魔女の宅急便 Book Club - December 2025

Book Clubs
#1

Hi Everyone!

A few others in the Book Collector Rehabtm community and I thought it would be fun to start a book club to help encourage people to read more. This is the welcome thread for anyone interested in reading through 魔女の宅急便 (Kiki’s Delivery Service).

If you’re interesting in joining, please have a read through this post!

Details

Book: 魔女の宅急便 by 角野栄子 (Kiki’s Delivery Service by Eiko Kadono)
Start Date: Dec 28, 2025
Pace: ~10 pages a week (see Pace section below for more detailed breakdown)
Vocab Decks: https://bunpro.jp/decks/vegl68/kikis-delivery-service

Focus of Club

The goal of this club to act as an inclusive community where we can help each other engage more with native material. This thread is a place to ask questions, help others, and just generally discuss the book. So let’s come together to support each other and share in the joy of Japanese studies!

General Rules

While this is not an official Bunpro staff-run book club, we will be using the same rules that were created for the official book club discussions. Please keep the following in mind when posting in this thread.

Keep discussion related to the target book.

You may of course make comparisons between grammar or vocabulary usages between this book and other series, but for the most part try to keep discussion related to the unique challenges that this book presents.

Search the threads for users that may have previously asked the same question as you.

It’s likely that a simple search will result in finding someone having asked the same question as you are about to ask. In addition to this, if you jump into a book late, it is expected that you would search the thread history before asking questions about content most participants have already read.

When asking questions, give as much detail as possible.

For example, if you include the page number, who is speaking, and explain what you want to know more about, that will be far easier for other users to answer rather than just asking ‘What does てっきり mean? Taking a screenshot and highlighting the portion you’re asking about would also be suitable.

Be polite! Not everyone is the same level.

Just because something is easy for you does not mean that it is easy for someone else. Let’s be thankful to those that answer our questions, and thankful also for the opportunity to help others that aren’t quite at the same level as us yet.

Keep questions in line with the pacing.

We know that some of you may want to surge ahead of the group if you are really enjoying a book. However, this can result in confusion if you are asking questions about things that people haven’t read yet. If this applies to you. Make a note of the question you want to ask, wait until the group has caught up, then ask the question

Be mindful of spoilers.

If you are asking a question about something that includes spoilers to the story, please be aware of this and let users know with a ‘SPOILER’ tag at the beginning of your question. Hiding the question by utilizing the Hide Details function of the forums would also be appreciated. Let’s allow everyone to enjoy the experience of reading spoiler free.

Let’s all have fun and create a positive learning environment together! :blush:

Pace

Week Start and End Dates Start Line End Line
Week 1 28/12/2025 - 03/01/2026 あるところに、深い森となだらかな草... やがて女の子も成長し、猫にかわるようなたいせつな人ができ...
Week 2 04/01/2026 - 10/01/2026 お茶の時間のあと、コキリさんとオキノさんが用事... 右手がエプロンのすそをにぎって、そっと目...
Week 3 11/01/2026 - 17/01/2026 お月さまは一日一日とまるくなって... オキノさんが空を見あげて、ぽつりといいました。

Okay, hope you’re all set to go! Looking forward to reading through this book with all of you! 🥳
30 Likes
Gauging Interest - 魔女の宅急便 (Kiki's Delivery Service) Bookclub
#2

I decided to start early just to see how it would be and… it’s already kiki-ing my butt (see what I did there)

Tbh I’ve only read the first two pages and it’s actually not so bad (as far as one can tell within two pages, anyway) but I feel like I have to read it more carefully if it’s for book club rather than just flying over stuff I don’t understand… have to remember I can always read it again in the future!!

11 Likes
#3

Still waiting for my copy to arrive, it’s scheduled to get there on the 31st so I might get a late start :sweat_smile: Will just have to read a lot during my vacation week afterwards to make up for it ig

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#4

Just ordered my copy. よろしくおねがいします

6 Likes
#5

I went ahead and read the first chapter, and there are definitely quite a few words I don’t know. I think what I’m gonna end up doing is read through it at whatever pace just skimming past what I don’t understand, then actually go through more thoroughly along with the book club pace

7 Likes
#6

Looking forward to it, I haven’t started reading anything yet but I got the book in time.

This is my first Book Club of this kind, I’m curious to see how it works.

Good luck everyone!

6 Likes
#7

I might suggest using the schedule proposed for the 2020 WaniKani reread of Kiki. It is roughly 10 pages per session (well, 9-13) and can be synced up with multiple versions of the book.

emphasized text

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#8

アマゾンで買ったところです。一緒に読むのを楽しみにしています！
来年の正月の希望は小説を全部日本語で読むことで、早くできたらいいと思います！

5 Likes
#9

Thats a great idea!!

#10

I got the exact ISBN of learnnatively since there’s so many options as epub and I’m reading it with ttsu reader so I can use yomitan on it. This is the first time I will attempt reading a novel in Japanese. Let’s see how bad this goes.

