Travel the world without leaving your chair.
The target of the Read Around The World Challenge is to read at least one book written by an author from each and every country in the world.
All books that are listed here as part of the "Read Around Asia Challenge" were written by authors from Japan.
Find a great book for the next part of your reading journey around the world from this book list. The following popular books have been recommended so far.
152.
Rental Person Who Does Nothing : A Memoir by Shoji Morimoto
EN
Description:
Need a rental person who does nothing? Shoji Morimoto provides a fascinating service to the lonely and socially anxious. After an old boss told him that he contributed nothing and that it made no difference whether he showed up to work or not, he wondered if a person who ‘does nothing’ could still have a place in the world. With a tweet, his Rental Person service was born. - Have a deep secret you desperately need to reveal, so deep that you can’t tell a friend or family member? - Have you spent a long time home alone, and want to know what it’s like to have somebody with you at your apartment... continue
153.
Restaurant of Love Regained, The by Ito Ogawa
EN
Description:
Returning home from work, Rinko is shocked to find that her flat is totally empty. Gone are her TV set, fridge and furniture, gone are all her kitchen tools, including the old Meiji mortar she has inherited from her grandmother and the Le Creuset casserole she has bought with her first salary. Gone, above all, is her Indian boyfriend, the maitre d' of the restaurant next door to the one she works in. She has no choice but to go back to her native village and her mother, on which she turned her back ten years ago as a fifteen-year-old girl. There she decides to open a very special restaurant, o... continue
155.
Ring by Koji Suzuki
EN
Description:
The Inspiration for the New Major Motion Picture RINGS A mysterious videotape warns that the viewer will die in one week unless a certain, unspecified act is performed. Exactly one week after watching the tape, four teenagers die one after another of heart failure. Asakawa, a hardworking journalist, is intrigued by his niece's inexplicable death. His investigation leads him from a metropolitan tokyo teeming with modern society's fears to a rural Japan—a mountain resort, a volcanic island, and a countryside clinic—haunted by the past. His attempt to solve the tape's mystery before it's too late... continue
156.
Sailor Moon by Naoko Takeuchi
EN
Rating: 4.8 (5 votes)
Description:
A graphic novel featuring the further adventures of Bunny, Luna, Tuxedo Mask, and the Scouts.
157.
Samurai! by Saburo Sakai, Martin Caidin, Fred Saito
EN
Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Description:
Saburo Sakai was Japan's greatest fighter pilot to survive World War II. A veteran of more than two hundred dogfights, Sakai reportedly shot down sixty-four Allied planes, but he is best known for flying his crippled Zero nearly 600 miles to safety while partially paralyzed and nearly blind from multiple wounds.
159.
Schoolgirl by Osamu Dazai
EN
Description:
"The novella that first propelled Dazai into the literary elite of post-war Japan. Essentially the start of Dazai's career, Schoolgirl gained notoriety for its ironic and inventive use of language. Now it illuminates the prevalent social structures of a lost time, as well as the struggle of the individual against them--a theme that occupied Dazai's life both personally and professionally. This new translation preserves the playful language of the original and offers the reader a new window into the mind of one of the greatest Japanese authors of the 20th century"--Page 4 of cover.
160.
Seven Japanese Tales by Junichiro Tanizaki
EN
Description:
Junichiro Tanizaki’s Seven Japanese Tales collects stories that explore the boundary at which love becomes self-annihilation, where the contemplation of beauty gives way to fetishism, and where tradition becomes an instrument of voluptuous cruelty. A beautiful blind musician exacts the ultimate sacrifice from the man who is both her disciple and her lover. A tattooist turns the body of an exquisite young girl into a reflection of her predatory inner nature. A young man is erotically imprisoned by memories of his absent mother. Shocking in its content and lyrical in its beauty, these stories re... continue