a book so good I bought it twice.

Today I was out shopping in the aforementioned super-mini-mall plaza out on the edge of town (a bitch by bus). Walking from one of the buildings to the other, I took my first tumble of the year. It was a full-on, "feet go up, butt goes down" kind of fall. It didn't hurt, but there's always a sense of disappointment with the first fall of the season. I'm always holding out for a miraculous perfect season.

But this time, it wasn't just the shame and disappointment. Evidentally, the book in my pocket also flew out. I was reading "the wind up bird chronicles" in Japanese (*coughSHOWOFFcough*), so I figured it wouldn't be such a big deal to pick another one up. Besides, it was only 500 yen.

I was right, it wasn't a big deal... for me. In most Japanese book stores, paperback books are sorted by the publisher, and then the author. So I had to ask the staff of the book store. They looked at me like I had asked for a quarter pound of plutonium. When they figured out that I meant a japanese edition, they first showed me to the hardcovers. I asked about a "paperback" edition... and things got confused. The japanese word probably isn't *pay-paa-bakku*, but I figured book store people would suss it out. wrong-o.

It turned into classic Japanese frantic-search mode. One staff member got on the phone to ask about it, and was getting transferred to and fro (by people who were probably also being thrown into frantic search mode). Another started searching on the computer. Another... well he went to deal with other customers. Still, there were two people looking when I figured I might as well take a look at the spines of the books since I was pretty familiar with how mine had looked (the paperback publishers use recognizable spine designs). It took me about 8 seconds to find my book.

I look forward to a future where japan begins to lay things out logically. But, maybe I'm a dreamer.

(don't get me started on the video store where they sub-categorize drama into a million tiny pieces like "human drama" and "crime drama" and "romance".)