Lilisin in 2015

Hello again everyone and welcome to a new year - 2015!
This year is going to be interesting for me and very exciting as I'm finally pursuing my dream of moving to and working in Japan. Starting February I will be doing chemistry in Tokyo! Due to this, however, I have no idea what my reading is going to look like this year but it'll be fun to find out.

Also, to Japan I'm only bringing what can fit in my suitcase so I can only bring so many books with me thus meaning I get to start my TBR pile from basically zero. I'm excited to see if I can be good and smart about my TBR pile this time around. (Or not. :P)

So far in 2015:
1) Hiroo Onoda : No Surrender
2) Charles Dickens : Great Expectations
3) Amelie Nothomb : Une Forme de Vie (Life Form)
4) Akira Yoshimura : Un spécimen transparent : Suivi de Voyage vers les étoiles
5) Otsuichi : GOTH 夜の章
6）Zola : Pot-Bouille

Books read in 2014:
1) Akira Yoshimura : La jeune fille suppliciee sur une etagere
2) Shizuko Natsuki : La promesse de l'ombre (The Third Lady)
3) Thomas Mann : La Mort a Venise (Death in Venice)
4) Kobo Abe : The Kangaroo Notebook
5) Elizabeth Eaves : Wanderlust *nonfiction
6) Seicho Matsumoto : Le vase de sable (Inspector Imanishi Investigates)
7) Takeshi Kaiko : Into a Black Sun
8) Ayako Miura : Lady Gracia: A Samurai Wife's Love, Strife and Faith
9) Jonathan D. Spence : The Death of Woman Wang *nonfiction
10) Fyodor Dostoevsky : The Idiot
11) 乙一 : ZOO2
12) Osamu Dazai : Soleil couchant (The Setting Sun)
13) Michael Emmerich : Read Real Japanese Fiction
14) Jeff Backhaus : Hikikomori and the Rental Sister
15) Emile Zola : Le ventre de Paris (The Belly of Paris)
16) Marguerite Duras : L'amant de la Chine du Nord (The North China Lover)
17) Nagai Kafu : Rivalry: A Geisha's Tale
18) Amelie Nothomb : Le voyage d'hiver (Winter Voyage)
19) Akira Yoshimura : On Parole
20) Donald Richie : The Inland Sea *nonfiction
21) Bi Feiyu : De la barbe à papa un jour de pluie (Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day)
22) Antoine de Saint-Exupery : Vol de Nuit (Night Flight)
23) Erich Maria Remarque : L'ile d'espérance (A Time to Love and a Time to Die)
24) Emile Zola : Therese Raquin
25) Natsuo Kirino : Out
26) Iris Chang : The Rape of Nanking *nonfiction
27) Ryu Murakami : From the Fatherland, with Love

Fiction: 23 / Nonfiction: 4
Male : 20 / Female: 7
Languages read: English x13 / French x12 / Japanese x2

Nationality of fiction authors:
Japan x13 / France x4 / Germany x2 / Belgium / USA / China / Russia

Random bits of data from 2015!

Books acquired:
1) Jules Verne : Voyage au centre de la terre
2) Jules Verne : Vingt mille lieues sous les mers
3) Ayako Miura : Au col du mont Shiokari
4) Akira Yoshimura : Un spécimen transparent : Suivi de Voyage vers les étoiles
5) Akira Yoshimura : Le convoi de l'eau
6) Patrick Modiano : Dora Bruder
7) 川上弘美 : センセイの鞄
8) 乙一 : Goth

LT age of books read:
2015 x2
2014
2012
2011
2010

Since I'm moving to Japan at the end of this month and I'm only supposed to bring what I can fit in my suitcases, I wasn't supposed to get any books in France. But I really couldn't resist as French bookstores just have the power of making me want to read ALL the Books, ALL the Time! So I ended up coming home with the following:

1) Akira Mizubayashi : Une langue venue dailleurs
2) René Fregni : Tu tomberas avec la nuit
3) Victor Hugo : Han d'Islande
4) Jules Verne : Voyage au centre de la terre
5) Jules Verne : Vingt mille lieues sous les mers
6) Ayako Miura : Au col du mont Shiokari
7) Akira Yoshimura : Un spécimen transparent : Suivi de Voyage vers les étoiles
8) Akira Yoshimura : Le convoi de l'eau
9) Patrick Modiano : Dora Bruder

I also acquired a comic based on Hokusai's life as I went to the beautiful expo on Hokusai's work at the Grand Palais. Still not sure what I'm going to do with all these books before I leave since I definitely won't have the time to read them all in my remaining 3 weeks in the US. Having to choose which few books make the trip in my suitcase to Japan is going to be so hard!

