Japan Books - Page 2

Sources of Japanese Tradition, Vol. 2

William Theodore De Bary, Ryusaku Tsunoda, Donald Keene

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Sourcebook of modern Japan 5 out of 5 stars.
19 of 28 people found this review helpful.

This book is a wonderful introduction to modern Japanese history. It is an anthology of important sources, beginning with the Shinto revival of the 18th century, through the Meiji Period, World War II, into the 1950s. This is an invaluable reference work for anyone concerned with Japan's development over the last two centuries.

Editorial Review:

Volume 2 deals with the legacy of these traditions in modern times.

Fruits (Postcards)

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 65 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Fruits Postcards is a collection of forty-five Tokyo street fashion portraits from Japan's premier fanzine of the same name. 'Fruits' was established in 1994, by photographer Shoichi Aoki, initially as a project to document the growing explosion in street fashion within the suburbs of Tokyo. Over the last five years, the magazine has grown to cult status and is now avidly followed by thousands of Japanese teenagers who also use the magazine as an opportunity to check out the latest styles and trends. The average age of kids featured in the magazine is between 12 and 18, and the clothes that they wear are a mixture of high fashion - Vivianne Westwood is a keen favourite - and home-made ensembles which when combined create a novel, if not hysterical, effect.

This collection of postcards represents a unique documentation of the changing face of street fashion throughout the last decade. Colourful, fascinating and funny, these cult images will delight followers of fashion and youth culture.

The Tokyo Look Book: Stylish To Spectacular, Goth To Gyaru, Sidewalk To Catwalk

Philomena Keet

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 47 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Tokyo is home to the most creative and stylish fashion in the world. The Tokyo Look Book takes us on a dazzling journey through the streets, clubs, and boutiques of this trendsetting city to introduce us to the people who wear the latest fashions and the people who make them. Crammed with cool, full-color photographs of Tokyo's trendy teens and twenty-somethings captured candidly as they work and play, this is a comprehensive look at the richly varied fashion scenes that thrive in Japan's capital city -- from the "gal" mecca of Shibuya, to the goths and cosplayers who hang out on Jingubashi bridge on Sundays, through the cutting-edge kids on the Harajuku backstreets, to the stylish young professional men and women on Omotesando Boulevard.

Yuri Manabe's distinctive photographic portraits are complemented by insightful text from British anthropologist and fashion expert Philomena Keet, who offers witty and informative background information on each of the fashion scenes introduced, and a plethora of soundbites and quotes from the featured fashionistas. In addition, there are interviews and spotlights on Tokyo's hottest fashion designers, magazines and boutiques, including:

HIBUYA 109: Shibuya's iconic shopping mall
GLAD NEWS: One of 109's leading boutiques
REIKO NAKANE: A former trendsetting "charisma"109 shop girl, now producer of her own fashion label
MANA: Japanese pop star and designer of "Elegant Gothic Lolita" brand, Moi-meme-Moite
H.NAOTO: Creator of the popular goth/punk brand
TAKUYA ANGEL: Creator of the cult cyber-kimono brand
EAM MESSAGE: Designer of skate/streetwear brands
DOG: Owner of a cult street-fashion boutique
SHOICHI AOKI: Creator of the influential street-fashion magazine FRUiTS
GARCIA MARQUEZ GAUCHE: The husband-and-wife team behind this stylish brand for young women
5351 POUR LES HOMMES: A fashionable men's brand
TOKYO FASHION WEEK: A peek behind the scenes
MANNENYA: Purveyor of traditional Japanese workmen's outfits

Tokyo (EYEWITNESS TRAVEL GUIDE)

DK Publishing

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Flawed 2 out of 5 stars.
21 of 22 people found this review helpful.

I really like the DK travel guides. But, right away I was taken aback at the cover photo. The COVER PHOTO! The central building in the shot of Shibuya crossing hasn't been in existence for nearly a decade. Does this 2008 book promise to be up to date? No. I spent twenty minutes flipping through it and noticed some errors. On Map1, page 184, they show Hotel Sunroute Akasaka as being a little south west of Shinjuku Station. Pity those who seek to find that hotel at this spot. Actually, it is Sunroute Plaza Shinjuku Hotel that is here. On page 10 Tokyo Dome is referred to as an amusement park. It is not. It is a sports stadium. Next to Tokyo Dome is, indeed, an amusement park but it is called Korakuen. How much time are families going to waste finding that amusement park while looking for or asking directions to Tokyo Dome?

