Japanese woodblock prints combine tourism with imagination. Woodblock prints ( called that from the use of carved wooden blocks used to press ink into paper) showed tourist spots popular in nineteenth century Japan and landscapes imagined by the artist. Andreas Marks’ book, Japan Journeys, takes you to various locales from this time period. Woodblock prints,…
Category: Book Reviews
Japanese Kanji Made Easy
I am terrible at rote memorization. In other Japanese language books (and when I took Spanish classes for that matter), rote memorization was the key to learning. I don’t know how many times I had to copy Spanish conjugate verb charts to remember even just a few of them. My memory is good, but not…
Spice and Wolf Light Novel Volume 1
I am a fan of Spice and Wolf. Yet, I haven’t read any of the light novels. I haven’t read any light novels for that matter. I grew up reading behemoth books like those found in the Wheel of Time series. I decided to fix this little problem. Light novels are an interesting format. The…
Drifters
On a whim, I started reading the manga Drifters from Kouta Hirano (author/artist of Hellsing). I rather enjoyed reading Hellsing, and I liked the anime version of it as well. So, I figured I would enjoy Drifters as well. As of now, there are 35 chapters released, and after all these chapters I am still…
The World Only God Knows
The World Only God Knows ( Kami Nomi zo Shiru Sekai, or Kaminomi for short) is a charming manga series. It is also an anime series. It follows Keima Katsurgi, an obsessed bishojo gamer known online as the “God of Conquests.” He is able to conquer any dating sim. He is sharply intelligent, but appears…
Kimi no Iru Machi: A Town Where You Live
Kimi no Iru Machi is a shonen slice of life manga wrote by Seo Kouji. To be honest, I thought it was a shojo from the way it read. The series follows Haruto Kirishima, Yuzuki Eba, Akari Kaga, and other friends as they grow up. The story centers around Haruto and Yuzuki’s turbulent romance. Yuzuki…