Shoji Morimoto's memoir Rental Person Who Does Nothing (translated by Don Knotting) is fascinating to me. He accepts requests, for expenses but no pay, to accompany a person to sign divorce papers or drink a frappucino or attend a concert or just observe them at work. He gives no advice and, of course, does no work! #amreading#books#nonfiction#memoir#writers#translation#work#Japan#JapaneseLiterature
The fourth novel in the internationally bestselling Before the Coffee Gets Cold Series
The regulars at the magical Café Funiculi Funicula are well acquainted with its famous legend and extraordinary time-travel offer. Many patrons have reunited with old flames, made amends with estranged family and visited loved ones. But the journey is not without risks, and there are rules to follow.
In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time...
A Woman’s Autobiographical Text From Tenth-Century Japan
Japan is the only country in the world where women writers laid the foundations of classical literature. The Kagerō Diary commands our attention as the first extant work of that rich and brilliant tradition.
15 sen for the curry rice - before the war, the sen was 1/100th of a yen. and the yen was worth dramatically more than it is now, it was much akin to a dollar, domesticallly in Japan, as opposed to like a penny
Anyway for some interesting and easily available in English looks at early 20th century Japan from the inside, I strongly recommend Yukio Mishima's Sea of Fertility series, particularly Spring Snow most in the general timeframe of this film.
(The second, Runaway Horses is for me the best of the set though. And the one that follows is the least, but it does set up the final novel in the series which ... isn't as even-keeled a novel as Runaway Horses but the ending that caps off the entire series is stunning.)