ナナブンノイチ One in Seven
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☆☆
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Seems to be a tale about a band of fraudsters / con artists planning an operation - with some double crossing intrigue going on between the members. Don’t know for sure about this book, but in general the author is known for having a comic style to his writing.
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赤い悪夢 (5分後に意外な結末)
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☆☆
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An anthology of short stories that are in the horror/mystery/SF genre. They are generaly suppose to take 5 minutes to read for a native Japanese person. This is the blurb from Amazon Japan:
SF、ホラー、ミステリー。くすっと笑える話、ぞっとする話、感動する話。ページにして数ページ、5分程度の時間で読めて、最後に「あっと驚くドンデン返し」。そんなショートショートを集めたアンソロジー。、朝読にも最適な一冊
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ドアD Door D
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☆☆
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Yuna and her 7 university tennis club friends were kidnapped and woke up in an unknown room. With only one locked door, and water filling into the room fast, they must figure out a way to escape before they all drown.
There’s a lever that opens the door. But it only holds the door open while pulled. One person will have to remain.
And this is just the start. Through a series of death trap rooms, and chances of survival slim, each other’s humanity will be tested. Will the group make it out alive? Will anyone make it out alive? And what awaits upon getting through the final door?
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秋の牢獄 Autumn Prison
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☆☆
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We all have thought at one point what it would be like to live the same day over and over again. The possibilities, the ramifications, the fear, Bill Murray… Ai has just stepped into that world. She has entered into repeats of a fine Autumn day. Every day resets at exactly 11:30PM, where she wakes up the same day.
It doesn’t take Ai much time to give up hope, as she sits in utter loneliness on a bench at her university. The bench she’s sat at for the past 25 repeats in a row.
Until something new happens. Ryuichi approaches her and tells her to come with him to a meeting place in the park. There he introduces himself and others to her. They are “Replayers,” and she is not alone. A group of 20+ Replayers gather every day at the park, to share in the experience. Some have been replaying for only a few days. Others have been there for hundreds.
Replayers start disappearing. It could just be that they decided to leave the group, but the appearance of a wandering white figure, referred to them as the “White Nobleman” starts to trouble them. All the Replayers have seen his appearance as he wanders around the city. His mysterious, ghost like figure is only visible to them.
What is his identity, and is he behind these possible disappearances? More importantly though, is there any way out of this repetitive cycle?
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ネガティブハッピー・チェーンソーエッヂ Negative Happy Chainsaw Edge
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This is by the same author as Welcome to the NHK and seems to contain some similar themes. However, it has a Kindle edition and is aimed at a youth audience so ought not to feature some of the more questionable content some people were worried about.
Story is about a high school boy who is riding home on his bike one day and comes across a girl fighting a man wielding a chainsaw. From what I can understand this is not really explained and is more a representation of the boy’s desire to find someone to ‘save’. The two team up and form a bond while the girl continues her nightly fights.
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アフターダーク After Dark
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Murakami’s shortest and probably easiest to read work. Set over the course of a single night and the first (I believe) of his novels not to be written from a first-person 僕 perspective, this centres on two sisters - one asleep in a mysterious room and viewed through a camera, the other out and about in Tokyo where she encounters various unusual characters including a jazz musician and a love hotel manager.
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Classics Club
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Oreki Houtarou is a self-proclaimed “energy-saver”—that is, he refuses to actively waste energy doing things that aren’t necessary. Though he had no interest whatsoever in participating in any clubs upon entering Kamiyama High School, he was commanded by his older sister, Tomoe, to join the club she was once a part of, the Classics Club, as it was in danger of being abolished due to its nonexistent member count. Together with his old friends Fukube Satoshi and Ibara Mayaka, as well as with the elegantly ladylike and curiously inquisitive Chitanda Eru, the newly reformed Classics Club ends up finding themselves involved in all sorts of mystery-solving escapades. Houtarou quickly learns that life in the Classics Club, just as Tomoe had promised, would be an interesting one indeed. And so begins the “Classics Club Series”.
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キノの旅
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Kino wanders around the world on the back of Hermes, her unusual, anthropomorphic motorcycle, and discovers that the world’s imperfections hold its true beauty.
