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GREED: or why one goes to New York
- I found most of my missing copies of Kohri no Mamono at Bookoff. This was the great success of the trip. Bookoff is still overheated at its new address; thinking this might be so, clever me wore a tanktop under my tshirt and hoodie that day and so could strip down to reasonable comfort. Truly, it's the heat at Bookoff that curtails my shopping trips there.
- The manga section seems smaller than it was at the old location. I disapprove of Bookoff's paucity of Japanese books.
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nojojojo said she took a bunch of her classic manga there and was told it was worthless-- 'but we'll recycle it for you.' No wonder I can't find anything interesting there like all the Kawasou Masumis I want. True, I did get the handful of Mushishis that I kicked myself for not buying last year. Ditto vol 2 of Youmi Henjou Yawa at last; and then put it back when I copped those eight volumes of Kohri and the backpack threatened to become unmanageable. - The backpack did become unmanageable, so that when I tripped on something on 6th Avenue, the weight drove me to my knees-- my poor poor arthritic knees that hate me anyway. This rather curtailed the afternoon's shopping, but I was determined to get to Kinokuniya and look at Wordtanks before everything stiffened into immobility. Wordtanks were the real reason I wanted Kinokuniya, both last year and this. Last year it had moved without forwarding address. This year it remained coyly elusive. Google maps would have it somewhere between 42nd and 43rd; it's actually more like south of 41, which a kind cop eventually told me-- NY cops are kind to tourists at least-- and I finally limped into it in triumph.
- But of course it doesn't carry Wordtanks. Electronic dictionaries geared to the Japanese. Which is argh.
- The *books* OTOH are geared to English readers. I do not understand the Japanese bookstores in this town, and their reluctance to carry Japanese books. Unless it's that one can't make a living selling Japanese books any more. The prices are also arghity. Calculation says it's maybe a dollar cheaper than buying from bk1, and I guess that adds up when you buy ten or twelve books, But seriously.
- So I got my missing Kurotsubakis, and a couple more Onmyouji novels just because they're fun and fast (but tending to the twee, as paleaswater says), and the first volume of Wild Sheep Chase just to see what Murakami reads like in Japanese. As suspected, he reads like tapwater, but less sociopathic tapwater than in English where the lack of affect reads very unsettling indeed. Got a later Natsume Yuujinchou, to see if the series acquires any weight as it develops. Probably not, but I fancy people don't read it for the weight. Unfortunately it reminds me of Franklin and His Friends' didacticism: happy ending with a large dose of improving moralizing. I'd have bought some Kuroshitsuji to see what it's like, but not at 7USD a pop, even if these days $7 US is more like 7.25CDN and not $10. Sampling manga is what Bookoff is supposed to be for, if it was doing its duty.
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Glad the trip is being good to you so far. *hugs*
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(I am resentful because Kinokuniya used to be the place I could count on for getting five minutes of peace in the city, and now I'm just too likely to run into a crowd yelling KAWAII.)
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Possibly it was the aftermath of Shoujocon, but I've been running into KAWAII mobs at Kino since 2001.
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