Every time I pick up this book I find more egregious errors. I just noticed that the map on pages 86-87 has Mitaka in the mountains to the west of Hachioji. It is not. Mitaka is to the east of Hachioji about 20 some minutes via the Chuo Line or 23.3km.

Yesterday I noticed that DK has written on page 60 that "Kinokuniya Bookstore has one of Tokyo's best selections of foreign books." It does, but not the Kinokuniya store the arrow is pointing to. That extensive foreign book section was moved to another, newer Kinokuniya more than a decade ago. It is referred to by the Kinokuniya company as the Shinjuku South Store. The arrow is pointing at the Shinjuku Main Store. In the Directory on page 145 we are led to find it on Map1, B1 but there is no Kinokuniya listed anywhere there. The Kinokuniya, which is most useful to non-Japanese readers of this book, or, at least one floor of it, should be shown to the south of Takashimaya below Tokyu Hands but there is no Tokyu Hands listed there either, let alone the bookstore in question.

So, please buy this book if you think you might enjoy armchair travel to Tokyo, or if you enjoy looking at pretty pictures. But don't bring this book to Tokyo thinking it will help you out. Just when you least expect it, or when you need it the most, the faulty fact checking and negligent editing may very well stab you in the back with its inaccuracies.

A Year in Japan

Kate T. Williamson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 37 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Land of the Rising Sun is shining brightly across the American cultural landscape. Recent films such as Lost in Translation and Memoirs of a Geisha seem to have made everyone an expert on Japan, even if they've never been there. But the only way for a Westerner to get to know the real Japan is to become a part of it. Kate T. Williamson did just that, spending a year experiencing, studying, and reflecting on her adopted home. She brings her keen observations to us in A Year in Japan, a dramatically different look at a delightfully different way of life. Avoiding the usual clichés -- Japan's polite society, its unusual fashion trends, its crowded subways -- Williamson focuses on some lesser-known aspects of the country and culture. In stunning watercolors and piquant texts, she explains the terms used to order various amounts of tofu, the electric rugs found in many Japanese homes, and how to distinguish a maiko from a geisha. She observes sumo wrestlers in traditional garb as they use ATMs, the wonders of "Santaful World" at a Kyoto department store, and the temple carpenters who spend each Sunday dancing to rockabilly. A Year in Japan is a colorful journey to the beauty, poetry, and quirkiness of modern Japan -- a book not just to look at but to experience.

Dave Barry Does Japan

Dave Barry

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 72 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Good for a giggle 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

If you've ever lived in Japan, like I have, you will find this a bit too light. It was good for a giggle, but that's all. Nothing to take too seriously. I think I finished it in a day or two.

Pretty lazy effort, overall... 2 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

... but at least he admits he's being lazy!

Dave Barry has always struck me as the 'guy' version of Erma Bombeck. You always know when the twist / joke is coming, and a little goes a long way.

Hilarious 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I'm not a big book-reader, and I never thought a book could be laugh out loud funny until I found Dave Barry. You'll find yourself bursting out with laughter... and then realizing that everyone around you is staring at you, wondering what was is so funny.

One of the best Dave Barry books, and one of the funniest books ever. Short, but amazing. I know nothing about Japan and I'm not planning on going there ever, but it was just great. As with most Dave Barry books, what you'll actually learn from the book is pretty limited.

I also recommend Dave Barry's greatest hits, a compilation of his best articles that he's written for the Miami Herald.

Editorial Review:

Barry samples Japan's native cuisine ("things that have eyeballs or suckers or other flagrantly unacceptable organs still attached to them"); experiences the agonies of Kabuki and the ecstasies of karaoke; takes his first (and last) bath in public; and explores culture shock in all its humorous forms.

Japanland: A Year in Search of Wa

Karin Muller

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Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

No "wa" 2 out of 5 stars.
17 of 18 people found this review helpful.