Enjoyed your lists (and their challenge to my French!) and looking forward to your reading (and other) adventures in Japan.

>4 lilisin:

That is what shipping is for - pack them in a box and ship them to Japan :) Good luck with the moving!

Great to "see" you again. I had missed your thread some time during 2014. Wonderful news that you are moving to Japan. I'm excited for you.

I'll follow with interest your reading! :)

I'm intrigued by the book you listed as read in 2014 with an non-latin character as an author name. What is it? I've searched LT but couldn't find it. Are these zeroes or capital o's in the title?

Thank you everyone for the greetings and well wishes!

chlorine -
That is a book I read in Japanese. The author's name is 乙一, which is read as Otsuichi. The title is just the word 'zoo' written in capital letters. The number is because the Japanese version breaks the collection of short stories into two volumes.

If you're curious to read the author, I found one of his books translated into French on the FNAC website: Rendez-vous dans le noir, a book I own in Japanese but haven't read yet. Otherwise, the short story collection is translated into English under the title of ZOO.

Thanks for the clarification! :)
My knowledge of Japanyse authors is abysmal, maybe your thread will prompt me to read some this year! :)

1) Hiroo Onoda : No Surrender
Japan
5/5 stars

Amazing. Mindboggling. Confounding. Doesn't answer any of your questions and you remain just as confused as when you first pick up the book but the journey with Mr. Onoda is fascinating.

Last year I read a news article announcing the death of Hiroo Onoda. I had never heard of him before but upon reading his story I knew that I had to know about this interesting character. Onoda is a Japanese soldier who fought in the Philippines at the end of the second world war. However, even when the war ended he did not stop fighting for the Japanese. Basically, he didn't believe that the war had ended and he kept fighting as a guerilla for another thirty years.

How could someone refuse to believe the surrender of their country? How could someone, despite being the last soldier on the island, muster up the courage (is that the word we should be using?) and determination to continue to fight for an additional thirty years. And all this despite flyers being dropped down on the island telling him to come out.

It's really a fascinating story and I could have continued reading about his story. In fact, I would have read the original 2000 page debriefing he gave upon finally surrendering. Unfortunately this book only covers 200+ pages of his life and every page is riveting. You can't stop asking questions but he managed to answer all questions in such a succinct and non-delusional way. Other than the length, another unfortunate thing is that there is no writing about his life post fighting. I want to know about his adjustment to life, his charity work and just everything.

Really, just fascinating. I could read 2000 pages about him, I could write 2000 pages about him and still remain just as mesmerized.

And perhaps my review is more a review of his life and less a review of the book but I know that when I turned the last page, I wanted to start right up again and just couldn't stop churning his life in my mind.

Wow! Quite a story.

>11 lilisin: No Surrender and its author sound fascinating. I'll add this to my wish list.

>11 lilisin: That is quite a story, as Rebecca said.

Congratulations! I look forward so much to following your adventures in reading and in Japan!

2) Amelie Nothomb : Une Forme de Vie
Belgium
3.5/5 stars

Another year, another Nothomb.

This one is about Nothomb and her correspondence with an American soldier. When he states that he is quickly growing obese as a means to cope with the stress of war, she becomes intrigued by his situation.

Her books don't take more than two hours to read and always provide a breath of fresh air. Entering the Nothomb world is like jumping down the rabbit hole as you get taken in, but like all her books lately, as soon as you leave you really don't remember much about the world you just left. So a good read but not as memorable as her works earlier in her career.

