。」Now 来る I know is a movement towards the speaker, but it can also be temporal in meaning. So my grammatical question is, does this phrasing mean he is on the island waiting for them, or that they’re getting closer to the fate he’s prepared for them, wherever that may be?
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Answers hidden as well 
Summary
Isn’t he sitting on those… uhm… wavebreaker thingies that are everywhere in Japan? They are made of concrete. (Apparently the correct term is “breakwater” in English.)
They are coming. He set a trap and is waiting for them, so he can kill them. We just don’t know who “he” is yet… though I have theories… 
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Yes. I just used the Japanese word in case it had a wider meaning that I was missing. Because as far as I can tell, there’s nothing like that on the island. The inlet has a wooden pier, and there are some concrete steps that lead down to the sea from the mansion, but no breakwater or whatever it’s called that I have seen. But if the 来る is literal (“they are coming to where I am now”) then he must be on the island already? Whoever that is.
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