Canned Coffee Reviews

Fire, Classico Standard with Naked Beans

Initial band-aid overtones ease into a surprisingly smooth finish with hints of charcoal. An excellent complement to late-night cab rides home on an elevated highway winding through a massive corridor of apartment buildings and neon billboards.

Japanese Chin Music

Natto

A food product made of fermented soybeans. Natto is not glutinous. Rather, it is sticky and soft, so perhaps 'gloppy' is a better characterization. Non-Japanese are supposed to hate natto. It is kind of a rule. To enjoy natto is an act of defiance...

Featured Author

Roland Kelts

Author of Father Hunters.

Roland Kelts is a Tokyo-based writer from New York whose fiction, essays, articles and reviews appear in numerous publication in the US and Japan. He was the winner of the Playboy College Fiction Contest and a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship Award in writing. In addition to Manhattan and Tokyo, he has lived in London, San Francisco, Anchorage and Osaka. His forthcoming novel is called ACCESS.

Art / Behind the Scenes

Peyote -- Interview and Gallery

Peyote's art punctuates the Kuhaku glossary. His full-lipped, pouty women seem to come from another era. We talk to this trippy freeter to find out what motivates him.

[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.)