the bookstore

i had lunch with an old friend today. i met him through a friend when i studied abroad during college. he graduated in march and moved to australia last april. then he moved to bali in october to work at the hilton hotel as the japanese guest manager.

it was good to see him. he's a quality guy. we had gyoza and fried rice followed by cold stone ice cream. which, sounds crazy, since it was only a few degrees above freezing today.

after that, he had plans so we said goodbye and i made my way to kinokuniya, a major bookstore in japan. i was browsing there the other night, killing time, so this time i went back with a bit more purpose. well, only a little bit more. mostly i had a free afternoon.

i came across some ronald dahl books, in japanese. i almost bought "the BFG", a favorite i read in 5th grade in elementary school, but decided not to. at least this time around. i decided to see if i could find a japanese copy of "letters to a young poet" by rilke, which i love.

it was then that i discovered the crazy way of japanese bookstores.

i looked it up on the book finder computer, and made my way to the section it said it was in. but the map only told me the section. once i got to that section, i realized there were about 8 rows of shelves, wall to wall books!! every so often, there was a book tied to a string, hanging from the shelf. i figured it was a catalogue of the books in that section, so i looked up "rilke" in each one. no luck.

back to the machine.
okay, yes, i'm in the right section.

back to the catalogues.
no luck. (it's getting hot in the bookstore...)

back to the machine.
ah! the publisher! okay...

back to the catalogue of THAT publisher.
score! RI-1-1

to the shelves!
RI-1-1, RI-1-1...wait, there is no RI.
oooh, katakana RI.
all the katakana being after all the hiragana.
of course!

hey, here it is!! i found it!! woohoo!

so the book is tough to understand in english, rilke being a poet and all, so i imagine the japanese will prove to be a huge challenge, but i'm quite excited about it. and i can always pull out my well-worn english copy and follow along. though, i'm going to try not to.

i also picked up two japanese study books. this one and this one.

while browsing for japanese study books, i picked up a couple "all about japanese particles" or "guide to japanese verbs" type books that are less like text books and more like bullet-point lists of japanese phrases, organized to be easy and fun to read. i was pleasantly surprised that i knew a lot of the stuff in them. it stuck me that i can't get much from the "fun" books anymore. i need to learn vocabulary, grammar and kanji. the boring stuff. so, that's what i got. the first book is aimed at level 2 of the japanese proficiency test, which i just took in december. and the second one is levels 1 and 2. so, since i know i didn't ace level 2 (don't even know that i passed yet!), i'm sure both books will have a lot of good study material in them.

now i just need to get motivated to actually sit down and study on a regular basis!