Our Frommer's Tokyo author has written about Japan for years, so she's able to provide valuable insights and advice. She'll steer you away from the touristy and the inauthentic and show you the real heart of the Land of the Rising Sun.
Tokyo is a whirlwind of traffic and people, a fast-paced gateway to the 21st century. It's one of the world's great cities, but it can be overwhelming. Frommer's makes it easy for you to find your way and discover the best of Tokyo, from business hotels to traditional Japanese inns, from restaurants serving exquisite kaiseki feasts to stand-up noodle houses, from tranquil gardens and temples to the incredible swirl of nightlife in Shinjuku and Roppongi.
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami Unabridged edition
The opening
pages of a Haruki Murakami novel can be like the view out an airplane
window onto tarmac. But at some point between page three and
fifteen--it's page thirteen in
Kafka On The Shore--the
deceptively placid narrative lifts off, and you find yourself breaking
through clouds at a tilt, no longer certain where the plane is headed
or if the laws of flight even apply.
Joining the rich literature of runaways,
Kafka On The Shore
follows the solitary, self-disciplined schoolboy Kafka Tamura as he
hops a bus from Tokyo to the randomly chosen town of Takamatsu,
reminding himself at each step that he has to be "the world¹s toughest
fifteen-year-old." He finds a secluded private library in which to
spend his days--continuing his impressive self-education--and is
befriended by a clerk and the mysteriously remote head librarian, Miss
Saeki, whom he fantasizes may be his long-lost mother. Meanwhile, in a
second, wilder narrative spiral, an elderly Tokyo man named Nakata
veers from his calm routine by murdering a stranger. An unforgettable
character, beautifully delineated by Murakami, Nakata can speak with
cats but cannot read or write, nor explain the forces drawing him
toward Takamatsu and the other characters.
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