The ebook doesn’t seem to come with page indicators since they depend on the device settings (font size, etc)

Excited to participate

In case anyone feels like this is useful, my “search on bunpro” extension seems to work properly with ttsu reader (the second version)

image

6 Likes
#11

Started reading a bit. There’s a lot of hiragana. So much that some words are even missing from jpdb deck, e.g. 見合わせる. But Bunpro deck seems more robust in detecting them all.

4 Likes
#12

I started reading a bit as well. I’m not really sure how far I am page wise because I had to increase the font to 200% so I could read it on my phone. I was surprised by how much hiragana there was. A few of the words I learned from the deck were written in kanji there, so I wasn’t sure what it was saying until I sounded it out myself.

Luckily the bookwalker app has a fairly decent dictionary function, so the lack of furigana isn’t as much of an issue as I was afraid it might be.

Comprehension-wise, I think (hope) I’m understanding the gist of things so far, but I don’t think I could say anything specific. But I was expecting that to be honest. I’m not very far along in my studies yet. Mostly I’m just hoping this will give me the chance to see verb conjugation in action because that’s an area I’ve been struggling with.

Reading vertical text is a bit of an adjustment as well. I’m hoping as we continue I’ll adjust.

2 Likes
#13

I’ve read the first 10 pages. It’s bizarrely more difficult to read novels with fewer kanji. I found it harder to distinguish between words and particles at times, even when I knew the word very well.

It might be useful if someone posts a summary of the first 10 pages (with spoiler tags). That way we can check for comprehension.

6 Likes
#14

Count me in starting next week!

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#15

Can someone post the end sentence? I have an ebook with no page numbers.

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#16

That’s definitely the issue I’ve had so far. For the first 12-13 pages though it’s not been too painful though

(My copy has a drawing on page 9-10 so I thought I’d continue)

1 Like
#17

Hey all!

Sorry for not updating the end sentence. I’ve been stuck overseas due to some flight cancellations without my physical copy of the book yay holiday travel disruptions!

It also looks like some people may be starting a bit late, and to ease us in a bit, I’m going to just say everyone should aim to finish chapter 1 - お話のはじまり, which is 6-10 pages depending on which version you’re using.

For those who have started reading already, feel free to start posting questions if you come across something that just isn’t clicking!

Someone also requested a summary of the first chapter so that people can check comprehension. I’ve listed out some of the key things that happened this chapter below. If people want a more abbreviated or more detailed summary for next week, please let me know!

CHAPTER 1 SUMMARY (SPOILERS) Chapter 1 starts by setting the scene. We're told that somewhere in a deep forest, sandwiched between some rolling hills, is a small village, that at first glance seems completely normal. However, if you take a closer look, you'll notice things that you wouldn't find in a normal village. For example, bells hanging on tall trees that sometimes ring even when there's no wind.

Next, we move to a description of Kiki’s house which is in the east outskirts of town. We are told it is a single-storied house with a sign outside advertising cold medicines, with a large garden growing various strange plants. In the living room, instead of paintings or photos, there are two broomsticks hanging. We hear a short argument between Kiki and her parents. Her mother (a witch) is asking Kiki if she’s decided on when she’s going to depart, and Kiki and her dad (a normal human) avoid answering.

We then learn a little bit more what they’re talking about. Apparently, it’s standard for girls born to a human and a witch to decided when they’re 10 years old whether they want to become a witch or not. If they do, they’re taught magic by their mother until they turn 13 years old. Then, during their 13th year, they must pick a night with a full moon and venture out into the world to practice magic in a town or village without another witch.

In the case of Kiki, when she was 10, she started learning two types of magic from her mother:

  1. How to grow medicinal herbs and make medicines (which Kiki doesn’t appear suited for and, no matter what, is unable to master).
  2. How to fly a broomstick.

However, while Kiki is very good at riding a broomstick, she is easily distracted and has had incidents where she’s crashed her broom. To avoid this, her mother placed bells in the trees around town to help Kiki keep her focus while flying.

Somewhat worryingly, we also learn that magic has slowly been disappearing, and more and more witches are unable to do as many types of magic as they could in the past.

Finally, we learn a bit about familiars and how it is tradition for witches to have a black cat as a companion, at least until they get married and go their separate ways. In the case of Kiki, she was raised with a small black cat named Jiji.

Hope everyone is enjoying the book so far!

9 Likes
#18

Okay I have done my required reading for the week! \o/ (Do I get a free pass out of jail…?)

Like some of the others mentioned, I was a bit thrown off by how much vocab is in hiragana (especially compared to my other read at the moment, which is a lot more difficult and kanji-filled), but after reading the summary I was pleased to find I’d more or less picked everything up. :slight_smile:

8 Likes
#19

Read the chapter last night and like others, the lack of kanji did slow me down a bit, I read about 1000 characters per hour slower than my average for 告白. I remember there being one part where I wasn’t quite sure what a word or particle or something meant, gonna have to skim back through and find it because I forgot to note it. (I think I might’ve accidentally posted this as a reply to the person above me, so sorry for the ping if so.)

3 Likes
#20

I am pleasantly surprised so far :slight_smile: Because of all the Hiragana the Migaku Reader Comprehension Score was lower than in reality. Although I did translate some sentences and my own comprehension was way off :joy: it’s my second book tho so it’s okay

2 Likes