And really, I really believe that Nothomb just doesn't know how to write endings to her books because she always leaves them open-ended. (And in Mercure she wrote two endings!) Now, this is can be a great literary device, but when she continues to do it, it makes me question her story telling. She's just full of ideas and I would love to see her take a risk and really flesh out one of them to its fullest.

(My star ratings for Nothomb are based on her body of work, and are not to be compared to other authors.)

----

The English translation of this work gives the title Life Form. I find this to be a really strange translation as that's not what the title means. The title should be A Type of Life, or Another Life as in, another way of living a life. I'd be curious to see the translation of the sentence of the book that contains the title of the book to see if they use the words "life form" in that sentence as well.

I arrived yesterday to Tokyo and today I got the keys to my apartment. (Or rather, my room as I share the rest with roommates.) I somehow managed to lug around two huge suitcases and a bag full of 20 books on my shoulders around the Tokyo subway system without dying and giving up. (So many awkward escalators!) My books got a little tattered unfortunately as the TSA did a check on my suitcases and weren't very good about not making a mess. You might say these are two very good reasons for getting a Kindle or something of the like but I'm still going to suffer through carrying books with me.

As I promised in a previous thread, here is my official in Tokyo TBR!

Books brought with me:
Alexandre Dumas : Vingt Ans apres
Jules Verne : Voyage au centre de la terre
Jules Verne : Vingt mille lieues sous les mers
Alain-Fournier : Le grand Meaulnes
Akira Mizubayashi : Une langue venue dailleurs
René Fregni : Tu tomberas avec la nuit
Francois Mauriac : Le noeud de viperes
Alexandre Dumas : Le meneur de loups
Akira Yoshimura : Un spécimen transparent : Suivi de Voyage vers les étoiles
Ayako Miura : Au col du mont Shiokari
Emile Zola : Pot-bouille
Erich-Maria Remarque : Arc de Triomphe
Honore de Balzac : Le Pere Goriot
Steinbeck : The Grapes of Wrath
Akimitsu Takagi : The Tattoo Murder Case
Kobo Abe : The Ark Sakura
Endo : Scandal
Alan Booth : Looking for the Lost
Shohei Ooka : Taken Captive

Books already waiting for me here:
Kenzaburo Oe : A Quiet Life
Troyat : La tete sur les epaules
Victor Hugo : Quatrevingt-treize
村上 春樹 : 女のいない男たち (His latest short story collection)
久美 沙織 : いつか海に行ったね
遠藤 周作 : 深い河 (Shusaku Endo : Deep River)
乙一 : 暗いところで待ち合わせ
乙一 : ZOO1
吉本 ばなな : ハチ公の最後の恋人 (Banana Yoshimoto)

These are the books I want to try to clear before I start buying a massive amount of books like I have set up in the US.

Good luck and have fun during your adventure in Japan. How long is your commitment, and had you met any of your roommates earlier?

Initial visa is for a year which I plan to continue as I really want to be in Japan. I had no idea who my roommates would be before coming here. I met one tonight (a kindergarten teacher from Dublin) and I think the other one might be hanging outside in the kitchen but I'm too tired to walk out and be sociable right now. Although I need to use the restroom! Oh I will miss the liberty of being able to walk around my old apartment doing whatever I want. I've never had roommates before!

Congrats on your arrival in Tokyo! I can imagine how exhausted you are, and I would struggle with being sociable with roommates at that particular moment as well. :) I remember the wrestling with too much stuff in train stations when my husband and I arrived in Belgium with all our worldly possessions. Of course, there we found out that there weren't any escalators for going down, so that was fun!

>17 lilisin: So many awkward escalators!

At least they seem to always work in Tokyo unlike Paris where they were more likely not to work just when you are lugging a suitcase. :) Have fun in Tokyo... one of those days I will return there for more than a week's business visit.

Yay ! :)

I don't know if it's proper to say welcome to Japan since I'm not there myself, but you get the idea! :)

Hello - and good luck for your time in Japan. (I have a brother who lives in Kyoto with his Japanese wife and their kids. I haven't been able to visit yet, but would love to so much one day...) Welcome to Tokyo!

