What fascinated the author, who was born in Taiwan and did not even know "aiueo" until the age of 15? The fascination and difficulty of learning Japanese as a second language. This is a collection of gems of essays by an Akutagawa Prize-winning author, overflowing with new insights into the Japanese language.
Memoir/Musings on Japanese Language
This was as a whole really interesting and really mixed memoir/essays on Japanese language, from 李 琴峰, a Taiwanese author who learnt Japanese as a second language, to a level where she writes award winning prose!
I did wonder while reading it, who the target audience of the book is. It’s a real mix of snippets of Taiwanese history, life in Taiwan/Japan, analysis on Japanese grammar points, Chinese poets, linguistic differences between Chinese, Japanese, and English, and probably more things.
There were bits which were a little dry, but equally there were bits which resonated with me too. It was also very interesting seeing learning Japanese from a non-european perspective, as it definitely comes with different nuances.
Language wise
This was a little tricky to grade. The writing in general is pretty readable, but there's a handful of more complicated sections. E.g. musings on Chinese poets, bits of lots of linguistics jargon. But these are also written in a way that's introducing these concepts to the reader, so they're often explained as you go.