Japanese English

A peculiar pet shop in Tokyo has been known to offer customers a unique opportunity: the chance to adopt one of seven special cats whose "magic" is never promised, but always received. But there are rules: these cats must be returned after three days. They must eat only the food supplied by the owner, and they must travel to their new homes with a distinctive blanket. In The Blanket Cats, we meet seven customers, each of whom is hoping a temporary feline companion will help them escape a certain reality.

Kai Bimore never imagined that sneaking a legendary sword through Narita Airport would plunge him into Tokyo’s vicious underworld. Once a criminal with a dark past and a heart still loyal to his family's warrior legacy, Kai now finds himself pitted against the ruthless Ice Kuroda and her deadly empire. As high-stakes alliances fracture and secrets of the ancient Honjo Masamune reveal unprecedented power, every choice he makes could spark a violent revolution or seal his doom. The narrative centers on high-stakes criminal underworld conflicts in modern Tokyo—with rival clans, lethal ...

Kazuma and crew have made it through the winter in one piece (for the most part), and they're in dire need of a break...and for stressed and tired adventurers, there's only one place to go—the hot springs! With open-air baths and beautiful mountain scenery, Arcanletia has everything they need for a relaxing vacation. Not only that, but rumor has it the Demon King's army is avoiding the place. The reports also say it's because Aqua's Axis Church scared them off, but her loyal followers can't be that bad, right...?

No books. No long lists of vocabulary. No chance of failure. Welcome to Learn with Paul Noble - a tried-and-tested language-learning method that has been used by more than one million people to speak fluently and confidently....

Heroes, Like Swords, Are Forged In Blood! From the steaming jungles of Southeast Asia, to the neon-lit streets of Miami, SUPER NINJA is a saga fifty years in the making, yet, its roots reach back billions of years. This first volume, THE SWORD OF HEAVEN, fuses the lives of two young boys with boundless imaginations, a heroic Vietnam vet lost in his pain, a beautiful thief searching for meaning with her skills, and the quest for a mystical sword forged from the stars that binds them all. A race against time unfolds in a bloody tapestry woven with a master ninja assassin; a genius billionaire...

After having fulfilled the requirements for his promotion to Rank S, Kelvin, the eccentric Summoner who transmigrated from another world, finds that a series of festivities are being prepared in his honor. To his surprise and delight, he learns that part of it involves a one-on-one practice round with Silvia, a Rank S adventurer nicknamed "Ice Princess." Eagerly anticipating this match against a truly worthy opponent, he promptly dives into his training like never before.

Kazuma's first winter in another world isn't going so well. With companions like Aqua (Arch-priest), Megumin (Arch-wizard), and Darkness (Crusader), his party of advanced classes should be the most powerful in Axel--but they're so dysfunctional, even the easiest-seeming quest goes terribly awry, and they can barely save enough to afford a stable!

Delve into the mystical worlds of Celtic enchantment, the heroic sagas of Bulfinch's lore, the enigmatic tales of Slavic spirits, the celestial dances of Japanese deities, the profound fables of Turkish origins, the creation epics of Sumerian and Mesopotamian civilizations, the rich tapestry of Native American heritage, and the captivating chronicles from the Filipino archipelago.

In search of lost rune technology, Ainz heads for the dwarf country with Aura and Shalltear in tow. On his arrival, instead of a welcoming party, he’s greeted by an army of creatures known as the kuagoa, poised to lay waste to a dwarven city. In his quest to obtain the secrets of the runes and even the rune crafters themselves, Ainz may find himself facing not only these strange subterranean creatures, but also the most powerful race that calls the Azerlisia Mountains home—frost dragons!

The Merciless Queen, a high-ranking commander unit for the Legion, has finally been taken into custody. Now the Federacy, the United Kingdom, and the Alliance of Wald can conduct a thorough analysis of this special Ameise, which houses the consciousness of Legion developer Zelene Birkenbaum. If their efforts bear fruit, they may learn the secret to stopping the Legion once and for all! In the meantime, the Federacy has decided to rest its battle-worn blades. The Eighty-Sixth Strike Package has been allowed leave for the first time in ages.

