#said el

[aowyn]

No.6 Reunion #4 has been announced! + Reunion #3 side story

No exact release date yet, but it is projected to come out in the fall. I wonder if it will be around Shion's birthday again, like #2 was.

Additionally, a side story for No.6 Reunion #3 has also been announced. It will be accessible through scanning a QR code on posters in select bookstores in Japan, just like previous side stories. It will depict Nezumi during his childhood and is titled "To the one waiting in the far beyond."

[aowyn]

I'm going to be away from home until earlyish-June and am leaving my laptop behind. I don't use tumblr on my phone, so I'll see any asks/DMs/etc when I return.

Reunion #3 will be coming out during my hiatus. I plan on reading it the day it is released, but will not start posting summaries or any other new information, like summaries of the Q&A event happening on June 6, until after I return.

[aowyn]

discord how could u do this to me. my friends are in there

[aowyn]

i fear neither nezumi nor shion will survive round four of that poll blog

[aowyn]

nothing brings the no.6 fandom together like pitting nezumi against spongebob

[aowyn]

No.6 Japanese Audiobooks

While it's not of much interest to the English-speaking side of the fandom, Kodansha has started to release Japanese audiobooks of the original No.6 series. They are narrated by Shindou Kei, who voiced Inukashi in the No.6 anime. The first installment was released a month ago, and the second was released yesterday (though Kodansha has yet to make an announcement about it). You can listen to them through Audible Japan here.

I listened to both and loved them! I'm super excited for the rest of the audiobooks, and I hope they do Beyond and Reunion as well. If you speak Japanese, I highly recommend them. They are short at less than five and a half hours each.

[aowyn]

In chapter three of No. 6 reunion, inukashi tells shion not to go picking a "partner" like nezumi (someone who lives on their own), and I was wondering if you could give some insight as to what the original word is and other possible translations. A partner is crime? A business partner? A companion? A romantic partner? A companion is always what I assumed Inukashi meant, but I thought as the translater you would know the nuances that the original japanese contains. Thank you!

Hi there, thanks for your question. The word Inukashi uses here is 相手 (aite), which is a broad word that is used in many different contexts. It can represent anything from your opponent in a sports match to a conversation partner—it doesn't have a good one-to-one equivalent in English. When used in the sense in which it appears in this snippet, it means the person you are doing something together with (such as the above example of a conversation partner, or accompanying someone to the grocery store.) Inukashi is telling Shion not to choose to share his life with a person like Nezumi, who is comfortable alone and able to live without relying on the emotional support of another person, because Nezumi will not be able to meet Shion's emotional needs.

[aowyn]

Hi! This is a bit of a random ask, but I recently came across your No.6 translations, and reading about your journey with Japanese really inspired me. I have a BA in Japanese studies, but after plateauing somewhere between N3 and N2 I kind of gave up. If it’s okay to ask, how did you approach learning vocabulary? Sorry for asking study advice on a fandom blog, but your posts (especially where you do language analysis) reignited my passion for Japanese. Thank you, and happy new year!

Hi there, thanks for writing in! Let me preface this by saying that vocabulary was my worst section on N1 when I passed it a few years ago. I also do not have a formal degree in Japanese and much of my learning has been self-study.

I'm super lazy about vocab—I take a laissez-faire approach and tend to only look up words I don't know if they are key to understanding a text. (When reading, that is—not when translating! I look up words very frequently when translating even if I know them well in Japanese because understanding a Japanese text is a different skill than turning that Japanese text into an English one).

I used to make flashcards from words I look up, but found that to be too much effort, so I don't often do that these days. I really dislike studying from arbitrary word lists and find that if I don't encounter a word from study materials in native contexts, I'm unlikely to remember it, so there's not much point in bothering.

What I have found helpful is simply reading a ton of native material. The more exposure you get, the more words you'll encounter and the more likely it is that they'll stick. Kanji knowledge is also key to retaining vocabulary and being able to figure out words from context because you can make educated guesses about readings and general meaning (though you can absolutely make incorrect guesses and not realize it!)

I also think that for advanced learners, when you are diving into a new topic, it can feel like you don't know any words simply because you don't know the jargon for that topic yet. Find a genre you like and read a bunch of it, and you will quickly learn its specialized vocabulary! I am a massive BL fan, so I read a lot of BL manga in Japanese as both entertainment and a study tool. Even in the most uncomplicated BL manga, there are sometimes new words, or usages of words that I've only recently learned and so my understanding of their nuances increases.

Apologies if this isn't super helpful! If you are looking for more concrete study tools, the Anki flashcard app is tried-and-true. I am using it right now to study for kanji kentei 2kyuu.