Canned Coffee Reviews

Boss Fine Roast

Initially redolent of saccharine and hickory, this mellows into a coffee with a soft finish and high drinkability. Good for slamming down on a humid day while striding along a tree-lined avenue achirp with cicadas.

Japanese Chin Music

Sensei

Teacher, master, instructor. The title sensei carries prestige in Japan. It is applied to school teachers, martial arts masters, revered elders who have knowledge to impart and pasty-faced twenty-two-year-old Americans who teach English for three thousand yen an hour.

Featured Author

Akuma Sho

Author of Blind Alleys.

Akuma Sho works, under his real name, as a freelance journalist and is based in a pleasant, but dull, west Tokyo university town. Although his sense of direction is poor at best, he takes great pleasure in wandering the area, seeking trouble and inspiration in approximately equal measure. His favorite saying is, 'If it's worth doing at all, it's worth doing half-assed.' Or something like that. We suspect he is in love with Haruki Murakami, but please don't tell anyone.

Art / Behind the Scenes

Design Notes

Peek inside the sketchbook of our designer as he maps out the look and feel of Kuhaku and Other Accounts from Japan.

[A]ll contained in a handsome and beautifully designed clothbound volume ... The traps that snare commentators on this peculiar nation are either expertly avoided or ignored completely, and in the sundry tales of families, affairs, pets, beverages, garbage and loves Japan emerges in fits and starts, stripped of its abstractions - defiant, utterly unique, and surprisingly tender.

Joseph Badtke-Berkow
Papersky Magazine, 2005

It is beautifully produced ... Plus, there is such a wide range of literary styles inside. It's a great anthology.

Suzanne DeGaetano
co-owner, Mac's Backs bookstore
Cleveland, OH

Kuhaku ... succeeds in providing an insightful account of the way things really are in a country that spends so much time polishing its image. The book is particularly valuable to those who have spent or will spend an extended period of time in Japan.

AJET Across Japan, 2004

One thing that Kuhaku systematically achieves is a vision. The vision is to capture a feel, an attitude -- the zeitgeist if you will -- of contemporary Japan.

Brian Chapman
Amazon.com

I just wanted to say that as I finished Kuhaku last night for the first time I was left with that wonderful feeling of disappointment that occurs when you finish reading an amazing book that you don't want to end. Thank you.

Wesley Griffin
Burtonsville, MD

Just finished Kuhaku, it is amazing. Thank you so much for taking the time to collect great stories and pictures and bind them in such a well-designed way. I enjoyed every minute of it and was disappointed to reach the end so quickly.

Martin Hansen
London, UK

Thanks very much for Kuhaku. It's nice to see people making books that are as good to own as they are to read. Beautifully designed and produced - a rarity compared to the shiny suited offerings in my local bookshop.

Rob Wilson

US/Canada

International

(Also, if you prefer, the book is available from Amazon.com.)