First book club. This shall be fun!
4 Likes
Unfortunately, I’ll pass on this one. The price is just too high considering the amount of other material I could be reading for free or cheap. I’ll just continue reading the next couple volumes of Happiness. Hope you all enjoy though!
4 Likes
I’m going to take part. I’ll probably be level 9 or 10 by the time May 14th comes around. It’ll be my first time in the book club.
6 Likes
That is true. If I order on Thursday evening the books will usually arrive on Monday morning. That’s fast. Meanwhile on of my national parcels got lost (yet) again…
Don’t know if I will join. It sounds interesting and I voted for it, because I didn’t realize it isn’t available online…. But I just ordered stuff about two weeks ago.
5 Likes
My book just arrived. Looking pretty cool.
7 Likes
Yup, same. I ordered the prefecture book along with other stuff Thursday afternoon (so early Friday in Japan’s time) and it’s arrived in Germany today, so it’ll most likely get delivered tomorrow 
Looking forward to it!
6 Likes
I doubt I’ll be able to join this one, even though it sounds very interesting. Sadly, shipping can get terribly expensive to Latin America, so no ebook is a bummer for me 
. I’m a bit behind on Happiness so I’ll probably still be reading that haha.
3 Likes
It looks very cute!
Kinokunia Australia is out of stock though, not sure it’s worth me placing an order from Amazon Japan unless I can think of a few more things I want.
I’ll follow along because I am interested in what the Tottori page is going to say! I used to live in Tottori and in fact I am using my Tottori Kitty mug right now. I imagine it will involve sand dunes, and nashi. I’d love to see an image of that page when you get to it.
3 Likes
Send Kinokuniya an e-mail. That’s what I did. The Japanese department can apparently do orders that the website can’t. (Added bonus: Kinokuniya will probably be perplexed by the sudden interest in this book. WaniKani book clubs shaping the Japanese book industry again!)
I’m interested in seeing how many prefectures I’ve been to will have locations featured that I’ve actually visited. (My bet for Tottori: either the sand dunes or the dinosaur museum.)
9 Likes
My copy’s at home otherwise I’d check now, but many of the stories seem to be about intangible culture from those areas, such as myths, dances, and traditional methods of doing things.
3 Likes
Aye, I just noticed the contents page is listed in the OP. A lot of them are fruits too.
2 Likes
Do you think they might produce an ebook in time for the book club (the publishers, not kinokuniya) if they become aware of the sudden increase in interest? 
I’d definitely read it in ebook form, but shipping costs, and more importantly lack of space, won’t allow me to get any more paper books in good conscience.
6 Likes
While this does seem like it’ll be a big book club (50-70 people and counting), is that really a significant number to encourage an ebook? I genuinely don’t know the normal numbers for these things, but it doesn’t seem like a big number to me.
3 Likes
There have been several occasions when a new print run of a book or manga has come quite soon after we pick it for a book club book in WaniKani (which is definitely causation and not merely correlation), so why not an e-book? I mean, to be fair, I’ve never seen that happen, but there’s always a first time.
5 Likes
And not just confirmation bias lol? I think it’d be cool if it happens, I just feel like 50 copies isn’t a lot in the grand scheme of things, but I just don’t know how the numbers work for these sort of things.
3 Likes
I don’t think anyone comes to WK and counts book club members. But it’s possible they notice a sudden spike in sales and act accordingly. That said, no, I don’t think they’ll go to the trouble to produce an ebook because of a sudden increase in sales. And in any case, for some reason children’s books don’t seem to be digitally available outside of Japan most of the time (judging from Bookwalker here, Amazon doesn’t seem to sell any digital content outside Japan), when manga, light novels and novels are available to all.
2 Likes
The “50 copies isn’t a lot” means “it wouldn’t really be all that big a spike in sales”. 
3 Likes
I get that, but for older volumes, a sudden spike (even of a few copies) in a short time might indicate a starting trend to them (which then dies down because book clubs are not that big, and sales are concentrated in a short period of time around a bookclub’s starting date). Just wishful thinking on my part, don’t mind me
2 Likes
I completely to your wishful thinking 
Especially since I ordered this book on CD Japan Friday (and just happened to order 9 other things at the same time… Greedy greedy 
), and Saturday I received notice that this particular book wasn’t ready for my order for another 1-3 weeks 
Still hope to get it on time though.
3 Likes
Send Kinokuniya an e-mail. That’s what I did. The Japanese department can apparently do orders that the website can’t. (Added bonus: Kinokuniya will probably be perplexed by the sudden interest in this book. WaniKani book clubs shaping the Japanese book industry again!)
Edit: Sorry, the above para is from Belthazar
Thanks for the tip, I should have read the whole thread first, but this is good to know for next time.
I ordered from CD Japan and hopefully 5 weeks will be long enough for it to get to me in Sydney.
Expensive but worth it to take my first dive into the book club. Looking forward to it.
6 Likes