Japanese Bookstores

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — Japanese bookstores kick ass!

Here’s why:

There are tons of magazines and literature on every imaginable subject, you could literally walk into a Japanese bookstore and ask to become a master at ___ and the clerk will happily guide you to an entire shelf full of stuff on the subject of ___.

The image above for example are really thick magazines filled with every piece of information you could possibly want about pens, different kinds of pens, fountain pens. They have tests on different kinds of ink, which ink holds the best while moist and so forth. Information about new pens, about antique pens and their ink. It’s insane!

But that’s not it. I found this one magazine which just makes me want to be able to read Japanese that much more!

It’s a magazine about Mad-Science, this specific edition covered atomic, chemical and biological warfare. It shows detailed articles on crazy science and whack plans, it goes through potential biological weapons and weapons used in the past.

Click for larger versions.
As you can see, it covers stuff pretty well, down to chemical compounds and pretty advanced shit about how it affects the brainstem (I assume).

But wait, theres more!

Theres a shelf full of magazines containing every bit of information you could ever want on guns. One of which details everything about every gun ever used in a hollywood movie.

Here’s a shelf full of magazines about watches, everything from latest fashion to one full magazine all about Rolex watches and their every detail.

They even have Match Lectures in magainze format, including a CD with the spoken lectures so you can listen to the lectures and follow along in the magazine.

One thing I really love about Japanese books (not magazines this time) is that they’re really small. Most books you seem to buy in three parts, where the cost of all three books is about equal to the cost of one pocket-book in Sweden (even a little less usually).

They fit perfectly in the hand and don’t weigh anything! There’s no need to carry around the whole book, you don’t read a whole book that fast anyway. You only need one part at a time. Perfect.

As you can see, one can easily waste away quite a few hours in these stores, even if you can’t read Japanese. And if you can, you just want to read everything! I’m starting to understand the whole culture of standing in the store and reading. You couldn’t possibly afford to buy everything you want to read.