In Bullet Train, underworld operative Ladybug was tasked by his handler Maria Beetle with retrieving a suitcase from a high-speed train in Japan. The job did not go according to plan. Will the unluckiest assassin in the world will find things easier this time around? All he has to do is deliver a painting to a hotel guest, a portrait made by his daughter. Easy enough, except when Ladybug makes the delivery, he realizes that the guest is clearly not the guy in the painting. Then he attacks Ladybug, they fight, and the guest ends up dead. How can such simple jobs always go wrong?

Balance your body, mind, and spirit and heal yourself with your own hands using this clear, step-by-step guide to the practice of the ancient Japanese healing art of Jin Shin - written by a trained expert with nearly three decades of experience.

In the Chizurui family mansion, a haunting presence casts a shadow over its residents. By night, an eerie figure, clad in a sinister Hannya mask is seen roaming around the house. An amateur murder mystery writer, Akimitsu Takagi, is sent to investigate—but his investigation takes a harrowing turn as tragedy strikes. Within the confines of a locked study, the head of the family is found dead, with only an ominous Hannya mask lying on the floor by his side and the lingering scent of jasmine in the air.

While intensely attentive to its own tradition, Japanese literature has also embraced the outside world, particularly the influence of China. Beyond this, Japan boasts a powerful literary culture, made up of cultivated reading publics, both aristocratic and bourgeois, literary salons, specialized presses, authoritative judges of talent who cultivated and celebrated particular writers and styles, and a canon consisting of classics. This Very Short Introduction traces the rich history of Japanese literature from its beginnings over a millennium ago to the present day.

Yahoo's lead baseball columnist offers an in-depth look at the most valuable commodity in sports - the pitching arm - and how its vulnerability to injury is hurting players and the game, from Little League to the majors.

Goblins are the weakest of the monsters, with only numbers in their favor. No warrior would dedicate himself to their eradication—except for Goblin Slayer. As his reputation spreads, a quest comes from none other than the Supreme God's own archbishop—Sword Maiden, the Gold-ranked adventurer renowned for defeating a Demon Lord. The former hero brings a report of goblins beneath the flourishing, peaceful water town, followed by a plea for Goblin Slayer and his companions to investigate, since no one else will.

On a cool summer evening in 1977, Mayumi Inaba hears a forlorn cry carried by the breeze of Tokyo’s Tamagawa River. She follows the sound to find a newborn kitten, just the size of her palm, dangling from a fence, abandoned. Overcome by tender affection, she takes the cat back to the small apartment she shares with her husband and christens her Mii, and so begins an ineffable bond.

From the internationally acclaimed Haruki Murakami comes a mind-bending new collection of short stories, all touching beautifully on love and solitude, childhood and memory...all with a signature Murakami twist. The eight stories in this new book are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator. From memories of youth, meditations on music, and an ardent love of baseball, to dreamlike scenarios and invented jazz albums, together these stories challenge the boundaries between our minds and the exterior world.

We work to the point of extreme exhaustion. Everyone is just too rushed, hurried, and stressed. We alleviate our stress by shopping for more stuff, binge eating, and engaging in time-wasting activities. We fill our lives with needless activities, relationships, and clutter. This makes us lose sense of who we really are and what’s important to us. This is the reason why the Japanese people have developed a lifestyle that strips away the inessential things in their lives. It’s called minimalism. In this audiobook, you’ll hear proven strategies on how to practice minimalism.

At turns nonchalantly hip and charmingly deranged, Suzuki's singular slant on speculative fiction would be echoed in countless later works, from Margaret Atwood and Harumi Murakami, to Black Mirror and Ex Machina. In these darkly playful and punky stories, the fantastical elements are always earthed by the universal pettiness of strife between the sexes, and the gritty reality of life on the lower rungs, whatever planet that ladder might be on.