Adventures in Japan

Better than a library

We were in Kyoto again yesterday. But not for touristing. Tyler had a job interview. While we were there, we took the opportunity to visit Green e Books, a bookstore we've been reading about all over the place lately. I guess it's pretty new. They sell used foreign books, which not a lot of places around here do. Books in Japan tend to be crazy expensive. At least compared to home. I guess it has something to do with the incredibly bloated distribution system or something. So Japanese books cost a lot. Imported books, even more so. Foreign magazines? Don't even go there. So finding a place that sells reading material for half price or less is like Christmas and birthdays all rolled up into one. But without church.

The store itself was pretty cool. They didn't have shelves and shelves of fantasy/sci-fi/romance series like a lot of the secondhand bookstores we saw in Australia. If we were made of money, we could have easily come out of there with a couple armloads full of stuff to read. But then we'd spend all our time reading and not Japaning. We could do that at home. So maybe it's best that we're frugal.

And the music in there was eclectic. I like that.


As we were walking to the bookstore, we saw a flock of eagles or hawks or something. They were swooping around a bridge over the Kamo River, along with a whole lot of seagulls, a stork and a bunch of ducks. I've never seen so many all in one place. The raptors, I mean. Usually they hunt alone, or maybe in pairs, but I've never seen a flock like that. And when they weren't in the air, they were all roosting in the same tree. I guess that's city living.