I also wishlisted Hiroo Onoda's book when I saw his obituary early last year. I'm glad to see your review - which I enjoyed reading very much - confirms that his story is as riveting as I suspected it might be. I will have to really keep an eye out for this one as I think I'll love reading it.

So I'm now starting my second week in Tokyo and everything is going really well. I like my company, my boss, my coworkers, my roommates, my commute, my room, everything. Training at work has been nonstop but my supervisor/coworker/section manager has been fantastic. He has been by my side the entire time giving me very clear instructions and allowing me to really practice. And I'm not sure how I'm managing to understand chemistry in Japanese but apparently at some point I learned enough words somewhere to allow me with not struggling. And with every day that passes, and a nice 9 hour sleep at night to allow my brain to process, it just keeps getting clearer and clearer. Really amazing how that works!

I'm also experiencing my second Tokyo snow. Before I had only ever spent 4 days in the winter in Japan so this is my first prolonged time experiencing the season. It has been cold but most of the days have been really nice and sunny so that is just wonderful. The first day of snow I was even able to make it to a shrine to take a picture before the snow turned into rain (although the picture wasn't that great).

In any case, I'm really happy to have made the leap over the ocean. Also, I was really worried about going back to the lab due to my horrible grad school experience, but it turns out that lab isn't miserable when you don't have labmates who all hate you. Go figure. :P

In any case, I never gave my thoughts on the Dickens I read but I wanted to write a few lines, even if those few lines don't really say much.

---

3) Charles Dickens : Great Expectations
England
4/5 stars

I read A Tale of Two Cities in high school and really enjoyed it but never revisited Dickens after that. I'm not a big fan of England as a whole so that has made me forget about its literature even though I actually do enjoy their writing. In any case, with the winter it just felt like a good time to finally dip back into Dickens writing and I can say I really enjoyed myself.

From the very first pages of the marshes I was immersed and wanted to read more. It really only waned a little bit in the middle but I was still very much involved in the story, which I actually knew nothing about. Apparently Pip is from this story! Anyhow, while the characters are all caricatures they are still interesting to read about in their simplicity and despite the obvious convenient coincidences, Pip's journey from rags to riches to acceptance of the fact that life should made gradually, was really wonderful. And Dickens humor made me smile quite a few times.

In any case, fantastic writing and I will continue to read more. I can't rate Dickens as high as Hugo as Hugo just has a way of sweeping me off my feet, but Dickens is much appreciated.

---

Apologies if my English is wonky at all. Switching over to full on Japanese is doing wonders for my Japanese but creating havoc everywhere else. Things will settle and balance out eventually but it might take a little while longer. Till then I expect lots of spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes and weird I-don't-know-where-that-came-from type mistakes.

I'm glad your first weeks went well and that you are feeling secure in your new life!

Good to hear that your time in Japan is going well and that you're enjoying life.

Very interesting to read your take on Great Expectations - much appreciated.

>26 Polaris-:
Rereading what I wrote I'm not quite sure what my take was but thank you. :)

(I just meant the impression it made on you.)

Nice to hear that Japan is living up to your expectations! (Whether "great" or not!)

I'm currently doing more reading of Japanese food and pottery blogs as I adjust to having to cook a new cuisine. So far it has been really fun but I'm daunted by the amount of things I want to eat (and thus cook) right now. I'm already imagining myself cooking the foods that best suit the season and then pulling out my plates and bowls that best suit the season so as to create a beautiful Japanese meal.

.... so far I've made miso soup. :P

(But it was highly successful! And entirely made from scratch!)

In any case, my reading is currently on the backburner. By the time I pick up the Steinbeck in the evening, I'm about 20 minutes away from falling asleep so haven't been able to log a lot of pages. I've only managed to read one comic so far in February: オレンジ楽園. At least this one was on and off the pile in less than a month. That's what I'm aiming for.

Reposting my review of all Japanese authors and works I have read so I can continue updating it.

