青山美智子is currently my favourite writer. I have read all her books in translated version available I could get my hands on. Now my first time reading her book in Japanese and I really really like it. Next time when I am in Japan I will buy all her books in Japanese.
I really like the cover and title of that book! What is it about? And what are some things you like about the author’s books in general?
Her novels I read so far (7 including this one) usually happened surrounding one central point (a cafe, a library, a fortune telling cat, a mysterious information desk, etc) and it’s the stories of different ordinary people (the problems they are facing and how they deal with them).
The characters would appear and reappear in each other’s stories. One story finished and the next unfold it’s like a relay; it could the same character reappeared from another book so it told you a little about what happened to that character a few years later. But all the stories happened independently so you don’t need to read book A in order to understand book B. But you read book A you found 1 or 2 characters you already know from book B it’s quite fascinating.
This book’s about the stories of people listening to the same podcast. I teared up I think 3 or 4 times reading this book because you got to know the characters like it actually happened in real life not far away from you. This book happened to have one character I felt very deeply from another book which made me very happy.
I found her books very easy to ready (both translated version and in Japanese) and you know the character’s personality very well very quickly. I also like culturally she includes all ages, all sexes and sexually orientation, different working classes, also so up to date like this one about a podcast etc. I recommended her books to all my book loving friends. So far my favourites ones are 1)『お探し物は図書室まで』; 2) 『鎌倉うずまき案内所』(I had to go to 鎌倉 after reading it) and this one 『月の立つ林で』.
I am not very good at articulating but I hope you got the idea.
Looking through this thread is dangerous because it makes me want to spend way too much money… 
Here’s my collection of manga.
And my textbooks. I finished the３ 総まとめ textbooks, but I was in the middle of the N2完全マスター読解 and 文法 books and never finished them. I should really do that at some point, but they’re still kinda brutal for me so I’ve been procrastinating. 
And these came in the mail just a couple days ago! A good start to what will probably become a much larger Jojo collection over time. I want to collect all of Golden Wind too, but I can’t justify spending much more rn since I just got these. Someday, though. Someday… 
Nyoho, beautiful collection 
Kind of proud of myself for being able to finish this. I have read historical manga before but it was always a bit tiring…but this time I was able to read the whole thing at pretty much normal speed…which even surprised myself.
As for the actual story, there are better historical samurai mangas out there, but the art is truly outstanding.
Picked up a couple interesting books at a local (American) used book store:
The first book is basically a choose-your-own adventure set in 199X, where you lead the US military in a theoretical WW3 against the Soviet Union. It was published in 1985 and seems to start with a bunch of background information about ICBMs and defense systems (and based on the cover… lasers!). Also, it’s bound western-style (i.e. spine on the left) and has horizontal text.
The second book is one of those manga-style history books, also from the 80s. I didn’t notice until I got home that it’s book 16 of 20. I can’t wait to be a relative expert in this very specific 15-year period of Japanese history 
These represent a full 50% of the JP books that the store had (and were in the “中国人” section, naturally 
)
My local library has that exact series and volume of history XD I think they’re either missing 5 volumes though or they’re all checked out. I suspect missing though because they also have a newer (edition? series?) set that only had 2 out last I saw.
On the bright side, it looks like it’s one of the more interesting bits – I think that’s Commodore Perry in the back right, which would make it fall of the shogunate/coming of the West.
I saw these at a BookOff and went through a couple, they looked really interesting and informative. The first looks cuter and things get a bit more serious as you go towards the present.
They cover everything, I saw a bit of WWII all with swastikas included IIRC, and then in the same volume you get 9/11
I didn’t buy any of them but it’s interesting to see the take on history that Japan used to create this manga and which events they decided to include.
Maybe they’re in a used bookstore somewhere across the world 
Yeah, it’s the Bakumatsu, so at least I’ll be all set if I ever get around to playing Like a Dragon: Ishin!
That’s not exactly the same - it looks like a different edition or different publisher or something. But either way, they’re meant for kids, so they should be pretty readable. Mine has furigana on everything.
Yeah, yours is 小学館, and that one is from 角川. It looks like 小学館 have put out a revised edition, so your volume is from the older set. The new one goes as far as 平成～令和時代. (Embarrassingly for the publisher, every volume in the new set describes itself as “The Educacitonal Comic of Japanese History” with prominent typo…)
This turns out to be a popular niche – five different manga publishers have all put out a Japanese History series. I found an article comparing them.
Sorry for ghosting you like that! Really had no intention to do so. I can’t believe it’s been 28 days already! D:
These sound like great settings!
And reoccurring characters sound quite fun as well!
Good to know that reading order doesn’t matter.
Thank you for telling me your favourites. These will make a good starting point!
Don’t worry, I think you did a great job of describing the type of vibe these books have! Thank you!
ooh, ok, so I got sucked into a huge rabbit hole and looked into these with your article and amazon.jp reviews. here’s a summary (from earliest to newest in publishing order) for anyone interested.
Summary
小学館版
- single author
- revised 1998 with a new volume in 2018 with the last 30 years.
- Amazon – comes with access to digital edition, and additional materials like study cards, calendar of Japanese history, map and chronological table handbook
学研版
- for younger elementary age kids, more approachable, full color
- includes some study reference booklet
- Amazon – some editions include DVD with animations
KADOKAWA版
- supervised by a single person
- can be read from 3-4th grade level, content reaches further into Junior high level and possibly university level topics
- includes maps and graphics
- smaller size
- more modern perspective
集英社版
- spends more time on modern history (8 of 20 volumes)
- manga itself has less information, it seems more is placed in reference sections at the beginning and end
- Amazon reviews weren’t wild about the manga art
講談社版
- reference section at the beginning
- each period of history supervised by a specialist
- historical figures not portrayed as villains, more nuanced approach
- high school level
The kadokawa edition (no. 3) looks like it has a nice balance of easier writing style with more advanced and modern content.
I am currently visiting Japan for the first time and just couldn’t leave the bookstore without buying something. I joked about needing to buy another carry-on luggage to haul all of the books and games I’ll buy home, but that’s absolutely not a joke anymore…
スーパーの裏でヤニ吸うふたり was of course the first thing that caught my eye. We’ve been reading these in the book club, it only makes sense to also get a physical set… if only to show to other people this series that convinced me I could actually start reading Japanese. I don’t need lookups anymore after preparing the vocabulary sheets. 
The おまけ postcards are actually a really nice touch, I don’t think these are properly available digitally as they are especially for TSUTAYA? The green one is a four-page mini comic that made me laugh out aloud.
Then we have the series that @Book9 recommended to me about an adult slice-of-life setting place in Finland of all places. There was a huge aisle setup with “Tervetuloa Metsapeuraan” catching both of our attention. (I resisted the temptation to correct the ä of metsä.) No way I could leave without these.
And yeah, then I walked across ホリミヤ. I was complaining about the quality of the digital versions here, glad I can now join the club properly with physical media in hand. They had ran out of volume 16, so I’ll be hunting that down still.
There are still a ton of other bookstores to visit, hopefully I can show some restraint in the future.
Perhaps save the souvenir buying for the end of your trip, so you’re not dragging it all everywhere. 
On one or two occasions when I have bought so many books I would have gone over the plane luggage weight limit, I have shipped a box back home by seamail…