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Amazon
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はたらく魔王さま
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Do you want fries with your hellfire?
Being soundly thrashed by the hero Emilia, the Devil King and his general beat a hasty retreat to a parallel universe…only to land smack in the middle of bustling, modern-day Tokyo! Lacking the magic necessary to return home, the two are forced to assume human identities and live average human lives until they can find a better solution. And to make ends meet, Satan finds gainful employment at a nearby fast food joint! With his devilish mind set on working his way up the management food chain, what will become of his thirst for conquest?!
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ほしのこえ
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In this timeless, interstellar love story, the power of love must conquer the distance of outer space. Rated for teens.
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魔女の宅急便
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Kiki is a resourceful, spunky girl who follows her maternal tradition to be a witch. She possesses only one gift of witchcraft – the power to fly. Like all young witches, she sets out at age 12 to find a town of her own. With her ever-present companion Jiji – a cynical and faithful black cat – Kiki departs on her broomstick and arrives at a big town near the ocean. Though nervous at first, she soon sets up a business delivering packages.
Kiki meets all kinds of people and has many adventures. She befriends the thief who stole her broomstick and saves the town’s traditional New Year’s marathon with some courageous and timely flying.
Throughout, Kiki’s confidence and self-awareness grows as she learns to value her unique talents. And with Kiki’s help, the townspeople realize that everyone has some magic that gives them their own special character and vitality.
This is a charming and delightful tale that is reminiscent of children’s favorites The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy and Astrid Lindgren’s Adventures of Pippi Longstocking. Black and white line drawings sprinkled throughout reveal the humor and warmth in everything Kiki does.
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君の名は
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Mitsuha, a high school girl living in a small town in the mountains, has a dream that she’s a boy living in Tokyo. Taki, a high school boy in Tokyo, dreams he’s a girl living in a quaint little mountain town. Sharing bodies, relationships, and lives, the two become inextricably interwoven–but are any connections truly inseverable in the grand tapestry of fate?
Written by director MAKOTO SHINKAI during the production of the film by the same title, your name. is in turns funny, heartwarming, and heart-wrenching as it follows the struggles of two young people determined to hold on to one another.
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怒り
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A grisly unsolved murder links three seemingly unrelated people in three different Japanese cities.
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クリムゾンの迷宮
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From a rising new star of horror comes a killer read that will make you lose track of time and reality. The Crimson Labyrinth is a wicked satire on extremist reality TV in the tradition of The Running Man-if that indeed is what it is. Welcome to THE MARS LABYRINTH where things aren’t what they seem. Welcome to the world of Kishi, where the plot is as gnarly as the humor is twisted.
When an unemployed former math major wakes up one day, he wonders if he’s somehow ended up on the red planet. The good-looking young woman with aid-she says her name is Ai and that she draws erotic comics for a living-seems to have no clue either as to their whereabouts. Their only leads are cryptic instructions beamed to a portable device. Has the game begun?
There is no reset button, no saving and no continue-make the wrong move and it’s really GAME OVER. In the cruel world of THE MARS LABYRINTH, mercy and compassion are only for the weak or the very, very strong. The stakes are nothing less than your life-and apparently a lot of money.
If you’re a fan of Lost or Battle Royale, don’t miss this one
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やはり俺の青春ラブコメはまちがっている
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Hachiman Hikigaya is a cynic. “Youth” is a crock, he believes–a sucker’s game, an illusion woven from failure and hypocrisy. But when he turns in an essay for a school assignment espousing this view, he’s sentenced to work in the Service Club, an organization dedicated to helping students with problems in their lives! How will Hachiman the Cynic cope with a job that requires–gasp!–optimism?
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時をかける少女
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One of Tsutsui’s best-known and most popular works in his native Japan, The Girl Who Leapt through Time is the story of fifteen-year-old schoolgirl Kazuko, who accidentally discovers that she can leap back and forth in time. In her quest to uncover the identity of the mysterious figure that she believes to be responsible for her paranormal abilities, she’ll have to push the boundaries of space and time, and challenge the notions of dream and reality.
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