Book picks similar to
Minka: My Farmhouse in Japan by John Roderick
japan
architecture
non-fiction
nonfiction
The Complete Nose to Tail: A Kind of British Cooking
Fergus Henderson - 2012
John in 1995, now one of the world's most admired restaurants. His Nose to Tail books are full of exhilarating recipes for dishes that combine high sophistication with peasant thriftiness. Now the books are to be joined together in a compendious volume, The Complete Nose to Tail, with additional new recipes and more brilliant photography from Jason Lowe. This collection of recipes includes traditional favourites like Eccles cakes, devilled kidneys, and seed cake with a glass of Madeira, as well as many St. John classics for more adventurous gastronomes - roast bone marrow and parsley salad, deep-fried tripe and pot-roast half pig's head to name but a few. With a dozen new recipes on top of 250 existing ones, more than 100 quirky photos and exceptional production values, The Complete Nose to Tail is not only comprehensive but extremely desirable.
African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan
Thomas Lockley - 2019
Samurai. Legend.The life of history’s first foreign-born samurai, and his journey from Northeast Africa to the heights of Japanese society.When Yasuke arrived in Japan in the late 1500s, he had already traveled much of the known world. Kidnapped as a child, he had ended up a servant and bodyguard to the head of the Jesuits in Asia, with whom he traversed India and China learning multiple languages as he went. His arrival in Kyoto, however, literally caused a riot. Most Japanese people had never seen an African man before, and many of them saw him as the embodiment of the black-skinned (in local tradition) Buddha. Among those who were drawn to his presence was Lord Nobunaga, head of the most powerful clan in Japan, who made Yasuke a samurai in his court. Soon, he was learning the traditions of Japan’s martial arts and ascending the upper echelons of Japanese society.
The Unheard: A Memoir of Deafness and Africa
Josh Swiller - 2007
They take the sounds of the world and amplify them. Josh Swiller recited this speech to himself on the day he arrived in Mununga, a dusty village on the shores of Lake Mweru. Deaf since a young age, Swiller spent his formative years in frustrated limbo on the sidelines of the hearing world, encouraged by his family to use lipreading and the strident approximations of hearing aids to blend in. It didn't work. So he decided to ditch the well-trodden path after college, setting out to find a place so far removed that his deafness would become irrelevant.That place turned out to be Zambia, where Swiller worked as a Peace Corps volunteer for two years. There he would encounter a world where violence, disease, and poverty were the mundane facts of life. But despite the culture shock, Swiller finally commanded attention--everyone always listened carefully to the white man, even if they didn't always follow his instruction. Spending his days working in the health clinic with Augustine Jere, a chubby, world-weary chess aficionado and a steadfast friend, Swiller had finally found, he believed, a place where his deafness didn't interfere, a place he could call home. Until, that is, a nightmarish incident blasted away his newfound convictions.At once a poignant account of friendship through adversity, a hilarious comedy of errors, and a gripping narrative of escalating violence, The Unheard is an unforgettable story from a noteworthy new talent.