また、同じ夢を見ていた

My First Full-Length Novel

Before reading this book, most of my reading practice was non-fiction or objective material such as the news. In my head, Japanese was connected to studying, objectivity, and emotionless small talk. My experience with the language was dull. It may sound a bit pretentious or strange that I'm saying this, but it truly opened my eyes. Before I only had exposure to "duller" uses of Japanese. For the first time, I was able to read Japanese that was written for an artistic purpose. I was surprised that I was at the level of being able to read something and sense the emotions of the characters.

In the beginning, I was unfamiliar with some of the elements of Japanese books and had difficulty understanding who was speaking in dialogue, or some of the language differences in literature. However, by the end, I became much more familiar with these and was able to read the ending sections with much more comfort.

There are some expressions I needed to look up, that I am sharing here in case you want to read the book for yourself. I have hidden the English meaning spoiler if you don't want to see the meaning out of context. These were, 季節を売る, a euphemism for prostitution (売春) and 色を気がつく, become sexually aware or "Do you like him?". There is also a reference to the Japanese etymology of the word contradiction (矛盾). You can read about it here. When the characters start talking about 矛 and 盾, you'll understand the reference and won't be suddenly confused about the topic.

I had consistent difficulty understanding the speech of 南, but I attribute this to my unfamiliarity with dialogue. Other people who have more experience with dialogue may not find her speech hard to understand. Some sentences are also very long.

Overall, I was very happy reading this. The story isn't super groundbreaking or complex. At points, I found it a bit too tedious. Also, the twist is a bit predictable. I found the overarching conflict and premise of the book interesting.

I would not recommend this to beginners though. While it works well as a first (non-children's) book, I would recommend other learners to check out short stories and children's books first. The book is 300 pages (bunkobon size), so I recommend having some experience reading fiction before starting due to its length.

I'm glad I picked up a physical copy. In the future, I hope to collect (and finish) many more.