books – Page 3 – Diary of a Norwegian in Japan

The end of summer

I hear the cicadas less and less. The continous noise that was summer is starting to quiet down, becoming a distant memory. While it is still too hot for my liking and to be called autumn, we will get there.

I am over the moon excited for autumn. I can wear all my favorite pieces again, and the new pieces I bought. I got a new dress for autumn, a brown flannel one, and then I got a white leather belt to go with it. And to be able to wear my beloved boots; bliss.

Japan seems to have a new flavour at starbucks every month, but I have yet to see the infamous pumpkin spice latte. While I have nothing against sweet potato frappuchinos and chestnut lattes, I’d like to get one with pumpkin spice once in a while too.

I am most excited about seeing the 紅葉　(momiji) ; the autumn foliage. Watching the leaves turn from green to yellow, orange, red. Breathtaking. I’d like to be able to take Darjeeling out for a walk too, to see her play with the leaves. Such a precious image.

I want to light a candle, bake cakes, take a bath with bath salts. Have the whole apartment smell of cinnamon and chai. And read books, mostly classics. Autumn is not the time for light contemporary books (in my personal opinion). The image in my mind is of cold evenings spent wrapped up in a blanket with a cat on your lap, a hot chocolate or milk tea in one hand, and a classic like Pride and Prejudice or Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights in your other hand. Maybe I’ll do the Japanese Little Women this autumn, it fits my requirement of being a classic AND it will give my Japanese some practice.

What things come to mind when you think of autumn?

a lost article of “Saki”

I found what I believe is the most “me”-cover I have ever seen and so I consequently had to buy this novel.

Feast your eyes upon this:

It has a book, tea, pancakes, a deer, plants, flowers, sugar… all the things I love. As usual I don’t know what it is about, but with a beautiful cover and an interesting title, you know as well as I do that I am compelled to get it (*hoarding intensifies*)

I love the simplicity of the book underneath the cover, nothing fancy but yet beautiful. Also that they decided to put the title in English!

Maybe I should rename my blog to “Me gushing about beautiful Japanese books that I find”

Upon closer inspection I realize that it is not a full length novel but actually a short story collection. I find myself a bit disappointed but that is life. The cover is still beautiful and I am hopeful that all the stories will delight me, especially the title story 「サキの忘れ物」

Japanese hardcover of Little Women aka one of the most beautiful Japanese books I have seen so far

I intended for this blog to be a place of writing, but some times words don’t cut it.

For instance; in the event that you find a beautiful Japanese hardcover of Little Women

If you think I was able to leave it at the bookstore you are sorely mistaken. I might have deprived a Japanese person of the wonder of Little Women and for that I am sorry, but this book was meant to go home with me.

After Kuri’s post on book covers in Japan you might wonder why I have one, but it was solely to protect this beauty until we got home.

Not once, but twice I was soaked to the bone getting off the bus and being caught in a torrential downpour before I was back home safe and sound with my copy still untarnished

I am in love with the cover, even the back of the book has a dear little illustration!

I want to dive into this at once, at the same time as I am apprehensive regarding whether I will be able to read it in a satisfactory manner. Considering the age of this work I am afraid that they might use older words and phrases with which I will not be familiar with.

The glorious index page featuring all the sisters at work

There are also numerous little illustrations throughout!

From the little front flap:

メグ、ジョー、ベス、エイミー。
世界でもっとも愛されている四姉妹のかけがえがない、
しあわせな日々へようこそ。
Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy. Welcome to the joyful days of the irreplaceable and most beloved four sisters in the world.

But since it is a book for readers both young and old, there seems to be plenty of furigana for the younger ones (or for us struggling foreigners, I thank thee) so it might not be too bad, and as I am more than familiar with the plot I do believe that I might not get too lost after all.

I am unable to get over how pretty this is.

I will probably update on the progress of reading it, but I make no promises on when that will be. For now, just enjoy the beauty of it.

Tsundoku

I have gotten better at not doing tsundoku. When I was younger I amassed hundreds of books but didn’t read them all. And even if I didn’t even plan on reading a book, I could not let go of it. That would be sacrilegious. It didn’t help that when I was studying at university, there was a £2 bookshop where every book was only £2. I dragged suitcases of books back home.

Enter the year 2016, I have finished university, and am planning on moving abroad (again). I’d read Marie Kondo’s book and cleaned out as best as I could the little room I was staying in. Now it was time to tackle my room at home.

I piled all my books on the bed.

(Not all, had already done a pre-konmari during a vacation so there was about 90 books atop my closet at the time)

I went from 304 to 124. It took a lot to get to that number. But it is as they say, the more you do it, the easier it gets. Last time I was home I got rid of even more books and have only about 40 left, but even now I look at the books left and think “I don’t need that one, nor that one…” so I am itching to go back and get rid of more.

Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t stopped loving books. But I just want to surround myself with my favorites, the ones that truly “spark joy”.

When I used to hoard books, I also was very reluctant not to finish a book, it felt wrong somehow. So even when I didn’t really like it, I had to stick it out. And then of course, not get rid of it, stick it back on the shelf so I would have to look at it every day. And my tsundoku pile (or mountain more like) would never get smaller. The pile would haunt me, taunt me. I would feel bad, stress would pile on and it was frankly, tiring.

Now I am more comfortable to not finish a book if I find that I am just not that into it, and even to get rid of it (not throwing it in the trash of course).

Thus, my books don’t pile up anymore in impossible-to-finish piles. I might buy many books in a short amount of time, but I won’t get suffocated by the unread amount.

I guess it also helps that I am living in Japan where Japanese books are cheap (to me) but they take longer to finish so I mostly don’t overbuy, and foreign books are expensive so I won’t buy one unless I truly want it on my shelf.

This went on a long tangent it feels like. And my tsundoku pile isn’t getting smaller by going on tangents so I better get back to reading.

52-hertz whales 「52ヘルツのクジラたち」

I picked this up at the nearby Tsutaya, where they were having a summery display, but while this book is blue, fitting with the summery theme, it is anything but a light beach read.

What drew me to it was the cute cover and the interesting title. I bought it not knowing what it was about. It said something about a lonely whale on the cover, but quickly flipping through I deduced it would not be about a whale but actual people so I bought it.

Coming home I googled “52-hertz whale” and found out it is an actual whale. A whale of an unidentified species that calls at 52 hertz, while other whales call at around 10-30 hertz, so no one can hear its call and it remains alone. From this you might think that the book will be about lonely people and it was.

While not a very happy story throughout, you keep reading. You get invested. You want them to be happy, to find happiness. Not a light read or as easy-going as for example 「麦本三歩の好きなもの」but nonetheless a captivating read. I only cried once, I swear.

Neither we, nor the locals in the book, know much about her. It took me twenty pages to figure out her name. It is Kiko. But, her friends call her Kinako, the few she has at least. The opening line is:

明日の天気を訊くような軽い感じで、風俗やってたの？と言われた。
“So did you do sex work? I was told as lightly as if asking about tomorrow’s weather.”

She is having some work done to the house she just moved to, a house out in a small town where gossip is the local currency amongst the grandmas. We see that she is not very friendly, I wouldn’t go as far as to call her unfriendly, but she keeps to herself. And she might be harboring a lot of stress or anger or both. She wants to be left alone, to live quietly by herself. She thinks of someone called An, and we get the feeling they were close but something happened and she is torn up about it. Maybe that’s the reason she came to this place, to escape.

There is a sense of tragedy, that something terrible has occured, but the book keeps you in the dark, keeps you guessing. That is not to say it is all doom and gloom, you have some little sparkles here and there but the overall feeling is sad, lonely, searching for something.

While I loved the book and gave it 5 stars on goodreads, it can be quite a heavy book, emotionally, and so be warned.

A thing I learned from this book was about an old hiragana for ‘e’. It looks like this: ゑ

One of the character’s name is さちゑ. Since it looked like る, or looked like it was in there, I thought it was an old way to write “ru” or maybe a kanji for “ru”. I posted on my instagram story with “what the f is this?? A kanji?” (I know, my language is very lady-like), and kept reading her name as Sachiru.

Two people (a coworker and “my” japanese mom whom is actually my friend’s mom) were nice enough to school me in the history of old hiragana. So I learned that her name is not Sachiru but actually Sachie. The only reason I can think of for the author using this old-ass hiragana for that character’s name is only the fact that she (the character) is an old lady. Maybe there are other reasons, however they are not apparent to me.

I’m a book flasher

Early Friday morning, standing on the train on the way to work with a mocha in one hand and my phone in the other.

Looking around the train I spot someone reading a book, the same book that I’m also currently reading, but not at that exact moment of course as my hands are occupied and I am trying my best to remain standing. (The book was 店長がバカすぎて)

I want to reach out, tell that person that ‘hey, I’m reading that too!’, maybe we could talk about it. If I could’ve sat opposite them, whip out the same book, flash it around, then maybe our eyes would meet, recognition, maybe share a smile and a nod.

But as it is not possible on this packed train, I tweet about it and continue looking out the window and the scenery rushing by, disappointed that life is not like in the stories we read.

A sip of my mocha and time to get off the train, never to see that person again.