Karin Muller describes her year in Japan as a search for "wa" or inner harmony. This is a literary construct--an entirely unconvincing one-- designed to tie together a series of travel stories that are really defined by restlessness, not harmony, as Muller and her camera bounce from one unusual festival or cultural practice to another. Then there is the motif of the Rules and Regulations that Muller keeps bumping into, which usually lead to her being Rejected. This happens with the host mother, Yukiko, most notably, and with each encounter I began to feel a little more sympathy for Yukiko, esepcially when Muller attempted to improve the family garden with a vegetable patch. (Yukiko is referred to as Muller's "nemsis" on the paperback cover blurb--a good way to sell the book, I guess.) Muller may be a good filmmaker (I have not seen the PBS series), but she's not a particularly good writer. She tells her stories in the present tense, evidently to give a sense of action and immediacy, which is wearying after a while and leads to way too many sentences that begin "I + verb". Check out page 205, for example, and just count them, if you doubt me. Muller also has a weakness for the unfortunate simile; when she described being cold after a naked swim in the sea as "I feel my body stiffening like a piece of roadkill after the sun goes down" I almost gave up on the book altogether. Occasionally Muller must supply historical background to explain what has drawen her to a particular place, but each time it has the awkward feel of a sidebar. Finally, there is her tendency to make sweeping generalizations ("courtesy is bred into their DNA," and so on) that makes you realize that Muller doesn't really like Japan or the Japanese very much.There are some interesting stories in this book, but I would not recommend it as a guide to Japan. I should say in all fairness that I read this book right after finishing "Oracle Bones", Peter Hessler's wonderful book about China. Hessler, in addition to his scholarship and years of living in China, has what I call a quiet eye. He's wonderfully observant and skillfully brings just enough of himself into the narrative to convey his personality and interests. Muller's "Japanland" is too frantic and self-absorbed to convey much that's truly interesting or new about Japan. Maybe the country needs a Peter Hessler.

Editorial Review:

During a year spent in Japan on a personal quest to deepen her appreciation for such Eastern ideals as commitment and devotion, documentary filmmaker Karin Muller discovered just how maddeningly complicated it is being Japanese. In this book Muller invites the reader along for a uniquely American odyssey into the ancient heart of modern Japan. Broad in scope and deftly observed by an author with a rich visual sense of people and place, Japanland is as beguiling as this colorful country of contradictions.

Japan 2009 Square Wall Calendar (Multilingual Edition)

BrownTrout Publishers Inc

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Space: Japanese Design Solutions

Michael Freeman

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Space is a photographic exploration of Japanese architecture and design in size-constricted areas, exploring imaginative, ingenious, and revolutionary solutions to space-compromised living. Masters in the art of managing small spaces, the Japanese in their design have given rise to a particular style of ingenuity.

In their work, Japanese interior designers and architects constantly draw on cultural traditions, while using a modern, even radical approach. Whether in the use of lightweight partitions to create flexible spaces, deliberate profligacy to give a feeling of generosity, or strange perspectives, the results are not mere workaday solutions, but artistic and unusual ones that can turn a lack of space into a surfeit of style.

Distinctly Asian in its feel and comprehensive in its coverage, featuring every room of each highlighted house, the book is divided into such themed sections as "Every Square Centimeter," "Interconnection," "Wasting Space," and "Shock Value."

The crisp photography, inventive design solutions, unique packaging, and handy format make Space the perfect gift for anyone looking to maximize his or her space as well as architecture enthusiasts and those with an interest in Japanese style.

Frommer's Tokyo (Frommer's Complete)

Beth Reiber

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

America’s #1 bestselling travel series

Written by more than 175 outspoken travelers around the globe, Frommer’s Complete Guides help travelers experience places the way locals do.

• More annually updated guides than any other series
• 16-page color section and foldout map in all annual guides
• Outspoken opinions, exact prices, and suggested itineraries
• Dozens of detailed maps in an easy-to-read, two-color design

You'll never fall into the tourist traps when you travel with Frommer's. It's like having a friend show you around, taking you to the places locals like best. Our expert authors have already gone everywhere you might go--they've done the legwork for you, and they're not afraid to tell it like it is, saving you time and money. No other series offers candid reviews of so many hotels and restaurants in all price ranges. Every Frommer's Travel Guide is up-to-date, with exact prices for everything, dozens of color maps, and exciting coverage of sports, shopping, and nightlife. You'd be lost without us!

Tokyo is a whirlwind of traffic and people, a fast-paced gateway to the 21st century. It's one of the world's great cities, but it can be overwhelming. Frommer's makes it easy for you to find your way and discover the best of Tokyo, from business hotels to traditional Japanese inns, from restaurants serving exquisite kaiseki feasts to stand-up noodle houses, from tranquil gardens and temples to the incredible swirl of nightlife in Shinjuku and Roppongi.

Whether it's business or pleasure, Frommer's Tokyo will take you there in style. You'll rely on us for a handy glossary of everyday expressions and menu terms, and our unique and indispensable Japanese character key that makes recognizing establishment signs as easy as ABC. With step-by-step directions, exact prices, detailed neighborhood maps, and valuable cultural insights, Frommer's Tokyo puts Japan's premier city at your fingertips.