Multiple books read by single author:
Kobo Abe : The Woman in the Dunes, The Box Man, The Face of Another, Secret Rendezvous, The Kangaroo Notebook
Yasushi Inoue : La Favorite, Shirobamba, Le paroi de glace, Le fusil de chasse
Yasunari Kawabata : Thousand Cranes, Kyoto
Junichiro Tanizaki : In Praise of Shadows, The Makioka Sisters, Le meurtre d'Otsuya
Kenzaburo Oe : Nip the buds, Shoot the kids, Gibier d'elevage, Hiroshima Notes
Shusaku Endo : La fille que j'ai abandonnee, The Sea and Poison, When I Whistle
Banana Yoshimoto : The Lake, Kitchen, アルゼンチンババア
Seishi Yokomizo : La hache, le koto et le chrysanthème, Le village aux huit tombes
Haruki Murakami : 1Q84, After the Quake, Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche, 色彩を持たない多崎つくると、彼の巡礼の年
Seicho Matsumoto : Tokyo Express, Le vase de sable
Yukio Mishima : La mort en ete, Le marin rejete par la mer, Sun and Steel
Akira Yoshimura : Shipwrecks, La jeune fille suppliciee sur une etagere, On Parole, Un spécimen transparent : Suivi de Voyage vers les étoiles
Ryu Murakami : Almost Transparent Blue, 限りなく透明に近いブルー, From the Fatherland, with Love
Otsuichi : ZOO2, GOTH 夜の章

Only one book read by author:
Natsuo Kirino : Out
Nagai Kafu : Rivalry: A Geisha's Tale
Ayako Miura : Lady Gracia: A Samurai Wife's Love, Strife and Faith
Takeshi Kaiko : Into a Black Sun
Takashi Nagai : The Bells of Nagasaki
Shizuko Natsuki : La promesse de l'ombre
Yasutaka Tsutsui : Hell
Keigo Higashino : The Devotion of Suspect X
Hikaru Okuizumi : The Stones Cry Out
Michio Takeyama : Harp of Burma
Fumiko Enchi : The Waiting Years
Masuji Ibuse : Black Rain
Natsume Soseki : And Then: Natsume Soseki's Novel Sorekara
Akiyuki Nosaka : La tombe des lucioles
Shohei Ooka : Fires on the Plain
Murasaki Shikibu : The Tale of Genji
Hitonari Tsuji : La lumiere du detroit
Ryunosuke Akutagawa : Rashomon et autres contes
Nobuko Takagi : Translucent Tree
Eiji Yoshikawa : Taiko
Meisei Goto : Shot by Both Sides
Mitsuyo Kakuta : The Eighth Day
Shohei Ooka : Fires on the Plain
Nosaka Akiyuki : La tombe des lucioles
Osamu Dazai : Soleil couchant

Nonfiction writers
Hiroo Onoda : No Surrender
Iris Chang : The Rape of Nanking
Donald Richie : The Inland Sea
Mineko Iwasaki : Geisha, a life
Komomo : A Geisha's Journey: My life as a Kyoto Apprentice
Alan Booth : The Roads to Sata
Didier du Castel : Les derniers samourais, Le crepuscule des geishas
Ian Reader : Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan: The Case of Aum Shinrikyo

TOTAL: 76 books

>24 lilisin: lilisin:

Glad everything turns out so good for you! :)

> Apparently Pip is from this story!

Are you by any chance talking about the Pip character in South Park? If not, which Pip is that and where did you hear about him?

> Apologies if my English is wonky at all. Switching over to full on Japanese is doing wonders for my Japanese but creating havoc everywhere else.

I feel for you! I've spent one year in Moscow in 2005 and I learned Russian there almost from scratch. It didn't do anything to my English skills, as they were very well established, but I swear I could not say _one_ word in any other language for a very long time, during my stay there and afterwards! Even tring to say "hello" in German or Spanish for instance, which should be no trouble, resulted in a Russian "hello".

Even now if I try to express something in a language I have only a very basic knowledge of, after five minutes I will start uttering russian words (the funny thing is I really don't speak Russian well! I had reached a basic conversational knowledge when I was there but I've forgotten most of it since then).

