Week 2 🐙 マグメル深海水族館 🐠 癒し系 Book Club

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Summary - Japanese

マグメル深海水族館は、東京湾の水深200メートルにある世界唯一の水族館。ここでは、深海に潜む生き物たちを身近に観察することができる。清掃員のアルバイトとして働くことになった天城航太郎は、深海生物が大好きで、少し引っ込み思案な青年。ある日、館長の大瀬崎湊人に出会ったことで、彼の人生に変化が訪れる――。深い海の底で生きる深海生物たちの魅力とひとりの青年の成長を描く、心あたたまる物語が始まる。

Summary - English

(DeepL) Magumel Deep Sea Aquarium is the only aquarium in the world located at a depth of 200 meters in Tokyo Bay. Here, visitors can closely observe the creatures that lurk in the deep sea. Kotaro Amagi, a part-time cleaner, is a young man who loves deep-sea creatures and is a bit withdrawn. One day, he meets Minato Osezaki, the curator of the museum, and his life is changed–and then. A heartwarming story of one young man’s growth and the fascination of deep-sea creatures living at the bottom of the ocean begins.

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Reading Schedule

Week Start Date Chapter
2 April 15 Chapter 1

Discussion Guidelines

  • Spoilers should always be hidden using spoiler blur.
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  • Feel free to read ahead if it’s exciting, but please refrain from spoiling ahead of the appropriate week.
  • If you have a question about grammar, vocab, cultural things, etc - ask! That’s a welcome part of the discussion too, and other readers will be happy to help.

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Finished this week’s reading. Quick question seven pages into this week’s chapter: our protagonist 航太郎 says this:

ここが世界で唯一深海の中にある水族館として
開館したのは５年前のこと

I want to read this as “5 years before the aquarium opened”, but is that right? It looked like a younger 航太郎 was featured at the very end of the chapter, which is making me think I’ve got it wrong, but I don’t understand how the 前 is working to mean “5 years after”. It also doesn’t make sense for the place to be open normally before the grand opening, too…

Did anyone else feel a bit bad for the ダイオウグソクムシ (what a mouthful) after the 館長 manipulated it into jumping just to entertain some bored museum-goers? :stuck_out_tongue: Maybe it was just me…

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Sorry the before here is confusing me a bit, did you mean before as in this is five years before the aquarium opened or like the aquarium opened five years before the current point? Here it’s the latter. I’d translate that line something like “It was 5 years ago when this aquarium was first opened as the world’s only aquarium in the deep sea.”

Could have at least given it a snack for the effort lol

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I think I see what you mean now. :thinking: Re-reading, I think the ここが was throwing me a bit. Thank you!

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