Japanese English

The Japanese know only too well the significant link between living your purpose and how happy and fulfilled you will be in life. Purpose is your reason for getting up in the morning. It is often considered some grand ambitious achievement but this really isn't the case. Purpose comes in all shapes and sizes and is very individual. This purpose will ultimately lead to your happiness, it could be simply growing vegetables or making hats to finding a cure for rare conditions or a world changing energy source, as long as it's your purpose then this is what you should do.

Decluttering your house can seem like a daunting task. It’s hard to know where to begin. Your home is such an important project as you spend so much time there. It becomes a reflection of you. A clean and tidy home means a clean and tidy mind. But most people aren’t equipped with the discarding skills to clear out the clutter, or the design ideas to create that sleek, minimalist yet warm feel for themselves.

Signed on September 2, 1945 by Japanese and Allied leaders, the instrument of surrender that formally ended the war in the Pacific brought to a close one of the most cataclysmic engagements in history. The surrender fulfilled the commitment that Franklin Roosevelt had made in 1943 at the Casablanca conference that it be "unconditional". Though readily accepted as policy at the time, after Roosevelt's death in April 1945, support for unconditional surrender wavered, particularly among Republicans in Congress.

Born and raised in Vancouver, 13-year-old Aya Shimamura is released from a Canadian internment camp only to be repatriated to Japan with her father, who was faced with an unsettling choice: move east of the Rocky Mountains or go back to Japan. With no hope of restitution and grieving the loss of Aya's mother during internment, her father feels there's nothing left for them in Canada and signs a form that enables the government to deport him. But life in Tokyo is not much better.

1941. Steven Katz is the son of prosperous landowners in rural California. Although his parents don’t approve, he’s found true friends in Nick, Suki, and Ollie, sons of field workers. The group is inseparable. But Steven is in turmoil. He’s beginning to acknowledge that his feelings for Nick amount to more than friendship. When the bombing of Pearl Harbor draws the US into World War II, Suki and his family are forced to leave their home for the internment camp at Manzanar. Ollie enlists in the army and ships out. And Nick must flee.

An engrossing, epic saga of one family’s experiences on both sides of WWII, All Ships Follow Me questions our common narrative of the conflict and our stark notions of victim and perpetrator, while tracing the lasting effects of war through several generations.

Agnes is an unusual young woman with peach-blossom hair and the fairy-given ability to make mushrooms sprout willy-nilly. Fortunately, she's now in a relationship with a handsome dragon prince who's absolutely obsessed with her mushrooms! Unfortunately, Agnes is still trying to get over the trauma of her last relationship, and it'll take a lot of spoiling from Claude to help her! This is the story of how, through a series of unlikely events, Agnes has found her mushroom-loving prince charming.

In these 11 stories, the individuals who lift the curtains of their orderly homes and workplaces are confronted with the bizarre, the grotesque, the fantastic, the alien - and through it, find a way to liberation. The Lonesome Bodybuilder is the English-language debut of one of Japan's most fearlessly inventive young writers.

Together, these three volumes form an essential collection for anyone fascinated by mythology, folklore, and the cultural heritage of Japan. Each story in this anthology is not just a tale. It's a window into the ancient soul of Japan, its people, and its enduring legacy.

The Japanese progressed throughout the eras because of the emperor, but they also progressed despite him. These are people who never let go of their sacred history, and their story is told and retold in art, film, literature, and even graphic novels across the entire world. Terms such as shoguns, samurai, haiku, anime, and manga are familiar to many in the Western world today. Westerners also learn flower arranging, martial arts, meditation, and enjoy a variety of visual and digital art forms because of the unique culture of Japan.

Best-selling and beloved Japanese author Hiromi Kawakami (The Nakano Thrift Shop) tells the story of an enigmatic man through the voices of 10 remarkable women who have loved him. Each woman has succumbed, even if only for an hour, to that seductive, imprudent, and furtively feline man who drifted so naturally into their lives. Still clinging to the vivid memory of his warm breath and his indecipherable sentences, 10 women tell their stories as they attempt to recreate the image of the unfathomable Nishino.

During World War II a community called Manzanar was hastily created in the high mountain desert country of California, east of the Sierras. Its purpose was to house thousands of Japanese-American internees. One of the first families to arrive was the Wakatsukis, who were ordered to leave their fishing business in Long Beach and take with them only the belongings they could carry. For Jeanne Wakatsuki, a seven-year-old child, Manzanar became a way of life in which she struggled and adapted, observed and grew. For her father it was essentially the end of his life.

On October 24, 1944, more than 200 American soldiers were surrounded by German infantry deep in the Vosges Mountains of Eastern France. When their food, ammunition, and medical supplies ran out, the area's army headquarters turned to the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a segregated unit of Japanese American soldiers, to achieve what other units had failed to do: rescue the "lost battalion".

Eight-year-old Jasmine and her family travel to Hiroshima to visit her grandma and cousin Akari. After finally building a good relationship with her older sister, Sophie, Jasmine couldn't be more excited to spend time together in Japan—and make a new friend in Akari. But Akari seems to only want to play with Sophie, and Jasmine's jealousy threatens to upend their visit. Can Jasmine befriend Akari and keep the peace?

Eight-year-old Jasmine Toguchi is now an expert on travel and doesn't want summer to end! In this final book chronicling her family vacation in Japan, she visits Kyoto. And wowee zowee, on this vacation there is still lots more to see. This is their last stop, and Jasmine is thrilled to be enjoying the city with her older sister, Sophie, and her Obaachan who teaches her how to live in the moment. Sad to see their trip coming to an end, in true Jasmine fashion, she hatches a plan.

“Congratulations, you’ve won the lottery!” shouts the angel Prapura to a formless soul. The soul hasn’t been kicked out of the cycle of rebirth just yet - he’s been given a second chance. He must recall the biggest mistake of his past life while on "homestay" in the body of 14-year-old Makoto Kobayashi. It looks like Makoto doesn’t have a single friend, and his family don’t seem to care about him at all. But as the soul begins to live Makoto’s life on his own terms, he grows closer to the family and the people around him and sees their true colors more clearly.

Award-winning poet Brandon Shimoda has crafted a lyrical portrait of his paternal grandfather, Midori Shimoda, whose life - child migrant, talented photographer, suspected enemy alien and spy, desert wanderer, American citizen - mirrors the arc of Japanese America in the 20th century. In a series of pilgrimages, Shimoda records the search to find his grandfather and unfolds, in the process, a moving elegy on memory and forgetting.

The daughter of a Buddhist priest, Tsuneno was born in a rural Japanese village and was expected to live a traditional life much like her mother’s. But after three divorces - and a temperament much too strong-willed for her family’s approval - she ran away to make a life for herself in one of the largest cities in the world: Edo, a bustling metropolis at its peak. With Tsuneno as our guide, we experience the drama and excitement of Edo just prior to the arrival of American Commodore Perry’s fleet, which transformed Japan.

Dear Diary Boy is an intensely personal, heartwarming, and heartbreaking chronicle of one mother and child's experience in a prestigious private Tokyo school. It's a tale that will resonate with all parents as we try to answer the age-old questions of how best to educate our children and what, truly, is in their best interests versus what is in our own.

A ghostly visit from her former landlady draws Emma away from sleepy little Hillbilly Hollow to investigate a murder in the big city. But what seems like a straightforward case soon becomes entangled with an event from Emma's past and a personal quest for justice. With the attractive but bungling Sheriff Tucker at her side, will Emma be tempted by the chance to avenge an old wrong?