The good news is that at approximately the same period I had a click in the brain and I realised that I was able to express myself much more easily than I thought if I focused on using words I knew to describe concepts rather than trying to directly say what I wanted to say. I think it has increased all my language skills. I hope it works the same for you!

>32 chlorine:

I just mean the name Pip in general. I know Pip is a famous character but for some reason I kept confusing him with Oliver Twist so in my mind they were in the same story.

As for language skills, I had the same problem as you when I was living in Argentina. I hadn't spoken Spanish for a while and before then I had been focusing on Japanese so making the switch between my third and fourth language was difficult.

However, my English is back to normal already. It was just a minor "glitch" from having to go from a 100% English state to a 100% Japanese one is such a short turnaround. Now to keep working on my Japanese skills!

Thanks for all the encouragement.

So I had the lovely privilege of meeting up with wanderingstar here in Tokyo on Tuesday. We went to Shibuya where I was supposed to take her to a good fish restaurant I had been to before, but I couldn't remember where it was, so instead we went to a yakitori (meat skewers) place that I had also been to previously. We had a delicious meal full of various chicken skewers (skin, wings, hock, meatball, meatball with green pepper) and some tasty shiitake skewers and some miso covered ginger. I didn't touch the cucumber though. That was all left to wanderingstar. But we just had a great evening and really fun conversation. If you have the chance to meet her, definitely do so! Such a nice, amiable, fun person.

So, my second LT meetup and both a success! You LT peeps are just so fantastic. :)

I am thoroughly enjoying your travelogue of Japan. Thank you so much for the list of Japanese authors and books. Akira Yoshimura is one of my favorites.

I am very impressed by your ability to adapt to living in different cultures. I have tried learning Japanese a few times but given up. But I have never been in a situation, like you are in now, where I absolutely had to speak the language. When I have been in Japan, even in the rural areas, I've been lucky to encounter people who had some rudimentary English, or we resorted to hand signals, or even scratching pictures in the dirt with a stick!

March update!

Absolutely zero books read!

It's funny because before leaving for Japan I was super excited about my TBR pile but ever since arriving I haven't even touched it! I guess I'm just too excited by my surroundings so all I want to do is go out and have fun, all in Japanese. That means that when I do end up reading, I'm just reading comics. I'm sure the reading mood will hit me again but to be honest, I'm not really missing it right now. I'm having too much fun!

This month I managed to only buy 1 comic and read 7 although I'm sure I could have read more. Last week I didn't read anything and this week is looking like a no-reading week as well as my social life is getting crazier (a good thing!) so I'm constantly out and about meeting people.

Also, the cherry blossoms are in full bloom so I'm running all over Tokyo trying to see all the different areas I can and taking hundreds upon hundreds of pictures. It's such a wonderful and majestic feeling to look upon all the varieties of cherry trees. Some have sparsely spaced blossoms, others are bundled and look like snow, some are white, some are pink, others hang down like wisteria while others have huge trunks and tower into the sky. It's been wonderful.

I'm in a really magic place right now and my happiness level is at an all time high.

I want to click Like.

Robert

>36 lilisin: I'm happy to see you happy! There will be time for reading later.

>36 lilisin: >38 FlorenceArt: What Florence said!

Great to hear an update!

Keep not reading! :-)

Being happy is what is important! Enjoy!

Enjoy Tokyo. Don't worry about reading.

I'm glad you're having such a great time!

Really great to read how happy you are in Tokyo - long may it continue! Nice to read also how much fun you had meeting up with wanderingstar. The food sounds yummy too.

Any favourite pictures from the wonderful Cherry blossoms?

Thank you everyone for the wonderfully nice comments. Unfortunately I wasn't able to reply as running around hunting sakura managed to land me a cold what with the constantly changing temperatures. (Yesterday felt like winter again.) So since last week I've been in this strange sleepy state where it's been taking a lot of focus just to get through work, though not without making mistakes, of course. Lots of stupid little mistakes and blunders. Anyway, I'm about 90% recovered starting today so I thought I'd post three of my sakura pictures. And if you'd like to see more, I put some more pictures in my member gallery.







Worth getting sick over I believe!