At least I still have my book.

The boss is too stupid (to function)

This is a Japanese novel I picked up on a day where I was pissed at my job and my company and the title caught my eye and resonated with my feelings so much that I had to get it.

The narrator is 28, works in a bookstore and starts the book with

いつも通りの長い長い店長の話に、いつもよりはるかに苛立っているのに気がついて、私は生理が近いことを思い出した。

Loosely translated (by me) to:

“The boss goes on and on as always and I notice that I am more annoyed than usual which reminds me my period is close.”

Which might have described me perfectly that day. It’s very relatable throughout and as an avid reader I loved to see the daily life at the bookstore. Seeing the interactions between the employees and the customers and how they are when their shift ends and they go home.

Each chapter deals with one thing that is stupid so it goes like:

1: The boss is stupid
2: Writers are stupid
3: The company president is stupid
4: The sales department is stupid
5: God is stupid (or gods as in customers are stupid)
6: In the end, I am stupid

You can feel the characters coming to life in this book. They are all real, flawed, human beings. No too perfect people here.

While it is not a mystery novel, it has a teeny tiny mystery towards the end which makes you want to read faster to get to the bottom of it. I was ready to throw the whole book out the window, but was luckily spared having to do that.

I really liked chapter 5, “God is stupid”, except it is not the god we would naturally think about. In English we say, “the customer is always right”, while in Japanese they say “the customer is God”. The different customers (gods) we meet in this chapter reminded me of my own time working in a couple of bookstores and the kind of people that would frequent them. Not all are bad, but not all are good either. As I do not necessarily believe the customer is always right, nor that they are gods, I believe I am not suited for a job dealing with customers, though I would love to work with books, either in the publishing industry, a bookstore, or maybe a library.

I really hope this gets translated so that more people can get the joy of reading this book. I loved every twist and turn and the little daily happenings that make up our lives.

Maybe I have to set out to translate it myself?

Will definitely recommend this book to everyone who loves books, daily life stories, maybe a bit pessimistic and easily annoyed people, and almost a surreal mystery springing forth between the pages.

Summer reading

For me, summer meant summer vacation, (we had two whole months), which meant lots of time for reading. Sitting outside in the garden or on a friend’s veranda or at the beach with a book in my hand enjoying life.

Now that I am working here in Japan I effectively have no summer vacation, but I have noticed that my appetite for reading has gone up considerably the last month and I am finishing books at an almost alarming rate (I am not complaining though).

Here in Japan it is mostly autumn that is closely associated with reading. They say 読書の秋 (dokusho no aki) which means something like “the autumn of reading”. They actually have this thing called 〇〇の秋 where you input a two-kanji compound word to reflect what autumn is about to you. So another popular one is 食欲の秋(shokuyoku no aki) which is “autumn appetite” as autumn vegetables are so delicious here so people spend a lot of the autumn just eating (and reading).

Anyways, for me it’s summer, so I guess it’d be 読書の夏　(dokusho no natsu) instead.

Because it hates me

Why isn’t the bus on time? Why can’t I find my pen? Why did my pansies have to get killed by aphids? The answer is; because they hate me. The bus hates me. The pen hates me. The aphids hate me.

I find myself thinking about this quote from the Dark Tower series by Stephen King a lot. I can’t remember which book, but it is after the fourth, I haven’t read longer than the fourth book in quite a few years as the fourth is my favorite, and the quote hasn’t come up at those times so either in the fifth, sixth or seventh book.
It isn’t anyhting deep in any way or if I remember correctly (which I surely don’t) significant to the plot even, but almost daily I have this quote appear in my mind.

So someone asks Roland, the main character, why the fire won’t catch, or why the wood won’t burn or something along those lines and Roland replies so matter-of-factly, that it is “because it hates us”.
As in, the fire hates them personally and thus is refusing to burn. And in the series, yes, it made sense, because it’s quite surreal at times, but that line has stuck with me for so many years. Out of 7 books, some pretty hefty ones, this is the only quote I remember. And I don’t even remember the context or what the situation was.

Anyway, somehow this reason always come up whenever something happens. Why is the wind so strong today making biking harder than it has to be? Because the wind hates me. Why did the opener tab thing on the can of peaches fall off? Because it hates me and doesn’t want me to eat the peaches. Why is it raining when I wanted to go to the park? Because it hates me. Obviously.

It’s so silly. Such a ridiculous reason for anything to ever happen, but it makes me laugh, and makes it easier to brush off these small, insignifiant obstacles that sometimes tries to throw you off in your daily life.

So live, laugh, love, pray, eat, all of that and remember; if something bad happens, it’s only because it hates you, so no use worrying about it.