Japan Books

What a delicious book this is! So hilarious, and at times quite touching. Reading it is like going away on a journey with a dear friend, only much better, because ones dear friends are rarely as adventurous or as bright! Dr. May is disarmingly honest and daring, and brings a charming, often surprising perspective to his experiences in Japan. Perhaps he could be invited to the deep south to teach philosophy next?

It's about a war beetween America and the Japanese. The war is very dangerous. This story is very interesting.It tells you alot about the Pearl Harbor. I like this book because it is very exciting. It's so exciting you won't want to stop reading it. It makes you feel like your in the story. So that's why I choose this book.

Ozaki was a real original, a samurai fighting for political modernization and responsible government. Elected to the very first Diet in 1890, he served for more than 60 turbulent years. He knew everyone in Japanese public life and draws sharp portraits of them and their actions. The story is told clearly enough (with annotations where needed) and vividly enough to serve as an introduction to Japan's political history. The editing and translation, by Ozaki's grand-daughter, is excellent.

Will O'Neil

Very good product. I have read the earlier volume on Swiss automatic wristwatches, and this one is of the same high quality.

This has differnt recipes to Avelines complete guide to macro cooking so it is worthwhile buying both. This is proper macrobiotic cuisine......it also explains how to do the diet

I have read several of Ms Kimura's books and this is one of her best. But for this book, I would never have known about the Awa Maru and how a mistake by an American submarine cost the lives of over 2,000 people! Ms Kimura not only wrote about a historical event that needed to be told but in her book, she made the passengers on board the ship and the events of one of the greatest tragedies of the Second World War come alive!! I followed Kyoko Tanaka as she traveled from Japan to Singapore to search for the truth about her family and I could not stop reading till the whole story of the "Titanic of Japan" had been told!

"B-24 Bomber Crew" by J.A. Nichols. Subtitled: "A True Story Of The Pacific War With Japan". Vantage Press, New York, 1997.

This small book (only 78 pages) recounts the experiences of one man in the United Sates Army Air force in the Pacific theatre of World War II. After three pages describing the bombed out city of Nagasaki, Japan, the story of John A. Nichols is told in chronological order from his flight training in 1942 up to his discharge in November 1945. There are some 19 pages of photographs (between page 28 and page 47), so that there is a minimal amount of writing. There is the obligatory discussion of the Depression of the 1930s, and its impact on his family business, so that they had to move into a flat in Boston, Massachusetts. John Nichols volunteered from Massachusetts, entered the service at Fort Devens and went for flight training in the American South. Again, the Southerners were still fighting the Civil War. A few pages later, Flight Engineer J.A. Nichols begins to narrate his combat experience.

One of his more interesting combat flights involves a single B-24 Bomber making a raid deep into Japanese held territory in order to bomb oil tanks near Shanghai. I wish that the author had expanded more on the flight, the reasons that a single bomber raid would be safer than many bombers and the success of the raid. In fact, I wish he fleshed out the entire book with more details. During the account of the Shanghai raid, the author does state that a major difference between bombing in the Pacific and bombing in the European Theater of Operations was the great distances covered in the Pacific. He repeats this statement a few times. He also repeats that the crew gained "extra points" if their plane was holed by flak. His repetitions would have been eliminated by a good editor.

On page 26, he has a sentence fragment in the next to last paragraph. On page 27, he wanted to say, "...damaged, of course, by the Japanese" but he wrote "...damage of course". Since Vantage Press is a so-called "vanity publishing house", I think that Mr. Nichols could have received more editing help on his work. Examples above. And then, on page 56, he has a single paragraph, entitled, "Okinawa"; this paragraph is also a single chapter that is also single page ... leaving a lot of white space. All in all, the book is an excellent mission by mission record of single person's World War II experiences.

I bought this CD for my son who is autistic as a Christmas present. It was very entertaining and enjoyable for my son--it was good to hear him sit and laugh. The CD also taught some valuable life lessons as well. Bobby Norfolk is one of my favorite storytellers--I got to see him in person at the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival and I was thrilled to discover that he had recorded his stories on CD. He truly transports you to another world--the world of his imagination. I will definitely purchase more of his CDs. Listen to Bobby Norfolk for yourself and appreciate his talent and humor.

(Please see William J. Higginson's excellent review of the earlier, Echo Press edition of this book.) I have Ueno Yozo's scholarly edition of Oku No Hosomichi which I've been going over, section by section, with a real scholar of Edo Japanese. My little knowledge of Japanese allows me to understand the differences between modern Japanese and the original, and yes, there's a density, a quickness, and a terseness, in the original that Cid Corman's translation faithfully captures in English. I give a great deal of credit for this to Cid's co-translator, Kamaike Susumu, and to Cid's love for just these qualities in poetry, which he learned from such earlier masters as Ezra Pound, and of course from his great teacher William Carlos Williams, and was on the road to perfecting for himself when he did this project and published it (in 1961) in Origin magazine. Cid's style was a good "fit" for this project--in other words, as the Japanese put it--Cid had "en" or destiny when he undertook this translation with Kamaike-san, for the plain truth is, Cid Corman did not know Japanese. Even after all of his many years of living in Japan, he was not able to speak, read or write it. Cid was absolutely honest about this, however, and you'll see that he shares top billing with Kamaike-san on the title page. Startled? Well, I'd argue that the top English translation of this Japanese classic being produced by a non-Japanese reader, writer, and speaker, is not quite as startling as Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage being hailed by Civil War veterans as being the most accurate rendition of their experience of war in print. Scholars argue that Crane's psychological dynamic allowed him to present the "truth" of conflict. I'd argue that the same sort of dynamic--albeit stylistic--was at work with Cid and Basho. On this point, I differ from Higginson.

Dylana Accolla and Peter Yates simplify chinese medicine and herbology for handling physical and emotional problems. Shows how to easily prepare chinese herbal remedies and also includes special exercises for special needs. This book is very easy to read and follow. A great book for anyone who wants to understand chinese medicine, but has been confused reading other books on the subject. I have personally used the treatments in this book and they work. I'm glad they wrote it!