Gorgeous photos!

Great photos!

Beautiful cherry blossom - thank you!

Hello! I'm still here. I've been carrying around a book with me for the past few weeks to see if anything ignites the desire to read a novel but so far, nothing. Ah well. Still enjoying myself. In the meantime, I just read three articles on three separate Japanese-related books that I thought I'd share to those interested.

‘The Last Shogun’ is a rare translation of Ryotaro Shiba’s historical fiction
- about the translation The Last Shogun

The ‘dwarf’ architect of Japan’s literary boom
- about a prominent Japanese translator and his current project

Legendary translator Jay Rubin’s novel ‘The Sun Gods’ evokes horror of internment camps
- about the well-known Japanese-->English translator who apparently has written his own book

thanks for the links - The Last Shogun and The Sun Gods sound interesting. I'll have to look for them. Glad that you are enjoying Japan. Don't worry about reading.

Hello! For some reason this thread had hidden itself from my Talk page since before we met... The Last Shogun looks really good, I will have to try and find a copy before I leave Tokyo.

>51 wandering_star:
Well I haven't been reading or updating at all so I don't blame you for not noticing! Glad the articles interested you. I've also been interested in reading Ryotaro Shiba's works but always wondered why I couldn't find any copies anywhere and the article explained why!

before I leave Tokyo

Don't remind me. I'm tremendously saddened about your leaving.

me too :-(

Nice to catch up with you! Thanks for the links.

Hello everyone. Haven't been on my own thread since May! Wow!
At some point back when I managed to read Akira Yoshimura's Un spécimen transparent : Suivi de Voyage vers les étoiles. Yoshimura being one of my favorite authors I of course enjoyed reading the two short stories very much.

The first, Un spécimen transparent (A transparent specimen), is about a man who cuts bones out of bodies to reconnect them as intact skeletons which are then provided to research labs, science classrooms exactly. However, he is upset by the inferior condition of the bones from the bodies he usually receives as they come in after they've already been autopsied and prodded so the bones are already in deteriorating condition. His ideal would be to get a fresh body so he can finally use his perfected technique that would allow the bones to look perfectly transparent.

Here, Yoshimura dives back into his recurrent theme of human interaction with death. My only fault with the story lied in the fact that I was forcing myself to read the book to try and force myself back into reading so that forced reading mood wasn't the best thing to do. Also, I kept having deja vu about having already read the story. In fact, so much so that I was having deja vu about having deja vu about having already read the story. It was the strangest feeling.

The second story, Voyage vers les étoiles (Trip to the stars), was the strongest of the two stories and was actually quite mesmerizing and at the end, terrifying. It is the story about a teenager with suicidal thoughts who ends up joining a group of other teenagers who have the same thoughts. They make a pact to turn their thoughts into action and you follow them to the ocean where they plan on taking their lives. It's a frightening and intense journey.

----

After that my reading just died and haven't touched a book since. Also, once summer came and the rainy season was finished, I didn't even read comics. Instead I've been going out nearly every day of the week after work and then barely spending time at home on the weekends. I've been to countless festivals, and parties and fireworks and it's been a blissful summer. However, it has been cut short as a week ago the weather turned and it's been raining and cold ever since. The sun hasn't made one appearance and I've already entered hibernation mode. Last night I even went to bed at 9pm instead of my usual midnight. Was awful. I planned a trip for this weekend for my last summer hoorah where I'll finally get to see the beach (haven't gone once this summer) and yet it looks like it'll be cold and rainy the entire weekend as well. I'm terribly sad.

This is the only thing that is hard about being in Japan in that, being from Texas, I'm used to my summers lasting for five months, not just one and a half. A huge change that I will have to adapt to. Other than that, I'm still happy as a clam here in my newly adopted country.

And thanks to a two week readathon that happened during this spout of bad, depressing weather, I was able to push myself into reading a little bit. Although it's just (three) comics I read, it was nice to push some books off the TBR pile. Perhaps with winter coming (yes, it feels like we won't even have fall, just bring on the winter) I'll even read a real book.

In any case, nice catching up with everyone!

