Japanese books are awesome. In Germany, we don’t have these neat protective covers that are wrapped around nearly every book you can buy in Japan. The paper always feels silky soft and the selection of books (that interests me) is far bigger. If you browse through Japanese book-stores, you get the impression that nothing ever goes out of style in Japan. A small group of people can always warm their hearts for even the most obscure stuff.
Girls with panties on their faces, or girls seductively licking doorknobs? Let’s print books about this. What I miss in Europe, and especially Germany, is the love for obscure things and niche products. Yes we do have TASCHEN as a book publisher and sometimes Rizzoli can do some good, too. But in general, the selection is rather boring and conservative. And that applies to fashion and many other areas as well.
But we were talking about books. It wouldn’t be fair, if I didn’t mention our French neighbors. I’m blessed that the French border is only half an hour away by car and train. Because over there, they still know how to properly offer a nice variety of books. Carefully bound and beautifully printed. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the Comic nation France is a sucker for Japanese mangos, being the second biggest market for these comics. After Japan of course.
But all that book drama is not so bad. Especially when you have a neat Japanese online shop for books, that ships all their stuff for only the actual shipping price overseas. You enter a Japanese address for billing and your actual address for shipping. If you have any problems setting up your account, just drop me a note and I’ll assist you.
Why are Japanese books so small?
This seems like a popular search term on google for this page and why not answer it here, I thought. On my recent trip to Tokyo I talked with my host mother about this and she explained to me that books are more than often available in different sizes. The smallest size is usually bought for reading in trains on your way to work or appointments in general. It’s a handy size which fits in every pocket and helps to kill some time. Most Japanese people have a rather long way they need to travel every morning and even if nowadays everybody seems to play with their cell phones there ones was a time when everybody was reading one of these little books.
