Stone Bridge Press

One night, alone on a hilltop, a young boy is swept aboard a magical train bound for the Milky Way. A classic in Japan, this tender fable is a book of great wisdom, offering insight into the afterlife.

This new concept in classroom supplements lets both beginning and advanced Japanese-language students craft their own customized guide to words, subjects, sentences, and cultural interests regardless of what textbook they use. There are 365 undated entries representing a full year's worth of learning, highlighting basic kanji and phrases, with lots of space to keep notes and reminders. Other pages offer fill-ins for favorite anime and manga, musicians, foods, prompts - whatever students want to keep track of or are curious about. At the back are practical references including kana and kanji, verb types, and a map.

The thirteen stories in this collection focus on ordinary characters from daily life - the working husband and the loyal wife who sadly and silently endures. Inevitably, they unravel to reveal human obsessions, flaws, and fears.

When Peter Meadowes flees to Kyoto for his summer vacation, he expects to find relief from Noriko, his grim Japanese mistress. But in the small wood-and-paper Japanese house he has rented, he finds something unexpected: another woman to desire. Next on the scene is Miss Goto, who turns an elaborately staged seduction into a comedy of errors. When wife Monica shows up from England, Meadowes must choose... and fast.

Are you ready for a new kind of origami? Preprinted tear-out papers with colorful pop-art designs on the front and folding lines on the back turn into 3D objects for play and display. Included are basic techniques, object descriptions, and complete folding instructions for each design. OriGrafix Fun showcases designs to play with - airplanes, sumo wrestlers, tops, pinwheels, butterflies, cameras, and more.

Are you ready for a new kind of origami? Preprinted tear-out paper with colorful pop art designs on the front and folding lines on the back turn into 3-D objects for play and display. Each volume includes 20 designs, 60 all-different sheets of folding paper, and 4 sheets of backgrounds for staging your creations. With OriGrafix Japan, you can make a cicada, turtle, crane, frog, little prince, Daruma, goldfish, and many more!

South Korea came from nowhere in the 1990s to become one of the biggest producers of pop content (movies, music, comic books, TV dramas, online gaming) in Asia - and the West. Why? Who's behind it? Mark James Russell tells an exciting tale of rapid growth and wild success marked by an uncanny knack for moving just one step ahead of changing technologies (such as music downloads and Internet comics) that have created new consumer markets around the world.

This colorful book provides a comprehensive introduction to the work and vision of Japanese director Satoshi Kon, anime's premier illusionist. The 2007 US release of Kon's mind-bending film Paprika put him on the map. Fans will be thrilled to discover his entire pantheon of masterpieces, including Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, and the satirical TV series Paranoia Agent.

This illustrated study of Tenryuji, ranked number one among the five great Zen temples of Kyoto and a major destination for tourism and worship, weaves together history, design, culture, and personal reflection to reveal the inner workings of a great spiritual institution. Looking at Tenryuji's present as a mirror to its past and detailing the famous pond and rockwork composition by renowned designer Muso Soseki, Norris Brock Johnson presents the first full-length "biography" of a Zen temple garden.

An engaging collection about everything from the abacus to zoology in Japan, designed to preserve knowledge about a society that was modernizing beyond recognition. This book remains an erudite source of information about culture, history, art, religion, and daily life.

This is the original screenplay for one of Ozu's finest masterpieces. Excellently translated, students of screenwriting will learn much from Ozu?s lean approach, while film lovers will treasure this unique keepsake of a great cinematic achievement. Yasujiro Ozu's 'Tokyo Story' (Tokyo Monogatari) follows an aging couple, Tomi and Shukichi, as they journey from their rural village to visit their two married children in bustling, postwar Tokyo.

This aptly named fiction anthology - tomo means "friend" in Japanese - is a true labor of friendship to benefit teens in Japan whose lives were upended by the violent earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011. Authors from Japan and around the world have contributed works of fiction about Japan, hoping to connect young adult English-language readers with their Japanese counterparts through stories of contemporary Japanese teens, ninja and fantasy-world teens, mixed heritage teens, and non-Japanese teens who call Japan home.