Don't despair, it sounds like you're having an early and bad typhoon season, but I don't think it lasts all autumn. And even if autumn is rotten, winter is a gorgeous season in Tokyo, it was my favorite, very sunny. But maybe that's just because I compared it with the depressing Paris winter.

>56 FlorenceArt:

Thanks for the encouragement. Unfortunately the hotel is already booked for the weekend so I have to decide whether to cancel or not. If I cancel then I lose 30% of the price of the trip and I end up spending a vacation day doing nothing. But if I don't cancel we might just end up sitting in a hotel in the middle of nowhere and with no access to the beach. It's quite vexing. Last year was such beautiful weather that lasted all the way until November that I'm feeling beaten by the weather this year.

Sounds like you're continuing to enjoy yourself, despite the weather. Nice to catch up with you.

Sounds like you're having a great time! Sorry the weather is bad, I hope it will improve (and if not I'm sure you'll adapt and find interesting things to do with your time).

I finally was able to finish a book which was GOTH 夜の章 by Otsuichi, a collection of three short stories (that are available in translation) but not his strongest works that I've read.

The three short stories are:
1）暗黒系
2）犬
3）記録 (TWINS)

I'm also more than halfway through Zola's Pot-Bouille which has been fun immersing myself into.

I couldn't put Pot-Bouille down!

Would love to have your advice (even if it is short) about Pot-bouille! I think this will be the next Zola I'll read. I have no idea when that will be though....

So I finally finished the Zola last night. Actually I finished the Zola about a month ago but I never got around to reading the last 15 pages! So I finally read them last night.

I don't know what it is but I'm very good at reading the longest books and then not finishing them even if I love them.

Pot-Bouille: Loved it. Read most of it in 2 weeks then took a month to read last 15 pages.
Musashi: Loved it. Read the entire 1000+ dense, small font pages and was so entranced, and yet, 3 years later and I still haven't read the last 60 pages.

It's like I don't want the adventure to end so I don't let it!

In any case, I really enjoyed Pot-Bouille. I enjoyed how, although we are introduced to Mr. Mouret on the first page as the main character, we quickly discover that he is actually the side-character, and the house he lives in and all its inhabitants are the main character in this book. It made for a lively book that was great at revealing the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie.

>62 chlorine:
This would be a great book to read as your next Zola (and as your next book in general). It's a lively tale that'll immerse you and that you can also finish very quickly.

>63 lilisin: Thanks for the advice! I'll try to get to it soon (I'm currently trying to reduce my TBR a bit, tough it's not that high)

>63 lilisin: I couldn't put Pot Luck (the bad English title) down, but it wasn't my favorite Zola.

I read an article about Fiske Hanley, a pilot who partook in bombing Tokyo during WWII. He was eventually captured then tortured by the Japanese and wrote a book about his exploits.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/12/10/national/history/former-b-29-aviator...

I'm interested in reading the book as it is not a perspective I have read yet about the war and because the article has him visiting a museum about the results of his actions and his reaction to it. Very interesting so Accused American War Criminal is now on my long list of wishlisted nonfiction reads.

My very short summary for what I read in 2015!

Books read in 2015:
1) Hiroo Onoda : No Surrender
2) Charles Dickens : Great Expectations
3) Amelie Nothomb : Une Forme de Vie (Life Form)
4) Akira Yoshimura : Un spécimen transparent : Suivi de Voyage vers les étoiles
5) Otsuichi : GOTH 夜の章
6）Zola : Pot-Bouille

Manga read in 2015:
Naruto 64-65
Hokusai
オレンジ楽園
クリスタル前奏曲
ホイッスル 1-24
コンビニの清水
僕だけがいない街 1-3
アイアムアヒーロー 1-9
ランダム・ウォーク 1-2
美少女戦士セーラームーン 1-4
よつばと！13

And now I'm 5 hours away from the new year and about to watch the New Years television special here in Japan while eating some sushi so I'll see everyone in our 2016 threads!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! How exciting to see it come in earlier than the rest of us (Oceania, excepted).

May 2016 be as wonderful for you as 2015, as you continue to explore Japan.