Showing results by author "Eric Ozawa" in All Categories

Twenty-five-year-old Takano has never liked reading, although the Morisaki bookshop has been in her family for three generations. It is the pride and joy of her uncle Ojisan, who has devoted his life to the bookshop since his wife Momoki left him five years earlier. When Takano's boyfriend reveals he's marrying someone else, she reluctantly accepts her eccentric uncle's offer to live rent-free in the tiny room above the shop. Hoping to nurse her broken heart in peace, Takano is surprised to encounter new worlds within the stacks of books lining the Morisaki bookshop.

In Tokyo, there is a neighbourhood with the highest number of bookstores in the world. It is called Jinbocho where book lovers can browse to their heart's delight and where hunters of first editions or autographed copies prowl the bookcases. The Morisaki bookshop, a small family-run shop, is so packed with books that barely five people can fit inside. Books crowd the shelves and invade every corner of the floor; when a customer arrives, the owner, Satoru, immediately pops out from behind the counter.

Hidden away, the Morisaki Bookshop is a booklover's paradise. On a quiet corner in an old wooden building, the shop is filled with hundreds of second-hand books. Here is where Takako comes to nurse a broken heart, finding within its crowded shelves books to soothe and uplift her flagging spirits. Over the course of two novels, Days at the Morisaki Bookshop and More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, Takako and her uncle Satoru discover their similarities and differences, and learn all about life, love and the healing power of books.

Tucked away on a narrow side street in Tokyo is the Torunka Café, a neighbourhood nook where the passersby are as likely to be local cats as tourists. Its regulars include Chinatsu Yukimura, a mysterious young woman who always leaves behind a napkin folded into the shape of a ballerina; Hiroyuki Yumata, a middle-aged man who's returned to the neighbourhood searching for the happy life he once gave up; and Shizuku, the café owner's teenage daughter, who is still coming to terms with her sister's death as she falls in love for the first time.