Ranging from humor to profound maturity, the works in this volume offer the full spectrum of Soseki's genius. They are among Soseki's best, and brilliantly display his temperament and thought, the richness of his humor, and the sureness of his satirical touch. Ten Nights of Dream comprises a collection of ten short stories of dreams. Couched in a surrealistic atmosphere, they reveal the attitudes of a major writer at a turning point in his career.

    Martial arts action scenes are very difficult to write because of the terminology and the unfamiliar movements, but the author handles this information beautifully, weaving it into the story until it becomes as interesting as the story itself.

    Sen must find a husband to marry into her family’s swordsmith business. She seeks a Christian husband, though Christianity is banned.Enter Nobuhiro. Third son of a high-level samurai, Nobuhiro fled his harsh father and apprenticed himself to a swordsmith. He yearns to prove his worth.They seem an ideal match. But for Sen, the choice is faith or family. For Nobuhiro, choosing a Christian ends any reconciliation with his family. Can love be forged from the impossible?

    Filled with hundreds of full-color photos and numerous recipes this is the essential box lunch book.

    New Japan Pro Wrestling is the country's most recognisable brand. It attracts scores of fans to annual Tokyo Dome shows, has made household names of its most prominent talent, and is increasingly in demand by a rabid international audience. Yet NJPW's 40+ year history has been a rocky one. The company has endured strong competition, scandals and riots, and for a time it seemed like poor decision making would sink what was once a national institution. For the first time in English, Lion's Pride: The Turbulent History of New Japan Pro Wrestling explores NJPW's triumphs and tribulations. Starting with the origins of pro wrestling in post war Japan, Lion's Pride covers the company's inception in 1972, through its boom in the early 1980s, its influence on the medium at large in the '90s, and its downturn and subsequent revival in the last two decades. Alongside a detailed and informative history are essays detailing the intricacies of Japanese wrestling psychology, how NJPW's key players shaped the company, and much more besides. A crucial reference guide for any wrestling fan, Lion's Pride offers an entertaining and insightful glance behind the scenes of the 'King of Sports'.

    A Japan where snakes slither down school corridors, where bears prowl dark forests and where Westerners are still regarded as curious creatures. Welcome to the world of the inaka – the Japanese countryside.Unhappily employed in the UK, Sam Baldwin decides to make a big change. Saying sayonara to laboratory life, he takes a job as an English teacher on the JET Programme in a small, rural Japanese town that no one – the Japanese included – has ever heard of.Arriving in Fukui, where there’s ‘little reason to linger’ according to the guidebook, at first he wonders why he left England. But as he slowly settles in to his unfamiliar new home, Sam befriends a colourful cast of locals and begins to discover the secrets of this little known region.Helped by headmasters, housewives and Himalayan mountain climbers, he immerses himself in a Japan still clutching its pastoral past and uncovers a landscape of lonely lakes, rice fields and lush mountain forests. Joining a master drummer’s taiko class, skiing over paddies and learning how to sharpen samurai swords, along the way Sam encounters farmers, fishermen and foreigners behaving badly.Exploring Japan’s culture and cuisine, as well as its wild places and wildlife, For Fukui’s Sake is an adventurous, humorous and sometimes poignant insight into the frustrations and fascinations that face an outsider living in small town, backcountry Japan.

    Originally, the role of the Ninja was to gain information about the enemy and to sabotage his operations. Over the centuries the sect (which might be called the original Fifth Column) perfected the art of boring from within. The Ninja long ago perfected the art and techniques of covert entry, especially designed to infiltrate enemy territory in wartime.

    A complete guide to the tools used by a shokunin, or master Japanese craftsman, this book is ideal for both beginning and professional woodworkers.

    And about men surprised by women who are unconventional, unafraid and independent. It is the story of Meena, rebellious and unexamined, and Yuri, as complex as Meena is naive. Of Hajime, outsider to two cultures, and Prakash, unable to see beyond his limited horizons. It is also the story of Haruko who has dedicated herself to her art, and of Leela who is determined to break gender roles and learn the traditional gold-craft of her community. Set between Japan and Jaipur, Kintsugi follows the lives of these characters as they intersect and diverge, collide and break and join again in unexpected ways. The result is a brilliantly original novel as profound as it is playful, as emotionally moving as it is gripping.

    In this one celebratory volume, the reader is exposed to the free-ranging thoughts of one of the century's most brilliant minds--Kenzaburo Oe, winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature--who offers his message for mankind as well as a selection of his most penetrating essays on themes varying from Hiroshima to the state of modern fiction.

    Not in 4000 years of Japanese recorded history had anyone followed the Cherry Blossom Front from one end of the country to the other. Nor had anyone hitchhiked the length of Japan. But, heady on sakura and sake, Will Ferguson bet he could do both. The resulting travelogue is one of the funniest and most illuminating books ever written about Japan. And, as Ferguson learns, it illustrates that to travel is better than to arrive.

    Glassman illuminates three key teachings of Zen Buddhism, offering line-by-line commentary in clear, direct language:- The Heart Sutra the Buddha's essential discourse on emptiness, a central sutra of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition. - The Identity of Relative and Absolute: an eighth-century poem by Shih-t'ou His-ch'ien, a key text of the Soto Zen school. - The Zen precepts: the rules of conduct for laypeople and monks.His commentaries are based on workshops he gave as Abbot of the Zen Community of New York, and they contain within them the principles that became the foundation for the Greyston Mandala of community development organizations and the Zen Peacemaker Order.

    Haiku are clearly shown to be a means of discovering and recording the miracles of the world, from the humorous to the tragic. This is one of the major themes underlying Writing and Enjoying Haiku-that haiku can provide a way to a better life.After looking at why the reading and writing of haiku is important from a spiritual point of view, the book shows, as has never been done before, the techniques of writing-the when and the where, punctuation and capitalization, choice of words, figures of speech, sharing haiku, and much, much more.Having come this far, having learned to read and write haiku with a discerning mind, the reader will never again look upon the world in quite the same way.

    Whether retracing the footsteps of ancient warriors or detailing the encroachments of suburban sprawl, he unerringly finds the telling detail, the unexpected transformation, the everyday drama that brings this remote world to life on the page. Looking for the Lost is full of personalities, from friendly gangsters to mischievous children to the author himself, an expatriate who found in Japan both his true home and dogged exile. Wry, witty, sometimes angry, always eloquent, Booth is a uniquely perceptive guide. Looking for the Lost is a technicolor journey into the heart of a nation. Perhaps even more significant, it is the self-portrait of one man, Alan Booth, exquisitely painted in the twilight of his own life.

    Five years later and now a novice adventurer, he is by chance reunited with his childhood friend, another survivor of the massacre. Despite his inexperience, crude battle gear, and low rank, the boy sets off alone on a mission to defeat a nest full of goblins-thus begins the origin story of how he came to be known as Goblin Slayer!